Fighting in a World on Fire: The Next Generation's Guide to Protecting the Climate and Saving Our Future - Softcover

Malm, Andreas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1804291250 ISBN 13: 9781804291252

Publisher: Verso, 2023

Synopsis

An argument for bold action to halt climate destruction, adapted for young people from Andreas Malm’s best-selling book

Young people are inheriting a world of climate catastrophe. Young people are also one of the strongest forces leading movements for climate justice, and to halt the fossil fuel emissions that are making our Earth unlivable.
 
As Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for the Future movement have made clear, solutions offered by adults are far too little, far too late: the measures in unenforceable international agreements won’t halt our reliance on fossil fuels, or take the drastic steps humans need to take in order to keep our planet livable.

What kinds of drastic steps are needed? What kind of bold actions can the climate justice movement begin using to bring a stop to climate destruction, and that can be employed alongside existing strategies of mass protest, awareness, and legal appeals? Why does our society consider profit for oil companies more important than the future of young people and the health of our shared environment?

In this adaptation of Andreas Malm’s best-selling book on the need for a bolder, more confrontational climate justice movement, these urgent questions are brought to the most important audience of all: those who are growing up in a world on fire.

About this title

About the Author

Andreas Malm is a scholar of human ecology, and the author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency, The Progress of this Storm, and Fossil Capital, which won the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.

Jimmy Whipps is a lifetime resident of Portland, Oregon. He enjoyed a twenty-year career in education, primarily as a middle school social sciences teacher. He has been involved in a variety of actions, marches, and protests.

Llewyn Whipps is a habitat restoration practitioner working primarily on Kalapuyan land. They attended their first protest as an elementary schooler, with their father Jimmy. They have been a participant in the climate movement since their early twenties, joining fights for fossil fuel divestment, against industrial logging, and to stop oil trains and drill rigs.

Reviews

Gr 10 Up—A YA adaptation of a controversial missive on climate activism that encourages drastic measures to save the planet's—and this generation's—future. It focuses on why past movements haven't been sufficient to change the tide in environmental justice; nonviolence and civil disobedience are just not enough. The author explains that many movements became successful once they began employing practices like property violence, riots, and self-defense. These include suffragettes Emmeline Pankurst and her daughters, civil rights activists SNCC, and anti-apartheid Spear of the Nation. Recent movements that readers will be familiar with include the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock and the Arab Spring. Though the structure and information is the same as the original, this edition attempts to give substantial background to make its arguments more accessible to young people. Frequent inserts define core concepts and are set off by gray boxes. Terms include divestment and fossil capital. They sometimes take up more than two pages. However, the definitions are important, because otherwise, young readers will find this difficult to digest. The work is most engaging when presenting past activist movements that centered around the work of young people and marginalized communities. Black-and-white photos, discussion questions, and suggestions for further reading are also featured. VERDICT A general purchase for curricular tie-in as needed.—Shelley M. Diaz

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1804291250
• ISBN 13: 9781804291252
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272