The Sea Is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook

The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook is an invitation to get involved in the movement to build a just and sustainable world in the face of the most urgent challenge our species has ever faced. By explaining the entrenched forces that are preventing rapid action, it helps you understand the nature of the political reality we are facing and arms you with the tools you need to overcome them. The book offers background information on the roots of the crisis and the many rapidly expanding solutions that are being implemented all around the world. It explains how to engage in productive messaging that will pull others into the climate justice movement, what you need to know to help build a successful movement, and the policy changes needed to build a world with climate justice. It also explores the personal side, how engaging in the movement can be good for your mental health. It ends with advice on how you can find the place where you can be the most effective and where you can build climate action into your life in ways that are deeply rewarding.

Cynthia Kaufman is the director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action De Anza College, where she runs and teaches in a community organizer training program. She is the author of three books on social change: Challenging Power: Democracy and Accountability in a Fractured World (Bloomsbury, 2020), Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope (Lexington Books, 2012), and Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change (2nd Edition PM Press, 2016). She has been active in a wide variety of social justice movements including Central American solidarity, union organizing, police accountability, and most recently tenants’ right and climate change. She publishes on social justice in Common Dreams.

Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist who in 2014 was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the “alternative Nobel.” His 1989 book The End of Nature is regarded as the first book for a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in twenty-four languages. He’s gone on to write a dozen more books. He is a founder of 350.org, the first planet-wide, grassroots climate change movement, which has organized twenty thousand rallies around the world in every country save North Korea, spearheaded the resistance to the Keystone Pipeline, and launched the fast-growing fossil fuel divestment movement. He is the author of Falter, Oil and Honey, Eaarth, Deep Economy, Long Distance, and Maybe One.