Longlisted for the Wainwright Prize 2021 for Writing on Global Conservation

Climate change is the greatest challenge to humankind today. While the coronavirus sheds a light on the vulnerability of our interconnected world, the effects of global warming will be permanent, indeed catastrophic, without a massive shift in human behaviour.

Writer, scholar and broadcaster Alastair McIntosh sums up the present knowledge and shows that conventional solutions are not enough. In rejecting the blind alleys of climate change denial, exaggeration and false optimism, he offers a scintillating discussion of ways forward. Weaving together science, politics, psychology and spirituality, this guide examines what it takes to make us riders on the storm.

Alastair McIntosh is an independent writer, broadcaster, speaker and activist who is involved in a wide range of contemporary issues, from land reform, globalization and nonviolence to psychology, spirituality and ecology.

In this profound new book, Alastair McIntosh explores the science, psychology and spirituality of climate change. He summarises the up-to-date science and shows the damage caused both by climate-change denial as well as exaggeration. In outlining the technological and policy options to cut greenhouse gases, he argues that neither will be anywhere near sufficient unless we grasp the 'twin drivers' - namely, world population and excess consumption - in ways that deepen people's dignity and freedom.

This book's enduring importance will lie in the uniqueness of the remedies proposed: our urgent need to reconnect with the earth, to build community, and own inner lives of depth psychology and even spirituality. This transforms climate change into a chance to discover deeper aspects of our humanity. The result is a scintillating guide to what it takes to make us riders on the storm.