I WANT A BETTER CATASTROPHE: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope and Gallows Humor (An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers)
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In this grave and irreverent philosophical manual, Andrew Boyd, bestselling author of Daily Afflictions and Beautiful Trouble, stares down the 21st century.
With global temperature rise set to blow past the 2°C limit, this life-long activist is thrown into a crisis of hope, and on a quest to find out how leading thinkers and everyday folks alike are grappling with the “impossible news” of our climate doom.
The responses are as diverse as America itself. Defiance: “I’m gonna drown with my boots on!” Self-preservation: “Sure, the apocalypse is gonna happen, but it’s gonna happen to somebody else.” Nihilism: “I’m going to party like it’s 2099.” Faith: “I have kids, hopelessness is not an option.” Pragmatism: “I want a better catastrophe.”
Boyd’s journey takes him from storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades to post-carbon think tanks to “hopelessness workshops.” Along the way, he walks through the 5 stages of climate grief, maps out our existential options, and gamely tackles some familiar dilemmas — “Should I bring kids into such a world?” “Can I lose hope when others can’t afford to?” and “Why the fuck am I recycling?”
As hope and hopelessness collide, paradox ensues, and Boyd offers us a broadside of gallows-humor life-advice — as well as a few surprisingly helpful flowcharts — about how to live knowing the worst is yet to come.
No one, it turns out, is more beset by dread than those most familiar with the facts: the climate scientists and activists themselves. But if catastrophe is truly unavoidable, Boyd asks, what are we actually fighting for, and why? He finds answers that will both surprise and inspire, and might even make you laugh.
Filtering these first-hand stories through the lens of wisdom traditions both East, West, and Indigenous, Boyd crafts an insightful guide for the apocalypse-challenged.
Maybe hopelessness can save the world? Maybe another end of the world is possible?
Published by New Society Publishers, February 2023.
