acknowledgments
This book owes a debt to everyone who has struggled for climate justice. Yes, really, everyone. I wrote swathes of this book under a blood-red sky, in my backyard hammock, while ashes sifted out of the sky. I worked outside as much as I could, because it felt so important to be there while it was happening. But it was hard. It hurt. Not just my burning eyes and raw throat—it hurt my heart.
Each climate rupture—every flood, every fire, every hurricane and tornado—hurts like that. I’m a father. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old daughter, Poesy, and when I think about her future, it hurts.
The only thing that stops the hurt is seeing the people who put their bodies between the forces of relentless, remorseless extraction and the preservation of the only planet in the known universe that can sustain human life. Greta Thunberg’s fierce oratory, to be sure, as well as her rapier wit. But also, Extinction Rebellion, the Sunrise Movement, and especially the Water Protectors. They are the moral exemplars that refill my reservoirs of hope and keep me going.
So this book is for them. For you. For everyone who understands that sorting your recycling isn’t going to cut it. For everyone who understands that the polycrisis isn’t about individual changes, it’s about systemic ones. For everyone who goes beyond shopping their way out of the emergency, and instead joins a group, a network, a movement.
Whoa, oh mercy, mercy me
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