Description

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.

Publisher Review

'It's imaginative, profound, and a reminder that the British Isles still have their own stock of indigenous wisdom to draw on ... written with wit and self-awareness' * Earthbound Report * 'the book has made me think quite deeply about these critically important issues. What more could one want?' * ShinyNewBooks.co.uk * 'This should be the end of any Scottish complacency ... Alastair conveys a heartfelt case for doing whatever you can, without succumbing to burnout and toxic indispensability' -- David Coleman * Eco-Congregation Scotland * 'McIntosh is no ideologue, he ... manages to hold in balance an exploration of the profound depths of philosophy and spirituality, with well-argued support for consensus science' -- Kat Jones of COP26 Climate Fringe 'Offers a steady, gentle voices, counterbalancing the ones which shout denial and alarm in street protests or down our timelines...McIntosh moves into his stride as a liberation theologian, peace-maker, community activist and poet' * Sunday National * 'McIntosh sees climate change as a threat which can be met. It presents us with risk and also with opportunity. This is a very good book because it is balanced and positive. There is no despair here' * Scotsman * 'This is a comforting book, and a wise one: all the more welcome for its calm insistence on asserting the validity of such qualities in a world where apocalyptic scenes seem pervasive and 'tipping points' are often presented as resting on a hair trigger' * Bella Caledonia * 'It's a good moment to pause and consider the power and politics of climate change. Alastair McIntosh's book does just that. As you would expect, it's beautifully written and provides the essential introduction to the historical and scientific background, grounded in a deep understanding of climate change in place, in the context of the author's home place of the Western Isles' * Green World * 'Seriously up to date ...always independent-minded ... McIntosh pulls of the scandalous trick of combining the insights of science, academia, poetry and eclectic spirituality ... conveys a heartfelt urgency for doing whatever you can' * Reform Magazine * 'Ecologist Alastair McIntosh's latest work could not be more timely ... Riders on the Storm offers a profusion of ideas, written with insight, honesty and wit' * The Herald * 'If you are searching for a well-reasoned, thorough and balanced review of the climate crisis, with Scotland at its core but the future of the world at its heart, you will find it here' * Farming Scotland * 'Aims to speak with authority to world leaders and the winter public on the environmental crisis. It stands out from other writing on this subject firstly for the high level of scholarship McIntosh displays, as well as the breadth of his understanding. The book retains and underlying sense of hope: neither we nor the world are necessarily doomed, he asserts; we could in fact become Riders on the Climate Storm. Despite the grave dangers we face, Alastair McIntosh always gives cause for hope' -- Jim Corrigall * Faith and Freedom Journal * '[McIntosh] is steeped in the scholarship but at his best on the intangibles. Ultimately, he seeks to place climate science within a more spiritual understanding of what it is to be human: to act as an ecological agent, by taking a human place within an ecology of life. The age of climate denialism is over: we are now in an era of displacement, dissociation and projection. This book is a great guide' -- Gerald Taylor Aitken * Resurgence *