Books
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Transformative Adaptation – Another world is still just possible (coming soon).
We are out of the safe zone. Impacts beyond 1.5oC, the agreed maximum limit-target for global overheating, are coming. In fact, impacts beyond 1.5oC are already here. In this context, adaptation, preparedness and resilience-building are no longer optional. They become central, pivotal to whether we survive, let alone flourish. The struggle to define adaptation will be the defining struggle of the coming decade. Enter Transformative Adaptation (TrAd for short). TrAd is adaptation that works with, not against nature. It reduces greenhouse gas emissions in the same breath as it guards us against the impacts of those emissions. This helps transform our civilisation to be in readiness and in the direction…
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The Climate Majority Project: Setting the Stage for a Mainstream, Urgent Climate Movement.
Edited by Rupert Read, Liam Kavanagh and Rosie Bell, and with a foreword by Lord Deben (former chair of the UK’s Climate Change Committee). The Climate Majority Project: Setting the Stage for a Mainstream, Urgent Climate Movement. To order a copy (with free UK postage and packing), click here. If climate action remains marginal at this late hour, it will fail. The rapid, system-level change that we need to escape catastrophe will take unprecedented public mobilization. A ‘silent majority’ of citizens is now concerned about human-made climate change – and as ever more people wake up to the crisis and ask ‘What can I do?’, the climate movement must answer…
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Do you want to know the truth? The surprising rewards of climate honesty
Do you want to know the truth? is a book written by Rupert Read and published by Simplicity Institute Publishing. In this book Rupert Read argues compellingly that truthfulness on climate has surprising rewards: we get to live authentically, win or lose; to be with each other rather than stuck in individualised silos of anxiety; and, most important of all, to turn the difficult emotions which climate-honesty generates into energy. In a series of provocative and stimulating chapters, Read shows how truth is a mighty power that can mobilise untold millions. Read tackles in particular ‘the 1.5 delusion’ – the belief that it’s still practically possible for humanity to remain…
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Why Climate Breakdown Matters
Why Climate Breakdown Matters is a book written by Rupert Read and published by Bloomsbury. Climate change and the destruction of the earth is the most urgent issue of our time. We are hurtling towards the end of civilisation as we know it. With an unflinching honest approach, Rupert Read asks us to face up to the fate of the planet. This is a book for anyone who wants their philosophy to deal with reality and their climate concern to be more than a displacement activity. As people come together to mourn the loss of the planet, we have the opportunity to create a grounded, hopeful response. This meaningful hopefulness…
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Collaborations: Joint writings on Ecology, Economy, and Society
Collaborations is a collection of Rupert Read’s articles, edited by Frank M. Scavelli. This is self-published as an eBook on this website.
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Deep Adaptation: Navitgating the Realities of Climate Chaos
Deep Adaptation is an edited collection co-authored by Jem Bendell and Rupert Read. It is published by Polity. ‘Deep adaptation’ refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for – and live with – a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world. This is the first book to show how professionals across different sectors are beginning to incorporate the acceptance of likely or unfolding societal breakdown into their work and lives. They do not assume that our…
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A Timeline Of The Plague Year: A Comprehensive Record of the UK Government’s Response to the Coronavirus Crisis
A Timeline Of The Plague Year is a book co-authored by Ian Sinclair and Rupert Read. It is edited by Joanna Booth and self-published. You can download a copy of the book for free from the book’s website. Or, you can purhase a print copy at lulu.com. Praise for A Timeline Of The Plague Year “With the success of the vaccination programme, the fear of mass deaths is fading. But unless we know how we ended up with the highest death rate in the world we cannot hold our government to account or make the necessary changes to prevent another public health catastrophe. This detailed timeline of what went wrong…
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Parents for a Future: How loving our children can prevent climate collapse
Parents for a Future is a book authored by Rupert Read and published by UEA Publishing Project. That our ecological future appears grave can no longer come as any surprise. And yet we have so far failed, collectively and individually, to begin the kind of action necessary to shift our path away from catastrophic climate collapse. In this stark and startling little book, Rupert Read helps us to understand the direness of our predicament while showing us a metaphor and a method — a way of thinking — by which we might transform it. From the relatively uncontroversial starting point that we love our own children, we are introduced to…
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Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy: Thinking Through His Philosophical Investigations
Wittgenstein’s Liberatory Philosophy is a book authored by Rupert Read and published by Routledge. In this book, Rupert Read offers the first outline of a resolute reading, following the highly influential New Wittgenstein ‘school’, of the Philosophical Investigations. He argues that the key to understanding Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is to understand its liberatory purport. Read contends that a resolute reading coincides in its fundaments with what, building on ideas in the later Gordon Baker, he calls a liberatory reading. Liberatory philosophy is philosophy that can liberate the user from compulsive (and destructive) patterns of thought, freeing one for possibilities that were previously obscured. Such liberation is our prime goal in…
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Extinction Rebellion: Insights from the Inside
Extinction Rebellion: Insights From the Inside is a collection of essays, articles, and interviews by Rupert Read, a leading voice in Extinction Rebellion, edited and with an extended postscript by Samuel Alexander. The anthology presents an insider’s perspective of the movement from its inception up until the Covid pandemic. It offers both a fascinating historical account of this emerging movement and a critical engagement with urgent questions of strategy and framing going forward. It is published by the Simplicity Institute. To maximise availability and access, the pdf version of the book is available on a ‘pay what you can’ basis (including for free). Rupert will be donating profits from this…
