Hell and High Water

The ecologist and author of Soil & Soul makes a compelling and provocative argument for a new way of life in the face of climate change.   Climate change is the greatest challenge that the world has ever faced. In this groundbreaking book, Alastair McIntosh summarizes the science of what is happening to the planet using his home country of Scotland as a case study. He then argues that the root of our climate crisis is not in our politics but in our consumerism—an addictive mentality where wants have replaced needs and consumption drives our very identity.   In a fascinating journey through literature that speaks to climate change—including the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, Plato's myth of Atlantis, and Shakespeare's Macbeth—McIntosh reveals the psychohistory of modern consumerism. He shows how we have fallen prey to a numbing culture of violence and the manipulation of marketing. Only when we resist these vices and face reality will we discover the spiritual meaning of our troubled times. Only then can magic, new meaning, and all that gives life, start to mend a broken world.   "What [McIntosh] does brilliantly here is offer an alternative, deeply humanist version of green politics." — The Scotsman, UK