Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide to Saving Ourselves

An inspirational guide to discussing and fighting climate change for millennial and GenZ voters that cuts through the usual myths and scare tactics to provide practical advice.

Will Hackman is a Millennial, and he is pissed. Two wars, two global economic catastrophes, and a pandemic before the age of forty combined with a ballooning cost-of-living crisis and crushing student loan debt can do that to a person, but this is just reality now. Work harder, we're told. The American dream will still be attainable some day. All generations have their struggle. But there's one thing that compounds these challenges that is unequaled at any other time in human history. That is the ticking time bomb of fossil fuel emissions. With that bomb detonating already, Millennials and Gen-Zers will be left to deal with the worst of the climate change fallout well after those responsible have passed away. Each year of warming makes these problems worse. And we have never been more divided.

In Radically Reframing Climate Change: A Guide to Saving Ourselves, Will Hackman identifies three main obstacles to solving climate change: polarization, paralysis, and stale, ineffective messaging. He empowers readers to turn their anxiety or apathy into passion, and anger into action at the personal, community, and governmental levels. Rather than disengage from what many young people view as a corrupt system, we must change it from within. The decades-old climate rallying cries to "Save the Planet" no longer work in our hyper-partisan world. No amount of beating people over the head with images of polar bears or melting glaciers is going to change their minds if they haven't already. Our job shouldn't be to convince non-believers; we no longer have that luxury of time, but we can use language tied to personal interests to get buy-in and results. The problem of solving climate change isn't scientific, fact-based, or even technological. It's political, emotional, and ideological. Saving Ourselves will provide a path forward for engagement and voter mobilization that combats apathy, dread, and resentment, and builds greater issue identification.

Hackman reframes the climate crisis as a humanity crisis, arguing that we must change how we think and talk about climate change, both in our conversations with non-believers and among those who care, particularly regarding solutions. Assuring humanity's place on a warming, changing planet will require a near universal level of public support we will never reach if we keep making the same mistakes. We know how to do this. We've built successful public awareness campaigns on seatbelts, anti-smoking, civil rights, and plenty of other vital issues. We can do it again. But the stakes have never been higher and time is running out.