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The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change
Climate change has arrived, and it's not going away. The Handbook is not another book about climate change science or politics. Rather it is an intelligent guide, and a potential ground breaker, for all of us who feel helpless in the face of government disagreement and want practical advice on how we can adapt now.
The Handbook will give you stories and advice from individuals who are already quietly doing amazing things. Jane Rawson and James Whitmore, former and current environment editors for The Conversation, look at how to establish your risk and face your fears; where to live and with whom; and how to survive heat, fire and flood. They investigate ways to provide your own food, power and water, make sure you can still get around, and get rid of your waste and sewage. They talk about new ways to think about home and possessions, the sadness of living through climate change, and how, for both individual and common good, we might positively change the way we live.
The Handbook is both practical and philosophical. It can be read cover-to-cover, or dipped into when you need specific advice. It can help you plan and execute a strategy to deal with the effects of climate change. It might change your life. But it should also make you ask, does it really have to be this way?
Where should I live? What kind of dwelling should I live in? What should I do in an extreme climate event? How should I live?
'Sooner or later we are all going to be compelled to think about these questions and to take some kind of action. There is no better place to begin than by reading The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change and talking about it with your family, friends and colleagues.'
Clive Hamilton, author of Affluenza, Requiem for a Species and Earthmasters.
http://www.survivingclimatechange.net/
The Handbook will give you stories and advice from individuals who are already quietly doing amazing things. Jane Rawson and James Whitmore, former and current environment editors for The Conversation, look at how to establish your risk and face your fears; where to live and with whom; and how to survive heat, fire and flood. They investigate ways to provide your own food, power and water, make sure you can still get around, and get rid of your waste and sewage. They talk about new ways to think about home and possessions, the sadness of living through climate change, and how, for both individual and common good, we might positively change the way we live.
The Handbook is both practical and philosophical. It can be read cover-to-cover, or dipped into when you need specific advice. It can help you plan and execute a strategy to deal with the effects of climate change. It might change your life. But it should also make you ask, does it really have to be this way?
Where should I live? What kind of dwelling should I live in? What should I do in an extreme climate event? How should I live?
'Sooner or later we are all going to be compelled to think about these questions and to take some kind of action. There is no better place to begin than by reading The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change and talking about it with your family, friends and colleagues.'
Clive Hamilton, author of Affluenza, Requiem for a Species and Earthmasters.
http://www.survivingclimatechange.net/
300 pages, Paperback
First published August 25, 2015
8 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Jane Rawson
14 books145 followersJane grew up in Canberra and travelled via San Francisco and Melbourne to Tasmania, where she works as a writer for a conservation organisation. Her first novel, A Wrong turn at the Office of Unmade Lists, won the Small Press Network’s Most Underrated Book Award and her second novel, From the Wreck, won the Aurealis Award and was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award. She is also the author of a non-fiction guide to surviving and living with climate change called The Handbook and a novella, Formaldehyde, which won the 2015 Seizure Viva La Novella Prize. You can read her essays in Living with the Anthropocene; Fire, Flood, Plague; and Reading like an Australian Writer.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 20, 2016
This is a fantastic book! Get yourself a copy!
Will you believe me if I say that I picked it up The Handbook late last night after I had finished reading Patricia Grace’s Cousins just to have a look at the introduction before turning out the light, and found myself reading the entire book instead? It’s true. I couldn’t stop reading it…
I did already know I was going to be interested, I had heard the authors discuss the book with Patricia Karvelas in The Drawing Room on Radio National. I knew it wasn’t yet another book about the science of climate change so that you can have arguments with climate change deniers, it was, as the title implies, a book about what to do to make life bearable now that climate change is upon us. How to make your life better in the 2° rise-in-temperature scenario, which is now inescapable. How to prepare for that, because it’s happening in your lifetime, in your own little house in the suburbs or wherever. Yes, present tense, not future tense. Noticeable changes now, and only going to get worse even if a miracle happened and our witless politicians started doing something to prevent it getting to the 4° rise-in-temperature scenario. But, well, I admit it, I was expecting The Handbook to be a bit worthy. I was expecting it to be a bit dull.
I should have known better.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/08/25/th...
Will you believe me if I say that I picked it up The Handbook late last night after I had finished reading Patricia Grace’s Cousins just to have a look at the introduction before turning out the light, and found myself reading the entire book instead? It’s true. I couldn’t stop reading it…
I did already know I was going to be interested, I had heard the authors discuss the book with Patricia Karvelas in The Drawing Room on Radio National. I knew it wasn’t yet another book about the science of climate change so that you can have arguments with climate change deniers, it was, as the title implies, a book about what to do to make life bearable now that climate change is upon us. How to make your life better in the 2° rise-in-temperature scenario, which is now inescapable. How to prepare for that, because it’s happening in your lifetime, in your own little house in the suburbs or wherever. Yes, present tense, not future tense. Noticeable changes now, and only going to get worse even if a miracle happened and our witless politicians started doing something to prevent it getting to the 4° rise-in-temperature scenario. But, well, I admit it, I was expecting The Handbook to be a bit worthy. I was expecting it to be a bit dull.
I should have known better.
To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2015/08/25/th...
December 30, 2015
"The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change" is possibly the first Australia-specific book of its kind, setting out practical ways we can change the way we live to better prepare for surviving and living in a time of climate chaos.
Written by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore (respectively, the former, and current, Environment & Energy Editor for news website, The Conversation), "The Handbook" makes for illuminating and terrifying reading. In chapters dealing with topics such as how to survive heat waves, bushfires and floods, "The Handbook" offers detailed analysis of the kinds of climate-related emergencies that can affect Australian residents and offers practical tips on what you can do to prepare (such as what to pack in an emergency survival kit).
The main message is: Don’t panic, but get prepared.
Three things stood out for me when reading "The Handbook":
We need to embrace a different idea of home.
Rawson and Whitmore argue that before you spend a pile of money retrofitting your house or making an emergency response plan that will take in every possible eventuality – take stock of what is most important to you in your life. If that includes your huge collection of vinyl records; you’ll need to include those in your plan. But the authors suggest that maybe we need to rethink how much we need (in material goods or money or housing) and discuss Minimalism (the idea of having enough to be happy; not more, not less) and the concept of The Tiny House: models for living that redefine consumption practices and how people might live in smaller, possibly even more mobile, spaces. “Earthships” are also discussed as a viable model for living through climatic extremes.
We need to increase our self-sufficiency in relation to food, power, and water:
"The Handbook" discusses keeping a food “lifeboat” – a stockpile of essential food that will supply an adult’s energy needs for ten weeks during a crisis – and ways in which we can learn to grow more food in an urban setting, garden specifically for our climate, and what to plant for “best nutrition”. It also details ways in which we can think about going “off-grid” by: reducing or self-supplementing power use via personal generation, storage, and community micro-grids, and improving the ways we collect and store rainwater and treat our waste.
We need to make ourselves and our communities more resilient.
In an increasingly urbanised environment, the most vulnerable (the isolated, sick, and elderly) often die alone. Rawson and Whitmore suggest that we need to rethink how we organise ourselves at a community level: instead of fortifying your house against every possible eventuality, maybe we need to form stronger ties with our immediate neighbours or do more thinking around the ideas of co-housing (private houses organised around shared spaces and communal buildings) and transition towns (communities built around the idea of self-sustaining small economies).
"The Handbook" is guaranteed to get even the most hardened climate change sceptic at least thinking about the climatic challenges facing this country over the years to come.
Written by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore (respectively, the former, and current, Environment & Energy Editor for news website, The Conversation), "The Handbook" makes for illuminating and terrifying reading. In chapters dealing with topics such as how to survive heat waves, bushfires and floods, "The Handbook" offers detailed analysis of the kinds of climate-related emergencies that can affect Australian residents and offers practical tips on what you can do to prepare (such as what to pack in an emergency survival kit).
The main message is: Don’t panic, but get prepared.
Three things stood out for me when reading "The Handbook":
We need to embrace a different idea of home.
Rawson and Whitmore argue that before you spend a pile of money retrofitting your house or making an emergency response plan that will take in every possible eventuality – take stock of what is most important to you in your life. If that includes your huge collection of vinyl records; you’ll need to include those in your plan. But the authors suggest that maybe we need to rethink how much we need (in material goods or money or housing) and discuss Minimalism (the idea of having enough to be happy; not more, not less) and the concept of The Tiny House: models for living that redefine consumption practices and how people might live in smaller, possibly even more mobile, spaces. “Earthships” are also discussed as a viable model for living through climatic extremes.
We need to increase our self-sufficiency in relation to food, power, and water:
"The Handbook" discusses keeping a food “lifeboat” – a stockpile of essential food that will supply an adult’s energy needs for ten weeks during a crisis – and ways in which we can learn to grow more food in an urban setting, garden specifically for our climate, and what to plant for “best nutrition”. It also details ways in which we can think about going “off-grid” by: reducing or self-supplementing power use via personal generation, storage, and community micro-grids, and improving the ways we collect and store rainwater and treat our waste.
We need to make ourselves and our communities more resilient.
In an increasingly urbanised environment, the most vulnerable (the isolated, sick, and elderly) often die alone. Rawson and Whitmore suggest that we need to rethink how we organise ourselves at a community level: instead of fortifying your house against every possible eventuality, maybe we need to form stronger ties with our immediate neighbours or do more thinking around the ideas of co-housing (private houses organised around shared spaces and communal buildings) and transition towns (communities built around the idea of self-sustaining small economies).
"The Handbook" is guaranteed to get even the most hardened climate change sceptic at least thinking about the climatic challenges facing this country over the years to come.
December 30, 2015
"The Handbook: Surviving and Living with Climate Change" is possibly the first Australia-specific book of its kind, setting out practical ways we can change the way we live to better prepare for surviving and living in a time of climate chaos.
Written by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore (respectively, the former, and current, Environment & Energy Editor for news website, The Conversation), "The Handbook" makes for illuminating and terrifying reading. In chapters dealing with topics such as how to survive heat waves, bushfires and floods, "The Handbook" offers detailed analysis of the kinds of climate-related emergencies that can affect Australian residents and offers practical tips on what you can do to prepare (such as what to pack in an emergency survival kit).
The main message is: Don’t panic, but get prepared.
Three things stood out for me when reading "The Handbook":
We need to embrace a different idea of home.
Rawson and Whitmore argue that before you spend a pile of money retrofitting your house or making an emergency response plan that will take in every possible eventuality – take stock of what is most important to you in your life. If that includes your huge collection of vinyl records; you’ll need to include those in your plan. But the authors suggest that maybe we need to rethink how much we need (in material goods or money or housing) and discuss Minimalism (the idea of having enough to be happy; not more, not less) and the concept of The Tiny House: models for living that redefine consumption practices and how people might live in smaller, possibly even more mobile, spaces. “Earthships” are also discussed as a viable model for living through climatic extremes.
We need to increase our self-sufficiency in relation to food, power, and water:
"The Handbook" discusses keeping a food “lifeboat” – a stockpile of essential food that will supply an adult’s energy needs for ten weeks during a crisis – and ways in which we can learn to grow more food in an urban setting, garden specifically for our climate, and what to plant for “best nutrition”. It also details ways in which we can think about going “off-grid” by: reducing or self-supplementing power use via personal generation, storage, and community micro-grids, and improving the ways we collect and store rainwater and treat our waste.
We need to make ourselves and our communities more resilient.
In an increasingly urbanised environment, the most vulnerable (the isolated, sick, and elderly) often die alone. Rawson and Whitmore suggest that we need to rethink how we organise ourselves at a community level: instead of fortifying your house against every possible eventuality, maybe we need to form stronger ties with our immediate neighbours or do more thinking around the ideas of co-housing (private houses organised around shared spaces and communal buildings) and transition towns (communities built around the idea of self-sustaining small economies).
"The Handbook" is guaranteed to get even the most hardened climate change sceptic at least thinking about the climatic challenges facing this country over the years to come.
Written by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore (respectively, the former, and current, Environment & Energy Editor for news website, The Conversation), "The Handbook" makes for illuminating and terrifying reading. In chapters dealing with topics such as how to survive heat waves, bushfires and floods, "The Handbook" offers detailed analysis of the kinds of climate-related emergencies that can affect Australian residents and offers practical tips on what you can do to prepare (such as what to pack in an emergency survival kit).
The main message is: Don’t panic, but get prepared.
Three things stood out for me when reading "The Handbook":
We need to embrace a different idea of home.
Rawson and Whitmore argue that before you spend a pile of money retrofitting your house or making an emergency response plan that will take in every possible eventuality – take stock of what is most important to you in your life. If that includes your huge collection of vinyl records; you’ll need to include those in your plan. But the authors suggest that maybe we need to rethink how much we need (in material goods or money or housing) and discuss Minimalism (the idea of having enough to be happy; not more, not less) and the concept of The Tiny House: models for living that redefine consumption practices and how people might live in smaller, possibly even more mobile, spaces. “Earthships” are also discussed as a viable model for living through climatic extremes.
We need to increase our self-sufficiency in relation to food, power, and water:
"The Handbook" discusses keeping a food “lifeboat” – a stockpile of essential food that will supply an adult’s energy needs for ten weeks during a crisis – and ways in which we can learn to grow more food in an urban setting, garden specifically for our climate, and what to plant for “best nutrition”. It also details ways in which we can think about going “off-grid” by: reducing or self-supplementing power use via personal generation, storage, and community micro-grids, and improving the ways we collect and store rainwater and treat our waste.
We need to make ourselves and our communities more resilient.
In an increasingly urbanised environment, the most vulnerable (the isolated, sick, and elderly) often die alone. Rawson and Whitmore suggest that we need to rethink how we organise ourselves at a community level: instead of fortifying your house against every possible eventuality, maybe we need to form stronger ties with our immediate neighbours or do more thinking around the ideas of co-housing (private houses organised around shared spaces and communal buildings) and transition towns (communities built around the idea of self-sustaining small economies).
"The Handbook" is guaranteed to get even the most hardened climate change sceptic at least thinking about the climatic challenges facing this country over the years to come.
January 25, 2020
I started off loving this book. I think I got sick of it not really applying to apartment dwellers and renters. But maybe that’s the point: if you don’t have money, it’s probably already too late. Also, the emergency food supply list was missing from page 164. That seems like a serious oversight.
September 4, 2017
I appreciated:
- the no-nonsense personal upskilling focus of the book, balanced by the warning not to try to be so self-sufficient that you end up isolating yourself from communities that you will definitely need
- the coverage of the annoying aspects of climate change as well as the increasingly frequent catastrophic events (gravity fed sewerage systems backing up due to sea level rise, anyone?)
- the acknowledgement that the mental challenge of holding the burden of knowledge and loss can be just as serious as the physical challenges.
The chapter on where you should locate yourself raised some important ethical issues: if you have the funds to relocate to somewhere that will be safer and more habitable in the near future, should you do so? What about the billions of people who don't have this luxury and will be forced to try to survive in situ, however unlikely that is?
- the no-nonsense personal upskilling focus of the book, balanced by the warning not to try to be so self-sufficient that you end up isolating yourself from communities that you will definitely need
- the coverage of the annoying aspects of climate change as well as the increasingly frequent catastrophic events (gravity fed sewerage systems backing up due to sea level rise, anyone?)
- the acknowledgement that the mental challenge of holding the burden of knowledge and loss can be just as serious as the physical challenges.
The chapter on where you should locate yourself raised some important ethical issues: if you have the funds to relocate to somewhere that will be safer and more habitable in the near future, should you do so? What about the billions of people who don't have this luxury and will be forced to try to survive in situ, however unlikely that is?
April 24, 2022
This is a book to keep ready on your shelves for advice when problems arrive. We have already experienced floods, fires, pandemics, and food shortages and war is just a continent away. Keeping ourselves informed and prepared will be a lifesaver in the future and this well-written book is both fascinating and useful.
September 13, 2015
Won this Through Goodreads First Read.
Really interesting book. Informative and resourceful. Not to scientific so it was easy to follow. Would recommend to all.
Really interesting book. Informative and resourceful. Not to scientific so it was easy to follow. Would recommend to all.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews