Book Review: People and Climate Change

People and Climate Change: Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Social Justice, by Lisa Reyes Mason & ,Jonathan Rigg (Eds.), ISBN 9780190886455, Oxford University Press, 2019, 226 pages,  $65.00.

    This is a must-read book for every social worker, professionals across disciplines, and citizen organizers. I have had very few books in my career, and life, that rise to the must-read category, and this recommendation is not made lightly. The book illuminates and masterfully drives home the reality that climate change is here. It is now, it is global, it presently affects our lives, and it will continue to increasingly have an impact on our lives. It is an issue that binds us together globally. Climate change affects the social fabric of every aspect of our communities, our families, our lives, and our societies.  This book catapults the focus of climate change from the physical and technical perspectives into the social realm, while keeping at the core the social injustices that have been and are central to climate change.

    The book calls on social workers to be leading change agents. Social workers have the expertise with large scale social issues and social injustice to be well positioned as coordinators of the collaborative interdisciplinary work that it will take to create necessary changes, responses, and adaptations to the impacts of climate change in the social, political, economic, and organizational realms.

    Central to the book is the reality that climate change is a social justice issue. The book provides in-depth examination of the reasons for this and examples from around the world. The chapters focusing on the climate change realities of specific communities, regions, and contexts transport the reader into the real lives of the people, their experiences, and their wisdom. The reader gains a firsthand view of how the disenfranchised globally carry a heavier burden than others and that they are usually left out of the dialogue at all levels when, instead, they should be included and central to the dialogue.  

    The book also provides ideas and recommendations for pathways forward. Overall, the book is expertly researched and well reasoned without minimizing the gargantuan systemic nature and complexity of the issues. Instead, it embraces them.  

    If you want to be an active participant in a helpful and just manner with making the changes needed to address the impacts of climate change at any level, this is a must-read book for you. And even if you do not want to work in this field, this book is for you, because you and the people you know and the clients you work with are and will continue to all be adapting to climate change.

Reviewed by Ellen C. Darden, PhD, MSSW, LMFT, Professor of Social Work, Concord University, Athens, WV.