Available Formats
1,001 Voices on Climate Change: Everyday Stories of Flood, Fire, Drought, and Displacement from Around the World
By (Author) Devi Lockwood
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
29th September 2021
United States
General
Non Fiction
304.25
Hardback
352
Width 152mm, Height 229mm, Spine 33mm
519g
Join journalist Devi Lockwood as she bikes around the world collecting personal stories about how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.
Its official: 2020 will be remembered as the year when apocalyptic climate predictions finally came true. Catastrophic wildfires, relentless hurricanes, melting permafrost, and coastal flooding have given us a taste of what some communities have already been living with for far too long. Yet we dont often hear the voices of the people most affected. Journalist Devi Lockwood set out to change that.
In 1,001 Voices on Climate Change, Lockwood travels the world, often by bicycle, collecting first-person accounts of climate change. She frequently carried with her a simple cardboard sign reading, Tell me a story about climate change.
Over five years, covering twenty countries across six continents, Lockwood hears from indigenous elders and youth in Fiji and Tuvalu about drought and disappearing coastlines, attends the UN climate conference in Morocco, and bikes the length of New Zealand and Australia, interviewing the people she meets about retreating glaciers, contaminated rivers, and wildfires. She rides through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to listen to marionette puppeteers and novice Buddhist monks.
From Denmark and Sweden to China, Turkey, the Canadian Arctic, and the Peruvian Amazon, she finds that ordinary people sharing their stories does far more to advance understanding and empathy than even the most alarming statistics and studies. This book is a hopeful global listening tour for climate change, channeling the urgency of those who have already glimpsed the future to help us avoid the worst.
"This is a great adventure story, but also a completely necessary bookthe climate crisis has reached the point where people around the world feel it, understand it, and talk about it in ways that everyone needs to hear."Bill McKibben, author ofThe End of Nature
"A hybrid of travel literature and oral history, Lockwood somehow shrinks the ungraspably vast problem of climate change down to a human scale, then, patiently, carefully, combines those individual voices into a planetary chorus. A monumental achievement."Robert Moor, bestselling author of On Trails: An Exploration
"Devi Lockwood's luminous book,1,001 Voices on Climate Change, is a testament to the power of listening,and an amazing chance to let yourself hear the symphony of grief and of courage that plays through lives of people around the world, all trying to find their way on a relentlesslychanging planet." Deborah Blum, Pulitzer-prize winning author of The Poison Squad and The Poisoner's Handbook
" "Tell me a story."Is there a more fundamentally human sentence than that Devi Lockwood circles the globe, seeking peoples experiences with water and climate change, from cultural myths, to rising seas impacts on daily life, to one womans pain, tuned to the voices of the trees. Lockwood seeks and you, dear reader, shall find."Erica Gies, environmental journalist, science journalist, and author of the upcoming bookWater Always Wins: Going with the Flow to Thrive in an Age of Droughts, Floods, and Climate Change.
In a world that needs more listening and more storytelling, Devi Lockwood covers the waterfront. This is an empathetic and beautiful book. Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principleand Our Wild Calling
In the spirit ofArabian Nights, Lockwood summons the power of storytelling to cast a spell of empathy and understanding regarding our worlds greatest existential threat.1,001 Voices on Climate Changetakes readers on a global cycling journey, translating science into stories, to chronicle the human toll of the climate crisis. Mona Hanna-Attisha, Flint pediatrician andauthor ofWhat the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
"This dazzling and significant collection captures the voices of people around the world, from Tuvalu to Thailand, from Australia to Kazakhstan, who are experiencing firsthand the life-altering effects of climate change. Lockwoods approach to recounting their stories is compassionate and impassioned, focused as much on the tiny details of life as the larger planetary changes afoot in her interviewees own backyards. 1001 Voices on Climate Change is beautiful and necessary reading." Amy Brady, executive director ofOrion.
As the fight against climate change accelerates, Devi Lockwood reminds us why.1001 Voices on Climate Changerecords vivid stories from those already living through the climate crisis. Lockwood takes us to every corner of the world to remind us to stop and listen. It is a compelling snapshot of this moment. Samantha Montano, Phd, Author ofDisasterology: Dispatches from The Frontlines of The Climate Crisisand Assistant Professor of Emergency Management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
"In thisbook, Devi illuminates the human stories the world so desperatelyneeds. Devi's gift is in meeting people, as they are, and pulling out the essence of their stories in such a way that speaks louder than words. It is not withspreadsheets,graphs, and technology that we will overcome the challenges of climate change, but with a transformation of our culture through story." Alina Siegfried, Author, Narrative Specialist, Spoken Word Artist, and Systems Change Advocate.
"A great storyteller needs first to be a greatlistener, and with each pedal of her bikeup and down previously unknown pathsDevi Lockwood hears from those living through climate change and related water woes literally on the front lines. Her skills at storytelling are matched by her mastery of listening. The results are riveting." Bud Ward, Editor,Yale Climate Connections
"In this lovely, engaging bookby turns wry and heart wrenching, and always candid and warmDevi Lockwood connects us with humanity itself as we confront the existential threat of the climate crisis. Lockwoods book is alight with vivid characters and stories from every inhabited continent, brought together by her own compassion and curiosity. Its a book we need now." Miranda Massie, Director,The Climate Museum
"Over five years, covering twenty countries across six continents, Lockwood heard from thousands. From Denmark to China, from Turkey to the Peruvian Amazon, she finds that ordinary people sharing their stories does far more to advance understanding and empathy than even the most alarming statistics and studies. This book is a hopeful global listening tour for climate change, channeling the urgency of those who have already glimpsed the future to help us avoid the worst."Michael Svoboda, Yale Climate Connections
Devi Lockwood has written about science, climate change, and technology forThe New York Times,The Guardian,Slate, andThe Washington Post, among others. She spent five years traveling in twenty countries on six continents todocument 1,001 stories on water and climate change, funded in part by theGardner & Shaw postgraduate traveling fellowships from Harvard and a National Geographic Early Career Grant. Lockwood graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Harvard, where she studied folklore and mythology and earned a language citation in Arabic. In 2019, she completed an MSin science writing at MIT. She is an editor forRest of Worldand splits her time between New York and Vermont. Follow her on Twitter at@Devi_Lockwood.