Hot Mess

What on Earth Can We Do About Climate Change?

By: Matt Winning

Narrated by: Matt Winning

Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

What is climate change, who's to blame, and what the f--k can we do about it? Award-winning comedian and climate change researcher Dr Matt Winning explains all.

For fans of Randall Munro's What If? Matt Parker's Humble Pi and anyone looking for practical tips on how to stop the end of the world!

Dr Matt Winning is a stand-up comedian and environmental economist with a PhD in climate change policy, which means he's the sort of doctor who will rush to your side if you fall ill on a plane, but only to berate you for flying. 

We are currently facing a global climate emergency. You've probably noticed. But why does the end of the world need to be so depressing? Hot Mess aims to both lighten the mood and enlighten listeners on climate change. This is an audiobook for people who care about climate change but aren't doing much about it, helping listeners understand what the main causes of climate change are, what changes are needed and what they can (and cannot) do about it.

But, most importantly, it is an audiobook that'll help people find the comedy in climate change, because if we can do that, well, we can do bloody anything.

©2021 Matt Winning (P)2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Breeder basically makes jokes

Annoyingly this person spent a good deal of his book justifying breeding during the critical situation we find ourselves. He disregards the decision to breed as the single most important decision any human on Earth can make about helping solve or making far worse climate change (he almost gets there but since he is a recent breed himself he backs off from really just flat out saying it: if you have more than one kid, you are the problem more than any of the non-breeders. In fact, non-breeders could not possibly even equal the carbon emission that your baby will result in over time through its own offspring (well if it lives since climate change is coming no one knows for sure). He also makes a whole lot of Britsh-style jokes, which would be pretty amusing except the topic is about as serious as stage 4 lung cancer, so it was kind of hard for me to get into the jokes.

The most important two facts of the dire situation are glossed over: (a) humanity is in this situation because it is in OVERSHOOT and should immediately attempt to reduce the number of babies added to the grotesque global human overshoot we find ourselves and (b) we are in this situation also because much of the world's rich (such as British and Americans - like myself) is consuming far more resources per person than required for simply a good life. But, of course, you never hear much about those because we want our baby spray to continue unabated (parenting is as much of most of the population's self-identity as their religion) and we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE consumption (it's the backbone of capitalism after all such that without it our economic paradigm would fall apart)! Fixing these two huge problems would be painful, so the two topics are taboo which is why the book glosses over them and basically why climate change is going to wipe out our civilization the best I can tell.

It's a pity that we never could, collectively, face up to the real facts and address them as sober adults. Instead, most of humanity either ignores them entirely or somehow justifies why they should have more kids and consume more stuff even while you shouldn't. Because of all this, we'll address the fallout of climate change on nature's harsh terms, which is going to be by far the most painful transition that mankind has ever endured (worse than the ice ages even). I don't expect the world population will be even 25% of today's by the turn of the century to be honest because we are too set in our ways to change.

Funny and Eye Opening

I found this book enjoyable and accessable from start to finish. The information presented was interesting and helped me grasp the urgency of the problem and the veracity of the solutions. The way it was presented was funny and charming. The author narrated the book and did an outstanding job.

Only book about climate change that has made me laugh out loud multiple times

I’ve read and listened to lots of books on climate change. This is the only one that has made me laugh out loud multiple times. It’s also informative and provides a good overview of the science and solutions.

While I normally prefer reading books rather than listening to them, this is one of the exceptions - would go with the audio version!

Highly recommend.

very entertaining!

this was an entertaining way to present this material. i have read 3 climate change books now and this one made me laugh the most. Bill Gates does do a lot for climate change research and he does use carbon-neutral fuel for his plane. if you read his book it is hopeful that the rich 1% will understand what they are doing to this world and change for the better. we do need all kinds to help with this problem.

Best book on climate change

This is the best book on climate change, not only because it’s written by an actual climate scientist, but because it presents facts in a way that’s informative but tries not to lead to hopelessness. Also, the audiobook is definitely the best way to experience this as some of the jokes are best experienced in the author’s original Glaswegian accent. Hopefully he’ll be happy to hear he’s helped me try to do my part by starting to bike to work and changing my energy provider. I’m now a fan of Matt Winning and hope to see him live one day, and that he gets the opportunity to pal about with Ban-Ki Moon.

killing dogs is not funny

His accent made it a tiny bit challenging to understand so I had to listen more carefully but overall the content was good; well researched and thought out. Unfortunately, he completely lost me when he started joking about killing dogs out in ch 8. I stopped listening at this point. Joking about killing dogs to save the planet is not funny, regardless of the context.