Spinning Out

Climate Change, Mental Health and Fighting for a Better Future

By: Charlie Hertzog Young

Narrated by: Charlie Hertzog Young

'Utterly brilliant - engaging, thrilling, disturbing, revelatory, explosive' GEORGE MONBIOT

'This extraordinary book, written with startling honesty and vulnerability, traces Charlie's remarkable journey from deep despair to resistance, reconnection and remedy. If you are ready to channel grief within into action in the world, read on.' KATE RAWORTH, author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

'Spinning Out is a salve, weaving together the intricacies of madness underscored by the backdrop of a changing climate. It's an essential and insightful resource in the fight for climate justice.' TORI TSUI, author of It's Not Just You

'Heart-rendingly, heart-stoppingly glorious' MANDA SCOTT, author of bestselling Boudica series


Humanity is driving the earth mad. Now, the earth is driving us mad in return.

Charlie Hertzog Young became a climate activist in his early teens. His journey led him onto airport runways and into the halls of power, but also to a serious mental health breakdown. He had to rebuild himself physically and psychologically, before focusing his efforts on collective mental recovery in response to a planet in crisis.

Spinning Out explores how climate chaos and the failure of those in power to tackle it are causing an inevitable mental health crisis across the globe. The relationship between the climate and our emotional wellbeing goes far deeper than eco-anxiety. It goes to he roots of our civilisation - its principles, its practices and its false solutions.

With testimony from dozens of activists, organisers and researchers across every habitable continent, Spinning Out is a celebration (of other ways to be) and a manual for anyone who wants to fight for a better world, while avoiding burnout and despair.

Wedding the needs of the earth with the needs of the human mind, Spinning Out offers a powerful, collective vision for change.©2023 Charlie Hertzog Young (P)2023 Bonnier Books UK

An authentic work that examines the roles of our well being in climate change and climate change in our well being

One of the few books that treats mental illness, and the mentally ill, as worthy of respect, the author sets forth very early the idea that mental illness can be a reasonable response to terrible circumstances. Pathologizing this response and treating the illness as the problem, rather than recognizing the situation as the problem and the illness as the manifestation of our suffering, is fundamentally cruel. Mental illness is often used as a weapon against the weak or oppressed by the powerful to silence or imprison them. The rising specter of mental illness among youth is ultimately a condemnation of much of modern life. Climate change is the most glaring example of this.

With the authority of someone who has been profoundly affected by this, Charlie lays out the role of our own mental well being in the context of the larger crisis. Full of helpful, concrete examples and examining the role of different kinds of climate actions in improving our well being, he looks at how real people throughout the world are dealing with this, often to great effect.

This is a work that really benefits from being read by its author. The honesty and authenticity of this work and his experience come through so clearly.