Navigating Climate Change with Grief, Hope & Humor with Author ANDREW BOYD
A night of stand-up tragedy at UW Madison for the new book, I Want a Better Catastrophe by renowned climate activist and author Andrew Boyd.
This is an offsite event at the Arts + Literature Laboratory
Click here to reserve your spot
Free and open to the public! Doors open at 6:00, show at 6:30.
We will read some passages, laugh some dark laughs, sign some books, gnash some teeth, explore some of our possible futures via oversized flowcharts, not necessarily in that order. The evening will NOT be a boring book reading. It will be interactive, participatory, fun; it'll be a chance to come together and -- aided by gallows humor and some unusual prompts -- reflect on some of the big questions before us.
To tackle the climate emergency, we need each other; we need solidarity and laughter and all the rest. We hope to see you there. (Management not responsible for any side effects including existential dread, being galvanized into action, etc.)
MORE INFO ABOUT THE BOOK & AUTHOR :
I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope, and Gallows Humor
An existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers With global warming projected to rocket past the 1.5°C limit, lifelong activist Andrew Boyd is thrown into a crisis of hope, and off on a quest to learn how to live with the "impossible news" of our climate doom.
He searches out eight leading climate thinkers — from activist Tim DeChristopher to collapse-psychologist Jamey Hecht, grassroots strategist adrienne maree brown, eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, and Indigenous botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer — asking them: "Is it really the end of the world? and if so, now what?"
With gallows humor and a broken heart, Boyd steers readers through their climate angst as he walks his own. From storm-battered coastlines to pipeline blockades and "hopelessness workshops,” he maps out our existential options, and tackles some familiar dilemmas: "Should I bring kids into such a world?" "Can I lose hope when others can't afford to?" and "Why the fuck am I recycling?"
He finds answers that will surprise, inspire, and maybe even make you laugh. Drawing on wisdom traditions Eastern, Western, and Indigenous, Boyd crafts an insightful and irreverent guide for achieving a "better catastrophe."
Andrew Boyd is an author, humorist, and climate activist. His new book, I Want a Better Catastrophe: Navigating the Climate Crisis with Grief, Hope and Gallows Humor is forthcoming from New Society Press in February 2023. He is currently CEO (Chief Existential Officer) of the Climate Clock, a global campaign he co-founded that melds art, science, technology, and grassroots organizing to get the world to #ActInTime. Boyd also co-created the grief-storytelling ritual the Climate Ribbon and led the 2000s-era satirical campaign “Billionaires for Bush.” His previous books include Beautiful Trouble (OR Books, 2012); Daily Afflictions (WW Norton, 2002), and Life’s Little Deconstruction Book (WW Norton, 1998). Unable to come up with his own lifelong ambition, he’s been cribbing from Milan Kundera: “to unite the utmost seriousness of question with the utmost lightness of form.”
