Saving Ourselves

Dana R. Fisher argues that there is a realistic path forward for climate action—but only through mass mobilization that responds to the growing severity and frequency of disastrous events.

Dana R. Fisher is the director of the Center for Environment, Community, and Equity and a professor in the School of International Service at American University. Her books include Activism Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America (2006) and American Resistance: From the Women’s March to the Blue Wave (Columbia, 2019).

Gerald Kutney, Canada's National Observer:
Dr. Fisher has written an informative and thought-provoking work based on her research on climate activism, politics, geopolitics, and the climate crisis. The work is written in a style that is appropriate for scholarly and general readers. A description is provided on the vested interest activities of the fossil fuel industry and the poor reactions to the climate crisis of corporations and politicians. I especially enjoyed the detailed analysis of climate activism and the different types. The work is inspiring to take action, especially climate activism. As her work concludes: “As unfair as it might seem, the future is up to us.”

Janine O'Keeffe, Fridays for Future:
At this dangerous climate emergency time, this book gives a path forward showing how necessary good quality social science is and how it can lead the climate activists and movements through the needed tricky and even thorny collective decision making. While living with heavy fossil fuel denial, scientists have stepped up to back up climate activists. Unfortunately, this book shows the complete failure of our institutions to also perform our democratically bestowed duty. For those of us living with the privilege of free press, (also established by civil disobedience), we have a moral responsibility to first listen to the science, acknowledge our public power and act!

Charlie Gardner, Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, University of Kent:
There's a growing number of books addressing the climate crisis and we now have a good technical understanding of what we have to do, as a society, to avoid the worst impacts. But there has been much less focus on the—more urgent—question of how to make the required changes happen. Fisher's illuminating and insightful book helps fill this critical gap in our knowledge, and is a must-read for anyone with an interest in a safe future.

Jeff Goodell, author of The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet:
Saving Ourselves is about the great awakening that is happening right now to the risks we face on a rapidly warming planet. Read it and you will understand the history of the climate fight, the forces that are shaping it today, and the challenges the movement will confront as it grows in size and urgency. Saving Ourselves will inspire you take to the streets and fight for a better world.

Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature:
Few questions could be more important than how to quickly build an effective resistance to the fossil fuel industry; this volume offers some vital clues and insights, and will be a help to many activists!

Naomi Oreskes, coauthor of The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market:
In a crowded landscape of books about climate change, this one stands out by asking two key questions: Have we made enough progress? And what should we do going forward? The answer to the first question is clearly no. Despite three decades of climate negotiations, both the US and the world are far behind where we need to be on climate action, and going forward, we need to be much more organized. Taking a lesson from the history of the civil rights movement, Fisher suggests that we can create a stronger climate movement by building on existing community structures—such as churches and labor unions—and taking advantage of the climate shocks that are already occurring with increasing frequency to channel moral outrage into meaningful action. An important, original, and thought-provoking book.