The scope of this book is only matched by its accessibility. Who Cares Wins provides a well written tour through the impact of consumer products (including fashion), diet, travel, and general life on climate and pollution. The idea is to arm the reader with information that they can use to make choices. By reading this book and caring about our impact on our environment (something that Cole defines very widely) we can win a future for the next generation. The book is festooned with descriptions of meetings and conversations with some very interesting people. One of these was John Francis, who, after the San Francisco oil spill vowed only to walk. Francis says ‘We could write a regulation to fix problems, like pollution, or loss of species, or climate change, or develop technology that might alleviate them and those are really good things. We shouldn’t stop doing those things. But if we don’t tackle the underlying cause, which is how we treat each other, the solutions will be a Band-Aid.’ I’m very drawn to this idea of interrelatedness and interconnectedness, that crops up numerous times in Who Cares Wins and in several stories of The Last Horizon (for example, Seaweed City and The Garden). There’s a piece of what I was trying to get across in the introduction too: We need to do everything, technology, Renewable energy, reducing consumption, rewilding, looking after the environment, and showing kindness to each other. No one thing is going to save us from dangerous climate change, but all of it together just might.
Alongside The Wall and Dreamland, Who Cares Wins is oft quoted and referred to in the introduction to The Last Horizon. If anyone is looking for a book that is informative, accessible and totally non-judgemental, because you’re wondering what you can do to help mitigate climate change, then you could do a lot worse than pick this up. We all need to find ways to do better, and this can really help.