Eden Book Reviews


Hot Mess Matt Winning Headline, £9.99


Bombarding people with facts about the climate crisis is still not hugely popular at parties, or indeed anywhere, which makes Matt Winning’s dual careers as a climate scientist and stand-up comedian all the more unusual. Many climate crisis books are also usually quite depressing – a summary of the horrors ahead along with a list of all the things you need to give up to prevent climate catastrophe, which can leave many people feeling powerless and disengaged. Although many of the answers are the same, Hot Mess is different, its pages more likely to be damp with tears of laughter than despair. Winning doesn’t pull his punches though: ‘The world,


as we currently know it, is coming to an end, regardless of whether you want it to or not.’ Climate change is a ‘threat multiplier’, and even those ‘hippy tree huggers at the Pentagon’ recognise it is a global security issue. The climate crisis is, he says, the ‘shittiest choose your own adventure’ but it’s still possible to make the right choices: ‘Better to share a car now than a toilet in an underground bunker in thirty years’ time.’ So far, so bleak, but Winning grounds his account in


his everyday life, presenting climate change scientist Matt Winning and new dad Matt Winning locked in an internal battle and being refreshingly honest (and funny) about the decisions he makes. His intention to buy only reusable nappies fails in the face of an actual shitstorm, and he admits that he allows his son to play with cardboard boxes because he loathes recycling. Winning recognises that there


are different ways to respond to the climate crisis. We can’t fix this alone and we all need to be pushing for systemic change. Even lightened by his domestic life and footnotes about


his divorced friend Ian, Hot Mess is still a slightly terrifying read. But Winning is clear that we still have agency, that the end is not nigh: ‘The best analogy is that we are driving towards a brick wall, but it really matters how hard we hit it. There is still time to hit the brakes. But we need to hit them hard.’ Robert Lowe


26


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32