Climate change and the destruction of the earth is the most urgent issue of our time. We are hurtling towards the end of civilisation as we know it. With an unflinching honest approach, Rupert Read asks us to face up to the fate of the planet. This is a book for anyone who wants their philosophy to deal with reality and their climate concern to be more than a displacement activity. As people come together to mourn the loss of the planet, we have the opportunity to create a grounded, hopeful response. This meaningful hopefulness looks to the new communities created around climate activism. Together, our collective mourning enables us to become human in ways previously unknown. Why Climate Breakdown Matters is a practical guide on how to be a radical, responsible climate activist. This is an urgent and necessary book. Rupert Read is one of the deepest thinkers of the green movement, and at the same time one of the most clear-headed. He urges us to face the reality of likely climate, and thus societal and ecological, breakdown, and act accordingly; nothing less is needed than a transformation of our politics, our economics, our society, and ultimately our philosophy. This is a book for realists not naive optimists, a book for those who are prepared to face scientific fact rather than rely on conventional thinking - and technology - to deliver us from this emergency. We need to shift the entire political and economic paradigm both to prepare for breakdown and mitigate it. Rupert Read gets it, and so should you.