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Sink or Swim
- Author
- Susannah Fisher
- Narrator
- Deryn Edwards
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 14 August 2025
- Run Time
- 8 hours 56 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
The world needs to adapt to climate change – but how? What are the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community? This book reveals all.
Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding caused by climate change are already impacting people and nature. Adaptation until now has been incremental with governments and institutions tinkering around the edges of current systems. This will not be enough.
Sink or Swim explores the hard choices that lie ahead concerning how people earn a living, the way governments manage relationships between countries, and how communities accommodate the movement of people. Should people be encouraged to move away from the coast? How can global food supplies be managed when parts of the world are hit by simultaneous droughts? How can conflict be handled when there isn’t enough water?
Drawing on cutting edge research, interviews with experts, and practical examples from across the world, Susannah Fisher tells the story of the tough choices on adaptation that lie ahead, and looks at ways we can still have a liveable planet later in this century and beyond. Will we choose to sink or swim?
Critics Review
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Fisher brilliantly outlines how climate adaptation must happen with people, not for people. A crucial roadmap for turning climate paralysis into determined action, where it counts the most.
Christiana Figueres, former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
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Sink or Swim shows us that adapting to climate change is a critical part of climate justice. Through a compelling and meticulously researched narrative, Susannah Fisher highlights the urgent need to face up to the scale of climate impacts and sets out how people can be at the heart of a fair and just response.
Mary Robinson, UN Special Envoy on Climate
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A clear and hopeful book which brings to life a hard but vital question of our time - how do we not only live with degrees of climate change but imagine better futures within them?
Alice Bell, author of Our Biggest Experiment
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Sink or Swim summarises the choice we face right now. This big-picture take on the unfolding global crisis and the part we all need to be playing right now is carefully researched and action-oriented. It is realistically stark but hopeful.
Mike Berners-Lee, author of A Climate of Truth
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Informative, engaging and pulling no punches, Sink or Swim is a must-read for anyone willing to face the tough choices around climate change adaptation. Nicely blending realism and hope, Fisher tells a tale of two futures: the bleak one into which we are sleepwalking, and the brighter one possible if we act now.
Elizabeth Cripps, author of What Climate Justice Means and Why We Should Care
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In laying out the dire stakes of the climate crisis, Fisher reminds us the situation is as complicated as it is unjust. This book is thoroughly researched yet accessibly written, and with urgency brimming off every page, it left me feeling inspired, courageous, and compelled to act. A must-read for anybody looking to make positive change amid ongoing chaos.
Madeleine Orr, author of Warming Up
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'If you only read one book about climate adaptation, Sink or Swim should be it. Susannah Fisher takes us to the heart of the hard choices we now face about how to adapt to climate crisis, from managing people on the move, to how we grow food, sustain nature and avoid conflict. An impassioned but grounded and highly accessible account of the science, politics and ethics of trying to protect life on a rapidly warming planet.'
Peter Newell, author of Power Shift
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In the best of all possible worlds, we would have prevented dramatic climate change by a fast transition to clean energy. But this is not that world – and this book is therefore a truly important contribution to the emerging understanding that we also have to adapt to the fact that many of us won't be able to live or farm in the places where we now live. If we don't make hard choices, the planet will make them for us.
Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun
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This readable book shows why, as with so much else in environmental policy, we need action
The Financial Times
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Fisher threads stories through the book, showing that adaptation isn’t just about survival - it’s about who gets to survive, and on what terms. Adaptation doesn’t have to be reactive - it can be creative, even inspiring
The Geographical
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Susannah Fisher’s profoundly illuminating, comprehensive and ultimately hopeful new book on adaptation, Sink or Swim, could not be more timely or relevant.
Resurgance
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Susannah Fisher
- Narrator
- Deryn Edwards
- Duration
- 8 hours 56 minutes
- Release Date
- 14 August 2025
- ISBN
- 9781399414067
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Climate change, Popular science, Environmental policy and protocols, Environmentally-friendly and sustainable architecture and design
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents Sink or Swim by Susannah Fisher, read by Deryn EdwardsThe world needs to adapt to climate change – but how? What are the key problems and hard choices that lie ahead for the global community? This book reveals all. Heatwaves, wildfires, hurricanes and flooding caused by climate change are already impacting people and nature. Adaptation until now has been incremental with governments and institutions tinkering around the edges of current systems. This will not be enough.Sink or Swim explores the hard choices that lie ahead concerning how people earn a living, the way governments manage relationships between countries, and how communities accommodate the movement of people. Should people be encouraged to move away from the coast? How can global food supplies be managed when parts of the world are hit by simultaneous droughts? How can conflict be handled when there isn’t enough water?Drawing on cutting edge research, interviews with experts, and practical examples from across the world, Susannah Fisher tells the story of the tough choices on adaptation that lie ahead, and looks at ways we can still have a liveable planet later in this century and beyond. Will we choose to sink or swim?
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