At Work in the Ruins

Invited to speak at gatherings with scientists and policymakers, with archbishops, Indigenous activists and students, Dougald Hine has spent most of his life talking to people about climate change. And then one afternoon in the second year of the pandemic, he realised he had nothing left to say. Why would someone who cares so deeply about ecological destruction want to stop talking about climate change now? At Work in the Ruins is the book that grew out of Dougald's attempt to answer that question. He delves deeply into what he saw during the Covid year,; why the virus and the measures taken against it drove so many of us out of our senses and how we can refind our bearings if the pandemic is not the big event that changes everything but simply one in a chain of emergencies that add up to the end of the world as we knew it. At Work in the Ruins explores what happens when our societies ask too much of science, turning it into an object of faith and an overriding political authority. Unless we take seriously the questions that science cannot answer, Dougald argues, we risk creating hell on Earth in the name of saving the planet. At Work in the Ruins is a book for anyone who has found themselves needing to make sense of what we've been through, what is ending and how we learn to talk about it. Only then can we face the depth of the trouble we are in and find the work that is worth doing in the ruins.