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Everything That Rises:
A Climate Change Memoir
Authentic and inspiring, Everything That Rises personalizes climate change by paralleling our relationship to the planet with the ways we interact at home.
Nineteen-year-old Brianna Craft is having a panic attack. A professor’s matter-of-fact explanation of the phenomenon known as “climate change” has her white-knuckling the table in her first environmental studies lecture. Out of her father’s house, she was supposed to be safe.
This moment changed everything for Brianna. For her first internship, she jumped at the chance to assist the Least Developed Countries Group at the United Nations’ negotiations meant to produce a new climate treaty. While working for those most ignored yet most impacted by the climate crisis, she grappled with the negligent indifference of those who hold the most power. This dynamic painfully reminded her of growing up in a house where the loudest voice always won and violence silenced those in need.
Four years later, Brianna witnessed the adoption of the first universal climate treaty, the Paris Agreement. In this memoir that blends the political with the personal, Brianna dives into what it means to advocate for the future, and for the people and places you love, all while ensuring your own voice doesn’t get lost in the process.
It will take all of us to protect our home.
Praise
“The most unusual and authentic book you will ever read on climate change. The international climate change negotiation may appear as an institutionalized impersonal political process. Craft shows how it is actually deeply personal, mysteriously exhilarating and profoundly moving.”
—Christiana Figueres, author of The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist’s Guide to the Climate Crisis and former executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
“This is a tour de force—an instant classic and a crucial addition to the literature of the environment. It tells many stories, but the through-line is the best account yet from inside the global climate negotiations. It’s told from the most important and least acknowledged of viewpoints—the negotiating team for the poorest and most vulnerable nations—and it’s told with love, power, brio, insight, passion and compassion. Do not miss it for any reason.”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
“Within her irresistible memoir, Craft powerfully embodies advocacy for all communities affected by environmental disaster. In a story that is alternately harrowing and enchanting, Craft’s honesty and passion inspire her readers to heed her clarion call to defend the environments of marginalized countries— and neighborhoods, because in protecting our neighborhoods we are protecting Earth, our common home. Thanks to Craft’s exquisitely recounted dual journey, readers not only comprehend, but also feel, that all ‘global’ climate change is local.”
—Harriet A. Washington, author of A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and the Assault on the American Mind
“Whether she’s writing about her traumatic personal history or the shared uncertainty of our climate affected future, Craft’s words radiate warmth, power, vulnerability, and strength. At once urgent and hopeful, her book is simultaneously a passionate reminder of the ways in which our connections transcend history and geography and a searing critique of the consequences of forgetting that interdependence is our only chance for survival. A promising debut.”
—Mathangi Subramanian, EdD, author of A People’s History of Heaven
“This is a brave memoir by a courageous leader in her own right. Craft worked side by side with people representing the most climate vulnerable countries on the planet, to be heard, to be taken seriously and in pursuit of justice. She brings the geopolitics of the climate negotiations to life through the people and friendships that make the process what it is. Craft’s vulnerability, honesty and humor make this a wonderful read.”
—Dr Tara Shine, author of How To Save Your Planet One Object at a Time
“An amazing story worth reading by anyone who wants to know how the negotiators from the most vulnerable developing countries manage to hold their own.”
—Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development