Life as We Know It (Can Be)

Description

Award-winning journalist and CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir draws on his years of immersive travel and reporting to share the best ideas and stories of hope and positivity from the people and communities around the world who are thriving in the wake of climate change, and what we can learn from them to build a more promising future.

While reporting from every state and every continent, and filming his acclaimed CNN Original Series The Wonder List, Bill Weir has spent decades telling the stories of unique people, places, cultures, and creatures on the brink of change. As the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news, he’s immersed in the latest science and breakthroughs on the topic, while often on the frontlines of disasters, natural and manmade.

In 2020, Bill began distilling these experiences into a series of Earth Day letters for his then-newborn son to read in 2050, to help him better understand the world he will have grown up in and be better prepared to embrace the future. Bill’s work and his letters were the inspiration for Life As We Know It (Can Be), which confronts the worry and wonder of climate change with messages and examples of hope for all of us on how a better future can still be written.

Highlighting groundbreaking innovation in fields of clean energy, food and water sources, housing and building materials, and more, and touching on how happiness, resilience, and health and wellness factor into the topic of climate change, Bill’s stories take readers on a global journey, from one community in Florida that took on a hurricane and never lost power, to the Antarctic Peninsula where one species of penguin is showing us the key to survival, to the nuclear fusion labs where scientists are trying to build a star in a box. In these pages, we join a search for ancient wisdom and new ideas.

Life As We Know It (Can Be) is a celebration of the wonders of our planet, a meditation on the human wants and needs that drive it out of balance, and an inspiration for communities to galvanize around nature and each other as the very best way to best prepare and plan for what’s next.Bill Weir is an Emmy Award-winning television journalist who has reported from all fifty states and over fifty countries on every continent. After covering sports in Green Bay, Chicago, and Los Angeles early in his career, he spent a decade as co-anchor of Good Morning America and Nightline at ABC before moving to CNN in 2013. After writing and hosting four seasons of The Wonder List with Bill Weir, he was named the first Chief Climate Correspondent in network news in 2019.

“There is no other correspondent like Bill Weir, and there’s certainly no other book like this one. It’s moving, funny, frank, well-researched, beautifully written, and looks at climate change in a way I’ve never seen before.”
—Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor, 60 Minutes correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

“Bill Weir provides insightful, alarming, but ultimately hopeful coverage of the climate crisis. His new book is a gorgeous love letter to his son but also to Earth and humanity. Read this for insight, solutions, and an exhilarating journey.”
—Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

“Bill Weir is one of America’s great storytellers. In this timely debut, he takes us around the world and gives us a front-row seat to one of the world’s most pressing issues: climate change. Life as We Know It (Can Be) gives us hope—and some real solutions—to build a more promising future.”
—Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Blue Zones books

“Life as We Know It (Can Be) is a clear-eyed, heartfelt argument against despair. It is also a kind of instruction manual for how to live in an age of so much loss. Weir risks writing both rigorously and personally, as a climate journalist and as a father. The result is sobering and inspiring.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times–bestselling author

“There is no other correspondent like Bill Weir, and there’s certainly no other book like this one. It’s moving, funny, frank, well-researched, beautifully written, and looks at climate change in a way I’ve never seen before.”

—Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor, 60 Minutes correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

 

“Bill Weir provides insightful, alarming, but ultimately hopeful coverage of the climate crisis. His new book is a gorgeous love letter to his son but also to Earth and humanity. Read this for insight, solutions, and an exhilarating journey.”

—Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

“Bill Weir is one of America’s great storytellers. In this timely debut, he takes us around the world and gives us a front-row seat to one of the world’s most pressing issues: climate change. Life as We Know It (Can Be) gives us hope—and some real solutions—to build a more promising future.”

—Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Blue Zones books

“Life as We Know It (Can Be) is a clear-eyed, heartfelt argument against despair. It is also a kind of instruction manual for how to live in an age of so much loss. Weir risks writing both rigorously and personally, as a climate journalist and as a father. The result is sobering and inspiring.”

—Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times–bestselling author

“There is no other correspondent like Bill Weir, and there’s certainly no other book like this one. It’s moving, funny, frank, well-researched, beautifully written, and looks at climate change in a way I’ve never seen before.”

—Anderson Cooper, CNN anchor, 60 Minutes correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

 

“Bill Weir provides insightful, alarming, but ultimately hopeful coverage of the climate crisis. His new book is a gorgeous love letter to his son but also to Earth and humanity. Read this for insight, solutions, and an exhilarating journey.”

—Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent, and New York Times–bestselling author

“Bill Weir is one of America’s great storytellers. In this timely debut, he takes us around the world and gives us a front-row seat to one of the world’s most pressing issues: climate change. Life as We Know It (Can Be) gives us hope—and some real solutions—to build a more promising future.”

—Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow and #1 New York Times–bestselling author of The Blue Zones books

“Life as We Know It (Can Be) is a clear-eyed, heartfelt argument against despair. It is also a kind of instruction manual for how to live in an age of so much loss. Weir risks writing both rigorously and personally, as a climate journalist and as a father. The result is sobering and inspiring.”

—Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times–bestselling author

Additional information

Imprint	Chronicle Prism
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09781797213613
ISBN-10	179721361X
Author	Bill Weir
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	NAT011000, HEA010000
Subjects	Memoir, HEA010000, environmentalism, autobiography, travel book, NAT011000, political books, climate change books, social science books, environmental science, Bill Weir, nature conservation, climatology, travel essays, current event books