Fighting populist arguments with wit and wisdom – and solutions that actually work.
KLIMAZIRKUS
by David Nelles
Penguin Germany, May 2025
« Why should I stop eating burgers? » – How populism slows down efforts to counteract climate change, and how to effect real change.
Eco-anarchists, selfish SUV drivers, tree-hugging snowflakes, compulsory veggie days, net zero… hardly any other topic these days is as contentious as climate change, and what to do about it. Again and again, we get ourselves entangled in populist pseudo-debates instead of finding workable solutions. No wonder that many people switch off whenever the subject comes up.
Bestselling author David Nelles thinks it’s high time we started a new kind of discussion about climate change and its consequences. In his entertaining new book « The Climate Circus », he uses the sort of statements made by politicians, journalists and various people on social media as a starting point to debunk the disinformation, incitement, binary thinking and misguided arguments we encounter daily. Armed with eye-opening graphics and a wealth of facts, he confronts us with our misconceptions, demonstrates how best to argue the case, and explains how we might go about making real progress.
As so many other business studies students, David Nelles was annoyed by all those over-emotional debates around climate change. He and fellow student Christian Serrer looked around in vain for a book that could provide them with a science-based yet accessible short introduction to the subject, with lots of useful graphics – so they decided to write it themselves with the help of more than 100 experts on the subject. The result was Kleine Gase – Große Wirkung: Der Klimawandel (‘Climate change: little gases – big consequences’), which was an instant hit and became the country’s bestselling book about climate change. Since then, Nelles has given and led more than 200 talks and workshops for businesses and communities. He is also founder of Klimafabrik, a ‘climate factory’ that helps organisations and their staff become greener.
Until recently, Germany appeared to be a paragon of economic and political success. Angela Merkel was widely seen as the true ‘leader of the free world’, and Germany’s export-driven economic model seemed to deliver prosperity. But recent events – from Germany’s dependence on Russian gas to its car industry’s delays in the race to electric – have undermined this view.
Climate change is the unifying crisis of our time. But the scale of the problem can be paralyzing, especially when corporations are actively staving off changes that could save the planet but which might threaten their bottom lines. To quote Greta Thunberg, despite very clear science and very real devastation, the adults at the table are still saying “blah blah blah.” Something has to change—but what, and how?
Les éditions Noir sur blanc ont publié l’édition française, intitulée RUSSIE, MON PAYS BIEN-AIME, en février 2024 dans une traduction d’Emma Lavigne et Anne-Marie Tatsis-Botton.