What do you think?
Rate this book
Love in the Time of Climate Change
Meet Casey, a community college professor with OCD (Obsessive Climate Disorder). While navigating the zaniness of teaching he leads a rag-tag bunch of climate activists, lusts after one of his students, and smokes a little too much pot. Quirky, socially awkward and adolescent- acting, our climate change obsessed hero muddles his way through saving the world while desperately searching for true love.Teaching isn't easy with an incredibly hot woman in class, students either texting or comatose, condoms strewn everywhere, attack geese on field trips, and a dean who shows up at exactly the wrong moments. What's a guy to do? Kidnap the neighbor's inflatable Halloween ghost? Confront evangelicals and lesbian activists? Channel Santa Claus's rage at the melting polar ice caps? Shoplift at Walmart? How about all of the above! Who would have thought climate change could be so funny! Actually, it really isn't, but Love in the Time of Climate Change, a romantic comedy about global warming, is guaranteed to keep you laughing. Laughing and thinking.
- GenresClimate Change Fiction
324 pages, Paperback
First published October 20, 2014
1 person is currently reading
290 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
May 5, 2015
Twice while starting Brian Adams’ Love in the Time of Climate Change I had to pause and review the book jacket to make sure it was indeed a work of fiction I was reading. Sure enough, there I saw it each time, on the cover in small print beside the author’s name, the definitive declaration: “a novel.” Yet mine was an easy mistake to make, as the book begins with an expository—if cheeky—primer on what’s later referred to as “The Issue.” Then again, isn’t this how so many novels start: by setting the scene for the tale to come? In this case it just so happens to be the backdrop of global warming.
The true start of the novel opens on Day One of the new semester at a small community college in western Massachusetts, as our narrator, Casey, an environmental studies professor, prepares to greet his new group of students. He begins, he tells the reader, the same as he has every previous semester: by revealing to his class his debilitating illness, Obsessive Climate Disorder (OCD.) Little does our quixotic narrator know that in this particular class is one student with the power to help him, if not cure his disease, then certainly ameliorate its symptoms. And it is these symptoms of Professor Casey’s self-diagnosed OCD that we witness him suffer through as he attempts to win hearts and change minds: one heart and mind, as he’s soon to discover, in particular.
An early clue that this book is more than just a thinly disguised sermon on the mount comes when two of the students in Casey’s extra-curricular group, The Climate Changers, get into an embittered battle over which of them is the more tenacious bicyclist. Clearly saving the world poses the possibly greater threat of ego annihilation (as in annihilating the world with one’s own ego.) It doesn’t take long to realize this story is far more about the struggle an individual goes through to live from day to day in the face of a damning reality than it is an attempt to educate an audience who likely already knows much of what he speaks. To simply say the author here is preaching to the converted would be disingenuous because he’s not preaching: he’s satirizing. He simply happens to be satirizing his own deeply held beliefs. This makes for some rather bold self-deprecating humor. For example, when a student comes to his office alarmed from her newfound awareness of our true environmental condition, Casey reacts at first with self-satisfaction, thinking, “Yes! Got ‘em!” followed immediately thereafter by, “Of course, what this really means is that they’re now doomed for a lifetime of extreme anxiety, possible depression, constant angst, and a whole host of other intellectual trauma…But hey, such is the price of education. Right?”
In such ways this novel often seems a case study on contradiction, on collateral hypocrisy, on trying to “walk the walk”, to “practice what you preach” in a world that makes such feats prohibitive. Thus we witness Casey forced by circumstance to patronize his Corporate Enemy #1: Walmart, only to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of humiliation while inside. Throughout Casey’s misadventures I was often reminded of the myth of Sisyphus, doomed to forever roll his boulder up a hill only to find that, just when he gets it near the top, it rolls past him all the way to the bottom again.
Likewise love, Casey finds, is not without its Sysiphusian hurdles, in this case that the object of his affections is also a student. Never mind that she is a peer in age, and even a fellow teacher, of youngsters, and at an entirely different school to boot. Casey’s professional moral code is as strict as his climatological one. Of course, all codes are meant to be tested, and indeed it is watching Casey butt up against these imperious standards of his that provides some of this novel’s richest humor—particularly when it’s his lust, second only to morals behind his steering wheel, responsible for such collisions. Case in point: when Casey ruins his chances of a sure-thing with a hot and perfectly available female when her apartment bears the unavoidable evidence of her environmental ignorance. Or when he takes his class on a field trip to an awe-inspiring earth friendly home only to have its message overshadowed when that special student he’s aiming to impress the most gets attacked by geese while he stands there paralyzed to help her. At times one has to wonder if this bumbling narrator can ever overcome his neuroses enough to land any woman, let alone the one of his dreams, and it’s both a torture and a delight to watch him trip over himself as he discovers, time and again, that all the science in the world can’t help him navigate the tides of love.
This novel is at its best, however, when it does precisely what its author seems clearly to have set out to do in devising it: using unexpected moments of mundane life to illuminate yet another way in which climate change affects us without us even knowing it. For example when Casey and the object of his affections visit an apple orchard only to discover the trees completely bare, as the unseasonable return of winter the previous spring killed off all the apple blossoms before they could flower. Or when Casey and his pothead roommate find their own moral boundaries tested in the face of their neighbor’s energy-sucking Halloween yard decor.
In short, Love in the Time of Climate Change is a light-hearted look at a heavy-hearted subject. But the love story embedded within the tale is far more than a literary device to keep readers entertained through the story’s teaching moments. In fact it proves to supply the missing ingredient in an adult child’s delayed maturation into manhood. Without the love story in our life we’re all doomed to the ravages we’ve wrought on ourselves, is the message.
The reference in the novel’s title to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera seems apparent. And while both stories detail an epidemic bound invariably to leave no one in its path unscathed, if I have to confront the imminent end of the world (at least as I know it) I would much rather take that ride with Casey and his manic band of Climate Changers, because with them at least I know I’ll go out laughing.
The true start of the novel opens on Day One of the new semester at a small community college in western Massachusetts, as our narrator, Casey, an environmental studies professor, prepares to greet his new group of students. He begins, he tells the reader, the same as he has every previous semester: by revealing to his class his debilitating illness, Obsessive Climate Disorder (OCD.) Little does our quixotic narrator know that in this particular class is one student with the power to help him, if not cure his disease, then certainly ameliorate its symptoms. And it is these symptoms of Professor Casey’s self-diagnosed OCD that we witness him suffer through as he attempts to win hearts and change minds: one heart and mind, as he’s soon to discover, in particular.
An early clue that this book is more than just a thinly disguised sermon on the mount comes when two of the students in Casey’s extra-curricular group, The Climate Changers, get into an embittered battle over which of them is the more tenacious bicyclist. Clearly saving the world poses the possibly greater threat of ego annihilation (as in annihilating the world with one’s own ego.) It doesn’t take long to realize this story is far more about the struggle an individual goes through to live from day to day in the face of a damning reality than it is an attempt to educate an audience who likely already knows much of what he speaks. To simply say the author here is preaching to the converted would be disingenuous because he’s not preaching: he’s satirizing. He simply happens to be satirizing his own deeply held beliefs. This makes for some rather bold self-deprecating humor. For example, when a student comes to his office alarmed from her newfound awareness of our true environmental condition, Casey reacts at first with self-satisfaction, thinking, “Yes! Got ‘em!” followed immediately thereafter by, “Of course, what this really means is that they’re now doomed for a lifetime of extreme anxiety, possible depression, constant angst, and a whole host of other intellectual trauma…But hey, such is the price of education. Right?”
In such ways this novel often seems a case study on contradiction, on collateral hypocrisy, on trying to “walk the walk”, to “practice what you preach” in a world that makes such feats prohibitive. Thus we witness Casey forced by circumstance to patronize his Corporate Enemy #1: Walmart, only to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of humiliation while inside. Throughout Casey’s misadventures I was often reminded of the myth of Sisyphus, doomed to forever roll his boulder up a hill only to find that, just when he gets it near the top, it rolls past him all the way to the bottom again.
Likewise love, Casey finds, is not without its Sysiphusian hurdles, in this case that the object of his affections is also a student. Never mind that she is a peer in age, and even a fellow teacher, of youngsters, and at an entirely different school to boot. Casey’s professional moral code is as strict as his climatological one. Of course, all codes are meant to be tested, and indeed it is watching Casey butt up against these imperious standards of his that provides some of this novel’s richest humor—particularly when it’s his lust, second only to morals behind his steering wheel, responsible for such collisions. Case in point: when Casey ruins his chances of a sure-thing with a hot and perfectly available female when her apartment bears the unavoidable evidence of her environmental ignorance. Or when he takes his class on a field trip to an awe-inspiring earth friendly home only to have its message overshadowed when that special student he’s aiming to impress the most gets attacked by geese while he stands there paralyzed to help her. At times one has to wonder if this bumbling narrator can ever overcome his neuroses enough to land any woman, let alone the one of his dreams, and it’s both a torture and a delight to watch him trip over himself as he discovers, time and again, that all the science in the world can’t help him navigate the tides of love.
This novel is at its best, however, when it does precisely what its author seems clearly to have set out to do in devising it: using unexpected moments of mundane life to illuminate yet another way in which climate change affects us without us even knowing it. For example when Casey and the object of his affections visit an apple orchard only to discover the trees completely bare, as the unseasonable return of winter the previous spring killed off all the apple blossoms before they could flower. Or when Casey and his pothead roommate find their own moral boundaries tested in the face of their neighbor’s energy-sucking Halloween yard decor.
In short, Love in the Time of Climate Change is a light-hearted look at a heavy-hearted subject. But the love story embedded within the tale is far more than a literary device to keep readers entertained through the story’s teaching moments. In fact it proves to supply the missing ingredient in an adult child’s delayed maturation into manhood. Without the love story in our life we’re all doomed to the ravages we’ve wrought on ourselves, is the message.
The reference in the novel’s title to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera seems apparent. And while both stories detail an epidemic bound invariably to leave no one in its path unscathed, if I have to confront the imminent end of the world (at least as I know it) I would much rather take that ride with Casey and his manic band of Climate Changers, because with them at least I know I’ll go out laughing.
August 9, 2020
An odd rather juvenile story about a 30 something community college professor and his obsession with climate change and one of his students. He captures the community college scene well. The dialogue between the main character reminded me of that of my sons. While the book wasn’t a page turner, it was interesting enough to stay with it to see if he won his lady love.
July 6, 2019
Funny, informative, great characters.
December 17, 2014
One of my pet peeves about environmental activists and climate change activists in particular is their shriveled sense of humor. Not all, mind you, but most beat a constant drum of doom and gloom that makes me want to jump off a cliff. Way to crucify my Jesus, people! That’s why it’s refreshing to read a story that takes a lighter view of a serious subject. Love in the Time of Climate Change, the first novel by Brian Adams, also makes the case that even the end of the world can spark a romance.
Casey is a 32-year-old community college professor who suffers from OCD, obsessive climate disorder. Rising sea and CO2 levels, evil oil companies, the stupidity of deniers, and other bugbears of climate doomsayers are never far from his mind, until the arrival of Samantha, a 29-year-old middle school teacher who needs some professional development credits. Over the course of the novel, Samantha’s hotness competes with Casey’s fears of global warming, until their interest in climate science and each other culminates in an meeting of minds and bodies.
Adams, himself a community college instructor in Massachusetts, paints an academic world of 10 percent scholars and 90 percent seatwarmers. By the end of the novel, Casey manages to change this ratio by a few percentage points, at least in his class. Casey and his roommate, Jesse, are stuck, however, in a sophomoric world of cold pizza, bong hits, and surprisingly little beer, though the fart jokes (topically relevant, in a climate-change sense) come fast and furious. As he criticizes the deniers, Casey fends off adulthood.
It’s too bad that the love story at the center of the novel generates so little tension. A college ban on teacher-student affairs is a weak reason for the lovers to resist their attraction. For someone determined to subvert the dominant fossil fuel paradigm, Casey excels at conventional behavior. A rival for Samantha’s affections, or the reappearance of a girlfriend-from-hell would have added necessary sparks, but Adams doesn’t feel the need for an antagonist, unless you count a dean who winks more than he frowns. The romantic outcome is never in doubt, but the prospect of failure is the essence of rom-com.
Adams, the teacher, can’t resist a lecture on various aspects of global warming. Casey proselytizes on the wonders of photovoltaics, and no one–student or faculty–disagrees, arguing for, say, tidal energy or biomass. Despite these issues, Adams manages to poke fun at the assumptions of fellow activists, such as a scene with a pair of door-to-door religious evangelists whom Casey and his roommate discover don’t deserve their cruel practical joke. Much of Adams’ humor hits the mark. Love In the Time of Climate Change is a pleasant, and often funny, read.
This review originally appeared on Joe Follansbee's blog.
Casey is a 32-year-old community college professor who suffers from OCD, obsessive climate disorder. Rising sea and CO2 levels, evil oil companies, the stupidity of deniers, and other bugbears of climate doomsayers are never far from his mind, until the arrival of Samantha, a 29-year-old middle school teacher who needs some professional development credits. Over the course of the novel, Samantha’s hotness competes with Casey’s fears of global warming, until their interest in climate science and each other culminates in an meeting of minds and bodies.
Adams, himself a community college instructor in Massachusetts, paints an academic world of 10 percent scholars and 90 percent seatwarmers. By the end of the novel, Casey manages to change this ratio by a few percentage points, at least in his class. Casey and his roommate, Jesse, are stuck, however, in a sophomoric world of cold pizza, bong hits, and surprisingly little beer, though the fart jokes (topically relevant, in a climate-change sense) come fast and furious. As he criticizes the deniers, Casey fends off adulthood.
It’s too bad that the love story at the center of the novel generates so little tension. A college ban on teacher-student affairs is a weak reason for the lovers to resist their attraction. For someone determined to subvert the dominant fossil fuel paradigm, Casey excels at conventional behavior. A rival for Samantha’s affections, or the reappearance of a girlfriend-from-hell would have added necessary sparks, but Adams doesn’t feel the need for an antagonist, unless you count a dean who winks more than he frowns. The romantic outcome is never in doubt, but the prospect of failure is the essence of rom-com.
Adams, the teacher, can’t resist a lecture on various aspects of global warming. Casey proselytizes on the wonders of photovoltaics, and no one–student or faculty–disagrees, arguing for, say, tidal energy or biomass. Despite these issues, Adams manages to poke fun at the assumptions of fellow activists, such as a scene with a pair of door-to-door religious evangelists whom Casey and his roommate discover don’t deserve their cruel practical joke. Much of Adams’ humor hits the mark. Love In the Time of Climate Change is a pleasant, and often funny, read.
This review originally appeared on Joe Follansbee's blog.
November 19, 2015
I randomly picked this up from the "Recommended Reading" section at my library and absolutely adored it. Clever, educational, sweet, funny tale of a pothead, climate-change-obsessed, semi-neurotic community college professor who falls for a "mature-age" (29yo) student in his class. One of the lower-rating reviews said he thought there was too much whining...and the main character is certainly not your typical, stoic, uber buff man's man from a spy novel. I personally wouldn't want to date him, but I think his character reads true and very endearing, facing moral and confidence issues many young folk struggle with. (Though the lusting after undergrads in his classes did creep me out a bit...don't want to think about that!) Epitomizes the struggle and balance between despair, action, and optimism many of us face in concern over the future of the planet. Overall, this is a hilarious, witty novel perfect for the liberal intellectual (or anyone liberal, really).
July 20, 2016
Love in the Time of Climate Change is a light-hearted look on a serious subject. This book is Fun…AND has a lot of information about global warming. Brian Adams has written a very funny novel about climate change. But I am against the use of the work f**k, and he used quite often! I could have done without it. Because of it... I rated it a 3 instead of 4.
It took me a couple days to read the book, but it's funny and serious at the same time. Very entertaining and clever! A Good read!!! Funny and engaging!!
FTC Full Disclosure – I won a copy of this book, and it was sent to me by the publisher in hopes I would review it. However, receiving the complimentary copy did not influence my review.
It took me a couple days to read the book, but it's funny and serious at the same time. Very entertaining and clever! A Good read!!! Funny and engaging!!
FTC Full Disclosure – I won a copy of this book, and it was sent to me by the publisher in hopes I would review it. However, receiving the complimentary copy did not influence my review.
January 17, 2021
Funny, important, and lively, this novel is written in a way that young adults can readily identify with the cast of awkward, well-meaning, and hilarious characters. The stage is a community college. The characters are a teacher, his best friend, and the adult students. Romance and comedy entertain while a deeper message about climate change enlightens. Highly recommended.
April 20, 2015
Too much angst. Every chapter is another rant.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews