Book Launch: Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition

Name: Book Launch: Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition
Start: 2025-11-12T18:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-11-12T21:00:00+00:00
Location: Pop Recs Ltd

Schedule

Wed Nov 12 2025 at 06:00 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC+00:00

Location

Pop Recs Ltd | Sunderland, EN

Come along to the Sunderland launch of Or Something Worse at Pop Recs and hear Nicholas Beuret in conversation with Auburn Langley - discussing the book, contemporary environmental politics, and the tensions surrounding net zero and the transition economy.
The event includes a bookstall from Sunderland-based publisher and distributor PM Press.
About the speakers:
• Nicholas Beuret, UCU member and author of Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition, is a lecturer in environmental politics and economic geography at the University of Essex. With a background in both activism and academia, he explores the intersections of climate change, capitalism, and social justice. His work has been featured in the Guardian, The Ecologist, Open Democracy, and Undercurrents. Nicholas lives in the UK, where he continues to write, teach, and engage in environmental advocacy.
• Auburn Langley is the Director of Sunderland Lit & Phil, and a community activist and facilitator. When not talking about history, philosophy, or political activism, Auburn is writing a political education text-based game set in Sunderland, a fantasy novel based on Celtic Mythology…and is likely buried beneath a stack of books she intends to read.
About the book:
Published by Verso, Or Something Worse: Why We Need to Disrupt the Climate Transition - is an exploration of who controls the shift away from carbon intensive energy, and in whose interests they act.
The push for net zero has become a new arena for class conflict, where the powerful profit and the rest suffer. Nicholas Beuret's incisive critique and actionable strategies empower us to fight for a truly sustainable and equitable future.
Or Something Worse exposes the bleak realities of the transition to a carbon-neutral economy. Greening the economy has become a one-sided war, as governments and businesses squeeze the living standards of ordinary people. We need to seize control of the transition in order to reshape it to equitable ends.
Existing policies won’t limit global heating to anything close to a safe level. Claims of sustainability disguise a zero-sum battle where the powerful profit and everyone else foots the bill. Green growth was supposed to bring increased wealth for all. Instead, work has been degraded, energy bills have soared, and the most basic necessities have become expensive and scarce.
We need to disrupt green capitalism. Nicholas Beuret follows those already fighting back through ‘don’t pay’ campaigns, blockades of fossil-fuel infrastructure, and community counter-planning. He shows we have the tools not only to stop climate change but to build a fairer future.