“Navigating Climate Change”: a review of Ryan Hagen’s YOUR GUIDE TO CLIMATE ACTION: How to Move Beyond Your Footprint and Make a BIG Impact by Gretchen Ayoub
Your Guide to Climate Action: How to Move Beyond Your Footprint and Make a BIG Impact
By Ryan Hagen
Climate Action Press (January 2, 2026)
Ryan Hagen’s book is a practical, resource-rich guide to taking steps to becoming a climate change activist. It is an informative read and one that can serve as an ongoing reference and source of ideas when the work of climate change begins to feel too big. The book lays out an action plan for everyone at any point in their climate activism journey.
One of the passages in the introduction stayed with me: “For some younger people, it’s all they’ve ever known – an underlying anxiety about a crisis they didn’t create but must face.” I did not grow up in a world where climate change was something that weighed on the minds of myself and my peers. We now have generations of young people who have known nothing different, who never had the opportunity to experience any other type of world. Before getting into steps and resources, Hagen addresses this anxiety in his chapter, “Getting Grounded: Navigating Eco-Emotions.” This is an important prelude. To understand what we are fighting for, we need to identify and name our feelings – cynicism, anger, helplessness, denial, and others. All of these are normal reactions. They are not comfortable, but as Hagen reminds us, they are doing what they evolved over time to do: keep us calm. He outlines the strategies for understanding eco-emotions: pausing and facing, “name it to tame it,” and embracing and connecting. This sets the stage for the rest of the book.
Many of the action steps start on a micro level within one’s community: becoming knowledgeable about local politics, identifying sustainable initiatives that are happening (or not) in one’s town or city, connecting with others both personally and professionally to initiate change, volunteering (he has substantial resources throughout the book), becoming an active and engaged listener when discussing climate change, and addressing specific ways to involve one’s workplace in these initiatives. These are practical, doable ideas that speak to a variety of skill sets and other factors. When reading through these sections, I was reminded of Tip O’Neill, a former Speaker of the House, who often said, “All politics is local.” Most often, sustainable change starts with a grassroots effort. Embrace your own community, whatever that is for you, and make connections – start with the familiar and go from there.
Climate change is an enormous topic covering a myriad of definitions, terms, facts, and figures. Hagen breaks down the science in understandable terms, cites research, and keeps reminding us that this is doable. His climate action newsletter reaches 200,000 people in 150 countries, he founded the nonprofit Crowdsourcing Sustainability, and his work has been recognized by the UN, TEDx, Harvard, and LInkedIn Top Voices. His far-reaching actions began with a first step – watching the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, being inspired to learn more, working in clean technology after college, then many other steps in between which led to the writing and publication of this guide. Hagen is part of the generations that have only known the anxiety of climate change, and he speaks from an authentic place of personal experience. Readers looking for a clear roadmap to climate activism will find it here and will also develop an increased awareness of the critical, global effect of climate change – the foundation, as he notes, on which civilizations are built.
Gretchen Ayoub is a success coach at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an editor for MicroLit . She was awarded first place in the Writer's Digest annual competition in the Memoir/Personal Essay category in 2023 and Honorable Mention in the Humor category in 2024. Additionally, Gretchen has published essays for the Boston Book Festival At Home Project, Consequence Magazine (book review), and The Tishman Review. She is currently working on a collection of travel essays focused on healing through grief.