As If We Were Staying: How We Build a Flourishing Future in a World That’s Falling Apart

· HarperOne · Narrated by Gibson Frazier
Audiobook
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This book will become available on November 10, 2026. You will not be charged until it is released.

About this audiobook

Inspired by his experience starting Solar Punk Farms and studying the resilience of living systems, biologist Spencer R. Scott helps us envision our collective future in a more hopeful way.

In an age of ecological emergency and social breakdown, how do we find the hope and determination to live on this planet as if we were staying?

Inspired by the solarpunk movement’s insistence that our vision of the future must be galvanizing, biologist and environmentalist Spencer R. Scott chronicles his journey from biotech research to the co-founding of the queer regenerative community and education hub, Solar Punk Farms. Weaving memoir and scientific inquiry, Scott reframes capitalism as an environment we’ve unconsciously adapted to in order to survive and documents the internal and external process of re-adapting to the realities of our ecological world. Only through community and collective action, he finds, can we make survival—and joy—beyond capitalism possible.

Bridging science and personal experience with optimism and lyricism, As If We Were Staying is an invitation to meet our precarious reality together and begin building a future worth inhabiting.

Inspired by his experience starting Solar Punk Farms and studying the resilience of living systems, biologist Spencer R. Scott helps us envision our collective future in a more hopeful way. In an age of ecological emergency and social breakdown, how do we find the hope and determination to live o...

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About the author

Spencer R. Scott, PhD, is a biologist, environmentalist, and cofounder of Solar Punk Farms. He writes stories at the intersection of science, ecology, and wellbeing, and his work has been featured on NPR, and in Sierra Club, Grist, Outside, The Bold Italic, and other publications. He lives in California.

Spencer R. Scott, PhD, is a biologist, environmentalist, and cofounder of Solar Punk Farms. He writes stories at the intersection of science, ecology, and wellbeing, and his work has been featured on NPR, and in Sierra Club, Grist, Outside, The Bold Italic, and other publications. He lives in Cal...

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