Jahren provides a glimpse into her personal journey, which she will reference throughout the text. She was born in 1969 in a rural community in Minnesota, lived and worked in Hawaii, and now resides in Oslo, Norway. Jahren uses the year of her birth as a touchstone to discuss change over time. 1969 was also the year that the Cuyahoga River caught fire, helping to spur environmental awareness in the United States.

In 2009, Jahren began developing a college course about climate change, which prompted her first deep dive into this daunting topic. While researching content for the course, she concluded, “I see the country of my birth moving backwards” (7). Worried, fearful, but also armed with a clear understanding of the big picture, Jahren then sat down to write this book. “So if you’ll listen,” she writes, “I’ll tell you what happened to my world, to your world—to our world. It changed” (8). The primary problem is this: Humans from certain regions of the world have learned to consume such a significant amount of fossil fuels, meat, and other goods that we are destroying the planet in the process.