This book persuasively explains how asking the wrong questions makes it impossible to put the right information in the hands of policymakers when it comes to climate change. It's wordy, which makes it a bit of a slog for laypeople. But it does a great job of reframing the approach governments need to take to solve this urgent problem.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Five Times Faster is both a history of global climate change and adjacent politics and a proposal of a better framework for approaching them in the future. The book is far easier to read and understand than one might expect, being centred on Sharpe's own experience working on national and international climate diplomacy and explained in terms quite accessible to anyone somewhat interested in these themes.
From rethinking the science, where the author explains the need do reframe the scientific investigation and communication in order to transmit to the political agents and even the general public exactly what we are going through, the potential risks and actions we may take to avoid them. As someone with enough scientific background I can certainly confirm that a question or point of view can influence quite a lot the way one interprets the data and even the way the future investigation follows from it.
In the economics chapter, Sharpe goes to the roots of current political economy discourse to illustrate how we are caged in a system that forces interpretations and expectations that are completely at odds with what climate science and experience in political intervention show us. I'd add that equilibrium economics is just blatantly the wrong set up for us to live in. Just reset this game and start over.
In diplomacy we're shown how conversations between nations and between governments or organizations and the industrial and financial actors happen. Sharpe's experience really shines here and the stories he tells are quite informative and very supportive of the importance he attributes to the need to reframe how these things are done.

All in all, a good book to understand how we're living decades after we've found out about human-driven climate change and still locked in some of the most basic and obvious fights, problems, tendencies and that really has a proposal for a better way to work on what we need to do to better our chances.

If i had to describe this book in three words, I would say engaging, thought provoking, and most of all, important. This book covers what is arguably the issue of the century - climate change. In it, Simon Sharpe, as someone with vast experience in the field, addresses the problems with how climate change is being resolved and offers solutions to many of these which are incredibly well-thought out and explained. The book covers three main sections of climate change resolution - the science behind it; the economics behind it; and lastly, the diplomacy behind it. Whilst the last remained greatly engaging and even provoked optimism, I found the first two parts to be the most interesting and engaging. I loved the way the scientific facts were intertwined to give the reader a greater knowledge and understanding but how the real point was to criticise the methods at which the science was carried out, or more so how science experiments were treated. I found the anecdotes of events where this was an obvious concern really thought-provoking, as as someone well invested into climate change affairs, this is not something I had considered much and Sharpe in this book guides your focus in a way that provides clear justification as to why this should be focused on. I also found the economics part intriguing and slightly concerning, as I gained a developed understanding of the science of economics, and also the deep-rooted problems with economics in our society today, which I found incredibly intriguing as i was introduced to new terms and developed a deep understanding of economics from little base knowledge. Sharpe finds a perfect equilibrium in this book - balancing facts and statistics against opinion and justification and balancing heavy informative elements with more humorous comparisons that lighten the mood and make it easy to read and understand. The explanations were perfectly clear and concise and I think this book, though academic, is incredibly accessible for anyone who is interested in climate change and wants to explore the issue to an extended level. The book really changed the way i view climate change and helped introduce me to new key concepts in many different areas of politics, economics and more.