9 books to boost your climate knowledge

1. Drawdown

If you’re tired of hearing about the doom and gloom and want details on exactly the ways we can begin to seriously address the climate crisis, look no further than Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming edited by Paul Hawkin. Stemming from the invaluable works of the website Project Drawdown, the book functions as a handy offline reference, and a way to support their work. Take in every solution listed in meticulous detail, with precise estimations of how much carbon could be sequestered in plain, simple language. It’s the easiest way to understand, not just that we can do this, but also how!

2. Braiding Sweetgrass

If you’re reading this, chances are you grew up steeped in western ways of thinking, which includes a culture that tends to (inaccurately) see a separation between us humans and this thing we call “nature.” Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer is a gorgeous, eye-opening, and deeply personal exploration of the human relationship with plants, each other, and the world. A scientist and citizen of the Potawatomi Nation, Wall Kimmerer’s book is about more than just climate change. It seamlessly weaves indigenous storytelling, science, history, poetry, language, and philosophy into a compelling argument for action based in reciprocity and embedded relationships.

3. Don’t Even Think About It

Ever wonder why people - despite all the overwhelming evidence - don’t seem to be concerned about the irreversible changes human economic activity is causing to the biosphere? Then this is the book for you! Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall takes a look at psychology and behavioural science to find the answer. The insights will help you understand how we got into this mess, and how we get out.

4. All We Can Save

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson is a blockbuster anthology written by women and girls from multiple disciplines and backgrounds. The book functions as both a salve for the soul and a guide for the mind. It’s one of the reasons Smithsonian Magazine put it on it’s top 10 book list for 2020. Plus, if you get the audiobook, you get to hear essays read by A-listers like Jane Fonda and Julia Louis Dreyfus. Because, as this book points out, to change everything, you need everyone.

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5. Our Changing Menu

Fossil fuels take so much of the attention in the climate discourse, but food is a huge piece of this puzzle. Food is more than just sustenance for humans, it’s culture, history, and family. It’s also increasingly precarious. Our Changing Menu: Climate Change and the Foods We Love and Need by Michael P. Hoffmann, Carrie Koplinka-Loehr & Danielle L Eiseman takes a look at some of our most beloved foodstuffs, while giving a broader overview of the global food system, and shows how - just like the climate - it’s all connected.

6. Merchants of Doubt

Ever heard someone deny the reality of climate change in the media? That’s not by accident. Climate, like most issues of scientific concern, didn’t start out as controversial. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway shows how the climate “debate” was manufactured using the same playbook that the tobacco industry used to deny smoking causes cancer. And in stunning detail. If you’re tight on time, simply watch the documentary.

7. The New Climate War

Speaking of climate deniers, perhaps no credible scientist has been harassed and taunted by climate deniers more than Michael E. Mann. From the author of The Hockey Stick Graph and the Climate Wars and The Madhouse Effect, Mann’s The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet is an update on the pernicious ways fossil fuel interests are seeking to maintain business as usual in an era where full-on denial of the problem has become laughably absurd. He also overviews real solutions (mainly the US) can take, including his thoughts on The Green New Deal and what could get passed in today’s political climate (no pun intended).

8. Being The Change

Another climate scientist, this time Being the Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution by Peter Kalmus will take you on a much more personal journey on the changes he’s made to his life, which he says have brought him a measure of happiness and fulfillment in a warming world. These include meditating, cycling, buying a vegetable oil fueled car, dumpster diving, gardening, growing chickens, and producing humanure in an outhouse, all within his suburban LA home. He also offers a great overview on the science of global warming for the uninitiated, as well as structural changes he supports.

9. Doughnut Economics

Economics is the most lauded social science, yet most of it rests on thinking with roots in the 18th and 19th centuries. How can we possibly address the crises of the 21st century if we don’t update our thinking? Enter Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth. This is a revolutionary way of thinking about an economy that meets basic human needs while staying within scientifically established planetary limits that define sustainability. Put those two limits together on a graph and it kinda looks like a donut! Don’t feel like reading? Watch the TED Talk instead.