Books About Climate Change

In this profoundly human and moving narrative, Alan Weisman returns with a book 10 years in the making: a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations and meeting people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?

In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await — food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action.

An expansive and revelatory historical exploration of the multicultural, water-seeking, land-destroying settlers of the most arid corner of North America, arguing that in order to know where the United States is going in the era of mass migration and climate crisis, we must understand where the Southwest has already been.

Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation.

In 26 essays — one for each letter of the alphabet — Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future. Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker and beautifully illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming, and darkly humorous — a unique examination of our changing world.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in Nonfiction, Fire Weather is a stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind — from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce.

A “lyrical” (Chicago Tribune) final work of nonfiction from the National Book Award–winning author and literary icon whose writing, fieldwork, and mentorship inspired generations of writers and activists. With an introduction by Rebecca Solnit that speaks to Lopez’s keen attention to the world, including its spiritual dimensions, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World opens our minds and souls to the importance of being wholly present for the beauty and complexity of life.

Told in luminous, perceptive prose, The Last Fire Season is a deeply incisive inquiry into what it really means — now — to live in relationship to the elements of the natural world. An arresting combination of memoir, natural history, and literary inquiry that chronicles one woman’s experience of life in Northern California during the worst fire season on record.

In 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived on the Caribbean Island of Guanahaní to find an Edenic scene that was soon mythologized. But behind the myth of paradise, the Caribbean and its people would come to pay the price of relentless Western exploitation and abuse. In Dark Laboratory, Dr. Tao Leigh Goffe radically transforms how we conceive of Blackness, the natural world, colonialism, and the climate crisis; and, in doing so, she deftly dismantles the many layers of entrenched imperialist thinking that shroud our established understanding of the human and environmental conditions to reveal the cause and effect of a global catastrophe.

Learn the story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism.

An urgent, resounding call to protect 50 percent of the earth’s land by 2050 – thereby saving millions of its species – and a candid assessment of the health of our planet and our role in conserving it, from the award-winning author of The Experience of Place and veteran New Yorker staff writer.

Global Weirdness enlarges our understanding of how climate change affects our daily lives, and arms us with the incontrovertible facts we need to make informed decisions about the future of the planet, and of humankind.

The Carbon Almanac is a collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers, and illustrators that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next. Drawing on over 1,000 data points, the book uses cartoons, quotes, illustrations, tables, histories, and articles to lay out carbon’s impact on our food system, ocean acidity, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, extreme weather events, the economy, human health, and best and worst-case scenarios. Visually engaging and built to share, The Carbon Almanac is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.

All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States — scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race — and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.

You might think it’s an impossible task: Secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope — but only if we listen to the science before it’s too late. We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet.

A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.

A Future We Can Love shares dialogues on the climate emergency between dozens of visionary scientists, activists, and spiritual luminaries. These important voices include indigenous scholar and artist Lyla June, medical biochemist and author Diana Beresford-Kroeger, climate scientist and Zen teacher Kritee Kanko, interfaith environmental leader Dekila Chungyalpa, Buddhist teacher Willa Blythe Baker, Rabbi Steve Leder, and many more.

Discover the landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change — updated and abridged into a single novel.

While everything appears to be collapsing around us – ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, the end of cheap oil, water shortages, global famine, wars – we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children’s children. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight helps us understand – and heal – our relationship to the world, to each other, and to our natural resources.

In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac — who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015 — have written a cautionary but optimistic book about the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity.

An investigative narrative that dives into the waste embedded in our daily lives — and shows how individuals and communities are making a real difference for health, prosperity, quality of life, and the fight against climate change, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Over the course of a year, Ehrlich experiences firsthand the myriad expressions of cold, giving us marvelous histories of wind, water, snow, and ice, of ocean currents and weather cycles. We share Ehrlich’s experience of the thrills of cold, but also her questions: What will happen to us if we are “deseasoned”? If winter ends, will we survive?

In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical — and accessible — plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.

Compiled by social scientist and researcher Tina Limpert, this collection of stirring words is intended to enlighten, prompt change, provide encouragement, and deepen readers’ conviction. Celebrating activism, focusing on solutions, and avoiding apathy and pessimism, this book is a call to action.

From a writer and expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than thirty years, a brilliant, big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to address climate change. Fire and Flood focuses on the malign power of key business interests, arguing that those same interests could flip the story very quickly — if they can get ahead of a looming economic catastrophe.

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change.