Reading lists for climate change

 I was concerned that I was not keeping up with thinking about climate change.  I typed “reading lists for climate change” into Google and of course got over 200 million results.  I only scanned the first six pages. Everyone from the New York Times to the United Methodist Women have a reading list for climate change.  I selected three lists that I thought would cover a range of attitudes about what is important and interesting to read about climate change.

I selected lists from the New York Times, Yale Climate Connections, and The Guardian. The New York Times was the shortest list.  Their list suggests that they they wanted significant variety even within a short list: one book about global impacts, one book about potential solutions, and one book about personal impacts.  Yale Climate Connections is a longer list, 12 books. It is a “can do” list, every book focuses on actions to reduce climate change or its impacts. 4 of the 12 deal with food and agriculture, which seems to be a particularly heavy weighting.  The Guardian list was prepared by Annie Proulx, a journalist but most famous for her fiction. Her list is more personal and dramatic than the others.

My own list is much nerdier.  It has three books/reports. 

IPCC,Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, “An IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty.”

Climatic Change, April 2014, Volume 123, Issue 3–4, Special Issue on “The EMF27 Study on Global Technology and Climate Policy Strategies” edited by John Weyant, Elmar Kriegler, Geoffrey Blanford, Volker Krey, Jae Edmonds, Keywan Riahi, Richard Richels, and Massimo Tavoni. “…documents the main findings of Energy Modeling Forum Model Inter-comparison Project… This study focused on the development and cross model comparison of results from a new generation of comprehensive international climate policy intervention scenarios focusing on technology strategies for achieving climate policy objectives.

DRAWDOWN, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Edited by Paul Hawken.  This book appeared on both the New York Times and the Yale Climate Connections lists, and I found its description compelling.

The three reading lists with edited descriptions are found below:

New York Times, Read These 3 Books About Global Warming, Concepción de León (Reference):

• SIX DEGREES,Our Future on a Hotter Planet, Mark Lynas, “In this book, Lynas draws on scientific research on climate change to predict how the planet will be affected by each degree of temperature rise.”
• DRAWDOWN, The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Edited by Paul Hawken, ”This New York Times best seller gathers leading scientists and policymakers to present the 100 most effective solutions to global warming, which they argue would roll back global greenhouse gas emissions within thirty years.“
• THE CARBON DIARIES 2015,  Saci Lloyd, “This young adult novel is told in short diary entries, narrated by a 16-year-old girl named Laura who lives in Britain, which has become the first country to implement a carbon rationing plan.”

Yale Climate Connections, 12 books about climate change ‘solutions’ that belong on your summer reading list, Michael Svoboda (Reference) 

• Change: Live Well and Spark a Climate Revolution, Peter Kalmus, “… explores the connections between our individual daily actions and our collective predicament. It merges science, spirituality, and practical action to develop a satisfying and appropriate response to global warming.” 
• An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis, Al Gore, “It explains how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and delivers hope through groundbreaking information on what you can do now.” 
• Cooler Smarter: Practical Steps for Low-Carbon Living, The Union for Concerned Scientists, “Cooler Smarter is based on an in-depth, two-year study by the experts at The Union of Concerned Scientists. …Cooler Smarter offers proven strategies to cut carbon, with chapters on transportation, home energy use, diet, personal consumption, as well as how best to influence your workplace, your community, and elected officials.”
• Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It,  Anna Lappe, “Nearly four decades after her mother, Frances Moore Lappé, published Diet for a Small Planet, sparking a revolution in our thinking about the social and environmental impact of our food choices, Anna Lappé picks up the conversation, examining another hidden cost of our food system: the climate crisis.”
• The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientist, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet, Kristin Ohlson,”… an ecological approach that tends not only to plants and animals but also to the vast population of underground microorganisms that fix carbon in the soil.”
• The Carbon Farming Solution: A Global Toolkit of Perennial Crops and Regenerative Agriculture Practices for Climate Change Mitigation and Food Security, Eric Toensmeier
• Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth, Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper, ”… the benefits of this carbonized material, now called biochar, extend far beyond the soil. Pyrolyzing carbon has the power to restore a natural balance.” 
• The Urban Fix: Resilient Cities in the War Against Climate Change, Heat Islands, and Overpopulation,  Douglas Kelbaugh, “The Urban Fix addresses how urban design, planning and policies can counter the threats of climate change, urban heat islands and overpopulation, helping cities take full advantage of their inherent advantages and new technologies to catalyze social, cultural and physical solutions to combat the epic, unprecedented challenges humanity faces.” 
• Greenovation: Urban Leadership on Climate Change, Joan Fitzgerald, “… argues that too many cities are only implementing random acts of greenness that will do little to address the climate crisis. She instead calls for “greenovation” – using the city as a test bed for adopting and perfecting green technologies for more energy – efficient buildings, transportation, and infrastructure more broadly.” 
• Climate of Hope: How Cities, Businesses and Citizens Can Save the Planet, Michael Bloomberg and Carl Pope, “offer an optimistic look at the challenge of climate change, the solutions they believe hold the greatest promise, and the practical steps that are necessary to achieve them.”
• Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken, “In this book, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and scientists have come together to offer realistic and bold solutions to climate change. One hundred techniques and practices are described here.” 
• The Climate Solutions Consensus: What We Know and What To Do About It, National Council for Science and the Environment , “… provides specific recommendations for federal policies, for state and local governments, for businesses, and for colleges and universities that are preparing future generations who will be dealing with a radically changed climate.” 
• Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy, Hal Harvey with Robbie Orvis and Jeffrey Rissman, “Designing Climate Solutions is an accessible resource on lowering carbon emissions for policymakers, activists, philanthropists, and others in the climate and energy community. In Part I, the authors deliver a roadmap for understanding which countries, sectors, and sources produce the greatest amount of greenhouse gas emissions. In Part II, they break down each type of policy…offering key design principles and case studies where each policy has been implemented successfully. 

The Guardian, Annie Proulx on the best books to understand climate change (Reference)

• The Weather-Makers, Tim Flannery, “…lucid and easily understandable explanations of climate change, both a history and a look into what might come next.”
• The Madhouse Effect, Michael Mann and Tom Toles, “It is drawn straight from the frontline of the climate wars. In trenchant sentences the authors skate out, hockey sticks swinging, and scythe the legs from under the cabal of vested interests, venal payola scientists and shadowy political éminences grises.”
• The Water Will Come, Jeff Goodell, “… is especially good at showing the daunting complexity of solutions to on-the-ground problems in places such as Miami Beach, Alaska, New York, Venice and remote islands whose residents have nowhere to go.”
• The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable, Amitav Ghosh, “ is literate and probing. He presents a critical discussion of the Paris Agreement vis-a-vis Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’. “
• The Whale and the Supercomputer: On the Northern Front of Climate Change, Charles Wohlforth, “… looks at two different and sporadically intermeshed groups – science experts from distant universities and local whale-hunter people of the Arctic with millennia of ice experience. “
• The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen, “… is a witty review of Earth’s previous global species extinctions.”
• Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis, Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky, “… offer a meditative approach … outlines the liminal relations between the natural world and humans. Here the wild is the bedrock of human ethical and moral values…guides us towards ways to live and know the situation of climate change.”