For this October, the month before the presidential election, Yale Climate Connections has identified enough timely titles to fill two bookshelves: one on climate action, the other on electoral politics.
This bookshelf presents the titles on climate action – or perhaps we should say inaction.
Read: 12 books to help you understand the 2024 election – and its aftermath
Scientists and concerned citizens have been crying out for action on climate change for so long – for decades, in fact – that several histories of American inaction have now been written. The most recent of these is “Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics.” Even regular readers of this monthly column will be surprised by how far back the story told by environmental policy analyst Chelsea Henderson goes.
There have been bright spots, the Paris Climate Agreement, for one. President Obama’s Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern provides a firsthand account of the American side of those negotiations. Nevertheless, the available evidence indicates that we will “overshoot” the temperature targets set in the agreement, both the preferred (below 1.5°C) and the fallback (2°C) targets. In their new book, activists and academics Wim Carton and Andreas Malm play out the consequences of inaction going forward.
Reporter Peter Schwartzstein and security analyst Sherri Goodman already see the dire consequences of climate change shaping international politics and strategic planning. People migrating away from climate-damaged environments, and the violence such breakdowns unleash, will destabilize the countries and polities to which they flee.
How should citizens in these countries respond? Professor of environmental law David Spence provides a detailed account of how effective energy regulation has sometimes been possible in the U.S. over the last century. But he now sees new stresses on the political system that are creating vicious circles of contempt and inaction. Journalist Cameron Abadi and activist Margaret Klein Salamon offer opposing takes on climate radicalism. Both would agree, however, that climate action is among the best remedies for climate anxiety. Social philosophers Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker go further, suggesting that we need to create new mental and social spaces for experiencing and understanding the emotions that arise from our (in)actions in response to climate change.
The last three titles in this bookshelf offer new paths to action. Graphic designer Esther Gonstalla has created an “atlas” of climate threats and solutions. Climate scientist Rob Jackson provides an update on the science and technologies of carbon removal and places that story in a bigger picture of comprehensive climate action. In conversations with people deeply engaged in a wide variety of climate actions, marine biologist and climate advocate Ayana Elizabeth Johnson sketches a path forward by imagining our destination: “What if we get it right?”
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.
Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics by Chelsea Henderson (Turner Publishing Co., 2024, 432 pages, $19.99 paperback)
Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics is the first inside-the-Beltway account to lay bare the machinations of what went wrong in Washington – how and why our leaders failed to act on climate change as mounting scientific evidence underscored the urgency to do so. The good news today is that public opinion is at its highest level of support for climate action, from corporate boardrooms embracing sustainability for business reasons to movements led by passionate younger generations who can’t afford to stand mute because it is they who will inherit the worst environmental catastrophes. If the missed opportunities in Washington are instructive, the path to acting is clear. Our elected officials must use their offices not solely for the power and prestige it bestows, but for the public good – and they must do so while there is still time.
Landing the Paris Climate Agreement: How It Happened, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next by Todd Stern (The MIT Press 2024, pages, $32.95)
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the twenty-first century: 195 nations finally agreed, after 20 years of trying, to establish an ambitious, operational regime to address one of the greatest civilizational challenges of our time. In Landing the Paris Climate Agreement, Todd Stern, the chief U.S. negotiator on climate change, provides an engaging account from inside the rooms where it happened: the full, charged, seven-year story of how the Paris Agreement came to be, following an arc from Copenhagen, to Durban, to the secret U.S.-China climate deal in 2014, to Paris itself. A unique peek behind the curtain, Landing the Paris Climate Agreement is a vital and fascinating read for anyone who cares about the future of our one shared home.
Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown by Wim Carton and Andreas Malm (Verso Books 2024, 416 pages, $29.95)
The world is on the cusp of one and a half degrees of warming. But even before one and a half, climate disasters have struck with ever more devastating force. And that limit will be overshot – perhaps two degrees as well. How did this happen? What forces are driving us into a climate that people – particularly poor people in the Global South – won’t be able to cope with? In Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton present a history of the present phase of the crisis, as the fossil fuel industry swims in the largest profits ever made. Money continues to flow into the construction of pipelines, platforms, terminals, mines – assets that will have to be destroyed for the planet to remain livable. Sweeping in scope, stirring and sobering, Overshoot lays out the stakes for the climate struggle in the years ahead.
The Heat and the Fury: On the Frontlines of Climate Violence by Peter Schwartzstein (Island Press 2024, 328 pages, $32.00)
As a journalist on the climate security beat, Peter Schwartzstein has visited ravaged Iraqi towns where ISIS used drought as a recruiting tool and weapon of terror. In Bangladesh, he has interviewed farmers-turned-pirates who can no longer make a living off the land and instead make it off bloody ransoms. Security forces blocked him from a dam being constructed along the Nile that has brought Egypt and Ethiopia to the brink of war. In The Heat and the Fury, Schwartzstein deftly shows that climate change is often the spark that ignites long smoldering fires, the extra shove that pushes individuals, communities, and even nations over the line between frustration and lethal fury. Schwartzstein’s unparalleled on-the-ground reporting and keen sense of human nature offer the clearest picture to date of the violence that threatens us all.
Threat Multiplier: Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security by Sherri Goodman (Island Press 2024, 272 pages, $35.00)
Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the U.S. military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change. More than thirty years ago, when Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon’s first Chief Environmental Officer, no one would have imagined this role for our armed forces. But now the Pentagon considers climate in war games, disaster relief planning, international diplomacy, and even the design of its own bases. What was the key to this dramatic change in military thinking? No one is better poised to answer these questions than Sherri Goodman, an environmental leader among our armed forces and civilian representatives. In Threat Multiplier, she tells the inside story of the military’s fight for global security, a tale that is as hopeful as it is harrowing.
Climate of Contempt: How to Rescue the U.S. Energy Transition from Voter Partisanship by David B. Spence (Columbia University Press 2024, 380 pages, $28.00 paperback)
Why is the United States struggling to enact policies to reduce carbon emissions? In Climate of Contempt, David B. Spence offers a voter-centric, bottom-up explanation of national climate and energy politics, one that pinpoints bitter partisanship as the key impediment to transitioning to a net zero carbon future. Members of Congress respond to voters whose animosity toward the opposing party makes compromise politically risky. The social media that constitute today’s information environment amplifies anger, spreads half-truths and falsehoods, and sows division. How, then, can we build a broader climate coalition? Spence contends that cooperation on this crucial issue is still possible, but it will require sustained person-to-person engagement. With its incisive understanding of our politics, Climate of Contempt offers hope for a net-zero future.
Climate Radicals: Why Our Environmental Politics Isn’t Working by Cameron Abadi (Columbia Global Reports 2024, 192 pages, $18.00 paperback)
In Climate Radicals, Cameron Abadi profiles the fascinating activists of Letzte Generation, known for throwing food on works of art; Ende Gelände, which demands the immediate phaseout of coal; and the German leaders of Fridays for Future, which organizes school strikes and large-scale demonstrations. Abadi finds that the groups’ uncompromising stances and outrage over narrowly defined policy failures have led them to extreme acts of publicity that feed their sense of urgency. In contrast, Joe Biden’s American Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 represents the most significant move toward green energy in U.S. history. The law did not impress groups like Letzte Generation, but Climate Radicals shows that political compromise and incremental progress might be the only way for governments to fight climate change.
Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth (2E) by Margaret Klein Salamon (New Society Publishers 2024, 154 pages, $19.99 paperback)
Facing the Climate Emergency offers a cure to climate anxiety. With the skill of a psychologist and the passion of an activist, Salamon helps readers process fear and grief and find their place in the climate movement. This second edition of the radical self-help book offers much that is new: an updated analysis of the context of the climate movement including COVID-19; a review of the accelerating impacts of climate change; concrete strategies for tackling climate anxiety; inspiring profiles of ordinary people sounding the alarm; and resources and exercises for self-reflection, and an invitation to the Climate Awakening, the climate emotions platform. Whether you’re drawn to the front lines of nonviolent direct action, or prefer to play a supporting role, this guide will help you combat the forces of climate denial and discover your own power.
Sad Planets by Dominic Pettman & Eugene Thacker (Polity 2024, 488 pages, $19.95 paperback)
In this series of meditations, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key “negative affects” – both eternal and emergent – associated with climate change. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change. Between the information gathered by planetary sensors and the simple act of breathing the air, new unsettling moods are produced for which we currently lack an adequate language. Should we feel grief over the loss of our planet? Or is the strange feeling of witnessing mass extinction an indicator that the planet was never “ours” to begin with? Sad Planets explores this relationship between human melancholia and a more impersonal sorrow; in their essays, Pettman and Thacker reckon with the limits of human existence and comprehension.
Atlas of a Threatened Planet: 150 Infographics to Help Anyone Save the World by Esther Gonstalla (Island Press 2024, 224 pages, $35 paperback)
Our planet is a fascinating and complex place, but the challenges we face can seem overwhelming. How does our climate actually work? Should we worry about the global supply of drinking water? How much land do we need to grow food? In Atlas of a Threatened Planet, award-winning book and graphic designer Esther Gonstalla digs into these questions and many more through her attractive and easy-to-understand infographics. Best known for her popular “Our World in 50 Graphics,” Gonstalla turns her eye in this book to the most critical threats to our environment, from shrinking glaciers and declining biodiversity to shifting ocean currents. These accessible illustrations will show readers that, although the threats are grave, not all is lost. Changes in technology, infrastructure, and outlook can still help us protect the places we love.
Into the Clear Blue Sky: The Path to Restoring Our Atmosphere by Rob Jackson (Simon & Schuster 2024, 304 pages, $29.99)
Climate scientist and chair of the Global Carbon Project Rob Jackson thinks we need to redefine our goals. We shouldn’t only be trying to stabilize the Earth’s temperature at some arbitrary value; we should aim to restore the atmosphere. Restoring the atmosphere means reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the air to preindustrial levels – starting with super-potent methane – to heal the harm we have done. Emissions must be cut, first and foremost. It is easier to stop emissions from happening than to remove greenhouse gases from the air later. But while mitigation is crucial, decades of inaction have convinced Jackson that we need to remove greenhouse gases from the air using everything from nature to cutting-edge technologies.
Into the Clear Blue Sky is a heart- and mind-changing book; together we can restore the planet.
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (One World 2024, 496 pages, $34.00)
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures. Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take – from all of us, with whatever we have to offer – to create. If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world – or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it – this book is for you.
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