Here’s a list of climate, environment and sustainability books from my library in chronological order. I’m a book lover who keeps my eye out for new and interesting books in my field.
A few housekeeping notes:
All books are in English.
All books are non-fiction unless otherwise noted.
Updates to this page are ongoing, as some are still on my “to-read” list and I frequently add new ones to my Kindle and bookshelves.
It’s Not That Radical
Full title: It's Not That Radical: Climate Action to Transform Our World
By Mikaela Loach (2023)
My take: I’ve been following Mikaela Loach on IG for over a year now, and I’m very fond of her work, including this newly released book. She’s a British-Jamaican social media influencer and activist from the UK who inspires activists to support climate justice, reminding us that climate change is an “inequality multiplier.” Loach situates her impassioned writing within a tradition of Black feminist and global south thinking to build solidarity across labor, anti-racist and climate change movements. She draws from the personal experiences of her grandmother who has lived to see parts of her home of Jamaica submerge beneath rising tides. This book is full of important perspectives that champion a broader rethinking of systems beyond “green capitalism,” and she delivers her message with infectious enthusiasm, energy and wit throughout. Her aim is to mobilize the “global majority,” including people of color and their allies, to tackle systemic inequalities as a central tenet of the climate movement.
NOT Too Late
Full title: Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility
Essays edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua (2023)
My take: Rebecca Solnit is an autodidactic author whose interests sprawl from nuanced history writing based on topics such as “walking” or the San Francisco Bay Area to a popular feminist diatribe against “mansplaining,” a term she coined. Her latest book returns to another one of her central themes: climate change. This time, she compiles others’ voices in an essay collection, a preferred format for publishing climate books lately. I have yet to read this book.
Climate: Our Right to Breathe
Edited by: Hiuwai Chu, Meagan Down, Nkule Mabaso, Pablo Martínez, and Corina Oprea (2022)
My take: The many perspectives in this book collect the ways communities are using poetry, food, seeds, activism, and art to respond to the intertwined problems of climate crisis, capitalism and racism. The essays are a collection from artists, activists, academics and poets from different countries and communities who consider ecological destruction through a de-colonial lens.
This pushes the conversation about the cause of climate change away from the scientific focus on greenhouse gas emissions to the hegemonic processes. Many of the authors detail how these processes have occurred through violence, force, occupation or settlement of land and pollution of water, air and soil. The authors show through various means, artistic or academic, how these processes have structurally minimized communities’ ability to propagate traditional seeds, practice low intensive farming or animal shepherding practices, or survive in the natural landscapes of their homes. The impact has caused forced migrations and divested people of their communities and nature-based livelihoods, which upend communities from their homes and cultural identities.
The authors problematize the seemingly “inescapable” dilemma and speak to the ways their own traditions offer viable solutions to the ruptures at play.
Electrify
Full title: Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for our Clean Energy Future
By Saul Griffith (2022)
My take: I look forward to reading this book, which highlights a key element of the energy transition: electrification.
The Climate Book
Essays edited by Greta Thunberg (2022)
My take: This book aims at giving an overview of the science and the political and ethical concerns driving climate action through the lens of prominent writers and thinkers on climate like Naomi Klein.
A strategic nature
Full title: A Strategic Nature: Public Relations and the Politics of American Environmentalism
By Maria I. Espinoza and Melissa Aronczyk (2021)
My take: This was a hugely influential book for me. It gives a nuanced view of how public awareness about environment and its value is shaped by industry and its think tanks.
How to Avoid A Climate Disaster
Full title: How to Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions we Have and the Breakthroughs we Need
By Bill Gates (2021)
My take: With all due respect to Bill Gates, this book is less about directly addressing climate change than about sparking public interest in the investments Bill Gates considers most profitable for the future. It is basically a PR tool for Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which Bill Gates founded in 2015. I decided to add it to my library, to understand the full spectrum of contemporary climate discourse.
Our Biggest Experiment
Full title: Our Biggest Experiment: An Epic History of the Climate Crisis
By Alice Bell (2021)
My take: I have a soft spot for taking the long view and adding historical perspective to any contemporary theme, so I was excited to add this book to my library.
Saving Us
Full title: Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World
By Dr. Katherine Hayhoe (2021)
My take: Dr. Katherine Hayhoe is a prominent climate communicator who tirelessly advocates for science-based, relevant climate talking points. I have yet to read her book, but I have completed the Climate Reporting Masterclass video series and certificate, which she contributed to.
Speed and Scale
Full title: Speed and Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
By John Doerr (2021)
My take: A much-praised book I have yet to read. Like Project Drawdown, it emphasizes the importance of how narrow a window of time we have to scale up cleaner systems to align with a 1.5 degree C pathway.
The New Climate War
Full title: The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
By Michael E. Mann (2021)
My take: Climate scientist Michael Mann spells out some of the pervasive strategies by fossil fuel companies to use greenwashing, doubt-mongering and delay to stall climate action. One of the most powerful passages of this book showed how fossil fuel funded media organizations tried to single him out and engage him in direct confrontations, as a means of intimidation. I agree with his critiques of fossil fuel PR and media strategies, and I find his personal experience as a victim of targeted bullying chilling. Yet, I found his position within the climate movement divisive, considering he denounces the influence of other popular anti-capitalist climate activists like Naomi Klein and the climate justice movement at large. Michael Mann instead promotes carbon pricing and working within existing systems as his preferred strategies for pursuing climate action. For me, the “dividing line” he draws in the sand produces horrible optics, placing his own (white, male, privileged) perspectives above those of the groups of people most impacted by climate change. Meanwhile, his promoted “solution” of carbon pricing, while potentially effective, has so far proven limited in its ability to mobilize popular support.
All We Can Save
Full title: All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
Essays and poetry edited by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson (2020)
My take: A collection of essays and poetry adding a cultural sense of depth to the climate crisis. The key takeaway is a Venn diagram inspiring people to get involved in addressing climate crisis using the skills they already have. One noteworthy essay included in this book also appears elsewhere: Rhianna Gunn-Wright’s description of drafting the influential Green New Deal policy, which raised the importance of a “just climate transition.” I found the entries uneven and lacking in a common theme, though, in its attempt to engage a wide audience.
The Ministry for the Future
By Kim Stanley Robinson (2020, fiction)
My take: While I found the style of the writing somewhat lacking, the novel envisions a future where fighting climate change will mobilize cryptocurrency carbon markets, geo-engineering and secretive missions to bypass slow democratic institutions and operationalize financial institutions to fight climate change. The novel’s protagonist are an odd collection of scientists, economists and other white collar professionals who become vigilantes who form a mission to hijack global systems to stop climate change. Even if some of the ideas already feel outdated (the climate space evolves fast), this book brings the energy of a spy novel to the often overwrought and dull subject of climate change.
Winning the Green New Deal
Full title: Winning the Green New Deal: Why We Must, How We Can
Essays edited by Varshini Prakash (2020)
My take: A series of essays that show how the emergence of the youth-led Sunrise movement coincided with the Green New Deal. This policy emphasizes a just transition by addressing environmental injustice, highlighting the need for an urgent yet equitable approach to transitioning the economy and energy system off fossil fuels while creating decent jobs. While the Green New Deal resolution did not win enough votes to pass when Congressional officers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey introduced it in 2019, it heavily influenced some of Biden’s climate policies such as the Climate40 and the IRA spending bill.
as long as grass grows
Full title: As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
By Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)
My take: An important book linking current indigenous-led climate and environmental justice protests to a longer-standing tradition of de-colonial resistance. This book is important for understanding how contemporary harm to the environment and ecosystems has roots in colonization, while giving insight into world views that prioritize place-based knowledge and respect for the environment.
Bad Environmentalism
Full title: Bad Environmentalism: Irony and Irreverence in the Ecological Age
By Nicole Seymour (2018)
My take: As a literature major who indulged in Bakhtin’s theories about the Carnivalesque, I absolutely adored this cultural commentary on ways environmentalists are expanding the range of expressions we have about various environmental crises to include bawdy humor, inappropriate behavior and more. By breaking down the overly awe-inspired and picturesque approach to environmental aesthetics that have dominated cultural production since Romanticism, this book is a breath of fresh air and it is full of new possibilities for environmentalist cultural output to become more diverse, engaging and approachable.
The Overstory
By Richard Powers (2018, fiction)
My take: Richard Powers weaves a narrative about activist action on behalf of the rights of nature. In this case, the characters in the novel for a wide variety of different reasons form a loose collective and defend old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest from clear cutting. The characters all have different sources of interest in the natural world and ecosystems stemming from their diverse backstories. However, they all feel compelled to challenge the “status quo” of industrial interests or capitalist accumulation in favor of the appreciation of a wider spectrum of forces in nature: studying the role of decomposition and decay, creating a seed vault, balancing growth with shared resources, or following an intuitive drive to remain near the forests and specific old growth trees.
While the novel humanizes “eco-radicals” for lack of a better word, it also continues to portray them as eccentric individuals who are exceptional in one way or another for contradicting social “norms” by rejecting society on behalf of nature. I think this is perhaps a modern take on the “return to nature” theme that suggests nature is somehow mystical, transcendent and sublime, which was favored among romantics of the nineteenth century. It depends heavily on the inscribed binaries throughout Western literature: rational vs irrational thought, savage vs civilized people, etc. Rather than complicate these themes, Powers simply plays into them. I wanted something more nuanced from the book.
Doughnut Economics
Full title: Doughnut Economics: 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist
By Kate Raworth (2017)
My take: Economist Kate Raworth synthesizes a number of key influential ideas in the sustainability movement such as the UN SDGs emphasis on social requirements for a good life and the Stockholm Resilience Center’s work on planetary boundaries. In a timely critique of unlimited growth without merely responding in opposition with “degrowth," her model emphasizes the need for hitting a sweet spot where we can meet people’s needs without depleting planetary reserves of vital resources or overburdening planetary systems.
Drawdown
Full title: Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Edited by Paul Hawken (2017)
My take: While this is more of an index of ideas, I read every entry on the different approaches to drawing down carbon emissions in line with a carbon budget. This book influenced me heavily with its emphasis on prioritizing the most impactful and affordable measures first and keeping a science-based approach to climate solutions. It helped me be more critical of the nuclear and carbon capture enthusiasts. As an organization, Project Drawdown continues to play a key role in emphasizing priorities in terms of speed to implementation, low cost and emissions reduction impact for technological solutions, while raising awareness of social climate solutions such as gender equality that don’t get as much attention from investors.
Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life
By E. O. Wilson
My take: An influential idea that probably didn’t need a full-length book to describe. While not quite half earth, global leaders committed to conserving 30% of land and oceans by 2030 at the COP15 UN Convention on Biological Diversity. One important consideration is to enable indigenous habitation and cultural use of conserved lands. Traditionally, land conservation coincided with total absence of human presence, meaning indigenous people could not practice traditional cultural activities in conservation areas.
The Sixth Extinction
Full title: The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
By Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
My take: A fantastic overview of the rapid pace of species decline and biodiversity loss and its causes today with a long-view of natural history.
This Changes Everything
Full title: This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate
By Naomi Klein (2014)
My take: As someone particularly fond of Canadian journalist Naomi Klein’s investigative reporting in “Shock Doctrine,” I enjoyed this newer book on climate change linking some of her earlier critiques of neoliberalism to climate change. Of course, she published another related book just a few years later in 2019 titled “On Fire: The Case for a Green New Deal,” which I have not read. Key moments include Naomi Klein’s behind-the-scenes attendance of a Heritage Foundation meeting to brainstorm climate denial talking points and her moving reflections on indigenous water defenders’ “blockadia” activism. She also debunks the viability of geo-engineering strategies for addressing climate change. She ends the book with a more personal passage about bringing a child into the world while contemplating the increasing risk for the future in terms of climate change.
Braiding Sweetgrass
By Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013)
My take: One of my favorite environmental books, this book bridges Western conceptions of ecology and indigenous knowledge through the lens of a scientist who explores her native roots. The thoughtful tone and engaging story-telling of this book make it a fast and fulfilling read.
Biopiracy
Full title: Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
By Vandana Shiva (2011)
My take: This book introduced me to the ethical and environmental issues around patenting seeds. I found it incredibly eye-opening and helpful for understanding the value of seed biodiversity and extractive perspectives of biotech and industrial agriculture companies.
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story
By Susan Freinkel (2011)
My take: An interesting history of how plastic became a pervasive fixture within contemporary culture in a relatively short period of time. The book also covers the paradoxes of plastic as a material used for “disposable” applications, while remaining intact as solid waste for hundreds to thousands of years. She gives an overview of the environmental challenges and health risks associated with plastic as well.
Merchants of Doubt
Full title: Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming
By Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (2010)
My take: A book that investigates the common media strategies used by tobacco companies and fossil fuel companies to exploit the doubt inherent to the scientific research process. The book also exposes issues raised by the “Exxon Knew” campaign, such as oil and gas companies’ long-standing awareness of the risks of climate change, and their concerted efforts to deny the scientific predictions they used to inform their business strategy. In essence, they treated the factual scientific basis of climate change was treated as one side of a debate for years until enough definitive proof of the science mounted. The book links these PR and advertising strategies to the same group of people working for both industries.
Unbowed: A Memoir
By Wangari Maathai (2006)
My take: An inspiring book about political action and persistence by the woman who led the African Green Belt movement, a vast tree-planting initiative to reverse drought and renew degraded agricultural lands in the Sahel region of Africa.
Cradle to Cradle
Full title: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002)
My take: I recall reading this as an undergrad. It formed the basis for my understanding of how businesses could completely revise the way they produce goods. It helped me understand the full importance of a value chain in creating environmental impacts. By now, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a more common sustainability practice, but when I read this book, it was cutting edge idea that impacted my thinking significantly.
Savages
by Joe Kane (1995)
My take: An important book about the human rights abuses and environmental devastation caused by Chevron in the Ecuadorian Rainforest, which I read in high school. These issues were later spotlighted by the popular Drilled podcast. The ongoing saga that Joe Kane originally reported on continues to this day.
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E. Butler (1993, fiction)
My take: Written as a futuristic reimagining of the Great Migration, when freed slaves moved north, this book is considered an early “climate fiction” book, which addresses how resource scarcity can drive social inequality and extremism. It is a fascinating read with important insights into both resilience and injustice in a dystopian narrative. It is the first book in a two-book series which includes “Parable of the Talents.”
The End of Nature
By Bill McKibben (1989)
My take: Bill McKibben is the founder of 350.org, an influential climate activism organization that campaigned to encourage fossil fuel divestment with his “keep it in the ground” campaign. I have yet to read this important book, which I bought several years ago.
Staying Alive
Full title: Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development
By Vandana Shiva (1988)
My take: A powerful perspective on the importance of nature to rural women in developing nations and the risk of their disenfranchisement through the lens of Western development in India.
Nature’s Economy
By Donald Worster (1977)
My take: A compelling history of how the scientific conception of ecology and ecosystems emerged. The book provides a helpful background about how scientific explanations for interactions among species communities and climate developed over time and emerged from the field of “natural history,” in contrast with applied science systems that emphasized a mechanistic view of the world.
Silent Spring
By Rachel Carson (1962)
My take: A must-read book on the risks presented by chemicals used in pesticides and other applications were (and still are) under-researched and dangerous for natural systems. The book is credited with sparking the modern environmental movement.