100 books like Eaarth

As a former vice president of the United States, Gore was the best-known American political figure to make climate change a priority personal and professional issue as early as the 1980s, literally forcing it into the United States and world political discourse, meanwhile using mass politics as a springboard to publicize the importance of the issue in the present world and for many generations to come.

As with many people who study the subject, Gore made combating climate change a large part of his life’s work, as he went on a lecture circuit with a ladder and magic marker to show how quickly the concentration of carbon dioxide had risen during the past few centuries.

Hansen is probably the grandfather of warnings about climate change in our time.

Former director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Hansen and colleagues sounded the first widely circulated alarm regarding climate change and its potential effects in Science during 1980. This eloquent book is both an explanation of the science and a call to arms that concentrates on what we must do to preserve a livable Earth for our children and grandchildren.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called Hansen “The Paul Revere” of global warming….who has braved criticism and censure.” He has a rare combination of scientific expertise and commitment to humanity’s future necessary to face a new world of climate peril. Ask him about how Venus got an atmosphere of 900 degrees F, and what it might mean for the future Earth.

Archer, a computational ocean chemist at the University of Chicago, is best-known for his work on the carbon cycle and its interaction with global climate, past, present, and future.

While Archer’s credentials may have some readers thinking of a starchy academic paper, Archer’s book is quite accessible, and a very good start to understanding the science of climate change. Howard Falcon Lang of the University of Bristol calls it ”a tour de force of elegant exposition on one of the most important issues of our time.”

It is not only accessible, but also lucid and sometimes entertaining. 

This book dissects the arguments of global-warming opponents through the scientific lens of Jim Hansen, who at the time it was published, directed the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).

Hansen and Bowen finds the climate deniers’ opinions dangerous for their inaccuracies and ignorance of how the geophysical world works. For interpreting geophysical reality to those who didn’t want to hear it (or stood to lose money if such thinking became part of policy), Hansen became a target to some, and a hero to others.

It’s not a common event to see a renowned scientist carried away from a protest in handcuffs. Hansen got used to it. 

Scranton is polarizing because he wallows in doom and flirts with an unpleasant form of nihilism. But even so, he provides an honest, sometimes searing introduction to the big troubles we are facing today—and he does so at the right level of analysis, our entire civilization. It is also very short and punchy. If, however, readers prefer less doom and more hope, then read instead Naomi Klein’s smart, serviceable collection of short essays, On Fire.

I opt for this over some other options because of its frightening clarity on the consequences of unabated human-generated greenhouse gas emissions. With business as usual, we are speeding towards a 4-degree Celsius temperature increase by 2100, about one lifetime away. This increase would make large parts of the planet uninhabitable due to rising seas, extreme heat, and more. Already, climate change is taking its toll.

Wallace Wells explores a long list of devastating effects, including heat death, hunger, drowning, unbreathable air, wildfires, disasters that are no longer natural, like outsize tornados and hurricanes, lack of fresh water, dying oceans from acidification, plagues of insects and diseases, economic collapse, climate conflict, and the multiplier effect of these things acting together.

You must antidote this book with books 1 and 2. It is too depressing to read alone. 

This middle-grade satire was one of my favorite reads of 2021! In the not-too-distant future, seventh-grader Ahab and his friends discover what just might be the last living bullfrog in the United States. Hoping to save the species, they decide not to give Alph the frog to authorities. Instead, the crew takes off on a not-quite legal bike trip to find a mate for Alph. In the process, author Madelyn Rosenberg shows us the world as it might be, if we don’t make an effort to save the climate. A bumbling environmental police force and indoor theme park/recreation center had me giggling, even as I got the message of this brilliant climate fiction novel.

I was drawn to this powerful, contemporary, Marxian analysis, which fits so well with After Capitalism. It opens with a section on “Capitalism and Unsustainable Development,” followed by “Ecological Paradoxes,” then “Dialectical Ecology,” (which includes evidence of Marx’s own concern with what we now call “ecology”). It concludes with “Ways Out.” It’s a long read, but well worth the effort.

This book shifted the way I think about climate change and made me appreciate a renewed focus on the biodiversity crisis, which is just as urgent.

Eisenstein presents alternative ways of framing and thinking about these issues and always leaves you with something to think about. One small caveat is that there is some science skepticism in here and some less-than-stellar ideas—you’ll just have to use your own judgments.

Eisenstein’s books are always a mixed bag, but I really felt like most of this one resonated with me and challenged me in all the right ways.

The dramatic growth in human populations and the extraordinary increase in human capacities to affect the environment has led to a transformation of the setting in which issues of environmental governance arise.

The result is the onset of a new era commonly described as the Anthropocene and the rise of the idea of Earth system governance. The biophysical conditions that control the Earth’s climate system or the diversity of life on the planet play critical roles as determinants of human well-being.

But human actions also are now critical forces in determining the character of the climate system and the future of biological diversity on the planet. There is still a need for regimes dealing with specific environmental concerns, such as transboundary air pollution, persistent organic pollutants, or the spread of plastic debris.

At the same time, there is a critical need to focus on arrangements designed to sustain key planetary… show more.