100 books like Apocalypse Never

Bill Gates has managed the impossible task of writing a detailed book on the technological fixes we need across the board to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, but doing so in plain language that is appropriate for the widest of audiences.

This is key because the green transition will affect everybody’s life and cannot be left in the hands of experts and technocrats. Perhaps my only grievance towards the book is that at times it feels like a long laundry list of green desiderata, without taking time to think about the social, economic, and political implications of the transformation.

Nonetheless, it remains a go-to reference for anybody working in the decarbonization space. 

When I was 8 years old, I plastered our house with anti-smoking stickers. It greatly annoyed my parents—but they quit smoking. Alas, a couple other close relatives did not, and both ended up dying from smoking-related diseases.

Part of the reason they did not quit was surely the decades-long campaign by tobacco companies to sow doubts about the dangers of smoking.

This book illuminates the strategies that the tobacco companies used to get a few scientists to spread these doubts, and I was amazed to see how the exact same strategies—and in some cases the very same scientists—have been used to sow doubt about climate change. Reading this book makes clear that the disinformation campaign is organized and dangerous.

I’ve been working in the solar and battery industry for over 15 years and I can say firsthand that it is totally feasible to electrify everything in your home and live comfortably. Griffith recommends that you should never buy a new fossil fuel appliance ever again. Switching to an electric vehicle, all-electric kitchen appliances, and heat pumps primes us to have a carbon-free home in the future, even if our electrical usage currently relies on fossil fuels. Appliances with a life of 10 to 30 years will eventually be powered by renewables as they get installed on the grid.

Although this transition won't be easy. Appliance manufacturers need some time to improve the reliability of these new electric appliances. Imagine the frustration after installing an expensive, new heat pump water heater and it breaks after two weeks! In addition, some industries will have a very hard time going fully electric,… show more.

Vincent is a social anthropologist who spent a number of years in Finland completing a truly fascinating piece of fieldwork: he studied the people involved in planning the spent nuclear waste depository at Onkala.

This is a huge undertaking and responsibility, requiring its architects to project their minds tens of thousands of years into the future. Through his fieldwork, Vincent drew out various broader lessons for how to think longer-term.

What’s striking about Onkala is that the people involved in the planning are simply normal Finnish people tasked with an extraordinary job. To me that shows that deep time can be accessible to everyone, and indeed this is a theme that Vincent explores himself: seeking out long-term time in everyday experience can be cathartic, he argues.

Rolf Halden makes reading about the environment fun. He is a microbiologist working at the Arizona State University’s Center for BioDesign. He is working to invite people to pay attention to the lifestream of the chemicals and other substances humans invent and then dispose of without a thought. For example, at the water treatment plant, he discovered piles of contact lenses because people just throw them in the toilet. Just throw them in the garbage can people. Plastic is still bad news on land but it’s even worse in our waterways.

Halden himself didn’t think of the results of his own contact-lens throwing away until he visited the treatment plant. By recognizing that humans will be humans, he advocates for us trying not to make stuff or use stuff that can’t be easily dissolved in the environment because it’s nearly impossible to know where all this human-made stuff goes or… show more.

Earth Emotions is a landmark guide to new concepts and vocabulary to represent the complex new ‘eco-emotions’, a spectrum of positive and negative emotional responses caused by recent environmental and life changes. From a mental health perspective to social sustainability, this book is valuable for many people currently processing their eco-emotions. One lesson from my research journey is that emotion and shared empathy as forms of sustainability knowledge are underestimated in favor of more rational approaches, when affect and cognition are intrinsically linked. This book advances our understanding of holistic emotions as sustainable information. Having conducted research into knowledge ecosystems, I can relate to the proposed shift from the Human Age (anthropocene) of isolation and despair to a Symbiotic Age (symbiocene) defined by positive mutually beneficial relationships between different groups.

A great anthropological read about the past 150 years of death care in this country. She discusses the ingrained traditions held so closely by the public over decades of death. There are so many destructive practices we cling to when someone dies. Suzanne unpacks the sack of societal behaviors that have been none-too-friendly on our precious environment. Our customary American demise practices, which include the procedure of embalming, hardwood and metal caskets, and concrete burial vaults and grave liners, only strengthen this saga.

In a clear, but profound way, Laura Alary’s picture book, Here, helps children to see the scope of their existence.

She starts with something familiar, “This is my home. I live here. But I am not the first.” Then she takes the reader back in time and space to show some good things (gardens) and some bad things (a garbage dump) on Earth. Charming illustrations by Cathrin Peterslund pair well with the text.

While it doesn’t specifically mention God, it calls on the responsibility of each person to take care of “This Dot We Call Home.”

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.

I placed at least 30 post-it notes in this book as every page includes practical and compassionate advice for planning an affordable and sustainable green burial. This book’s pragmatic step-by-step suggestions were especially useful as I took my one-year journey to revise my own final wishes with climate and community in mind. The author operates the first green funeral home in the Portland, Oregon area, and she draws on her experiences to help you avoid exorbitant funeral expenses while helping the Earth and your community.