Here are 100 books that Drawdown fans have personally recommended if you like
Drawdown.
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Many believe the planet's energy needs can be provided carbon-free, with solar, wind, and water carrying the load. Coal, oil, and natural gas use will fade away. It’s an appealing vision. But the numbers don’t back it up for seven billion people, many looking in on the comfortable lifestyles of the wealthy countries and thinking: “What about us?”. Humanity needs a mix of energy sources, and nuclear energy is a carbon-free power source that can deliver at scale. I’m a nuclear physicist by training, recently retired from North Carolina State University, with interests in cosmology, energy research and policy, science education, and neutron and neutrino physics.
Putting in the numbers is what Gates does in his book. Climate change is real, no question. How to address it is where the controversy comes in. I really like that from the outset, Gates proposes five questions to consider whenever climate change is discussed: what fraction of the annual carbon dioxide emission are you removing? What’s your plan for cement? How much electrical power will be needed, what’s the cost, and how much space will it take up?
But he’s optimistic that zero emissions can be reached. He argues there are many options to explore, including nuclear, and says, contrary to much of the news reporting, don’t focus on 2030; focus instead on 2050 to give the best solutions time to emerge.
In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical - and accessible - plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide toward certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions…
I‘m a pediatrician in Reno, the fastest-warming city in the US. I also have a background in environmental science. I’ve seen the impacts of climate change on children first-hand, especially the impact of worsening wildfire smoke from “mega-fires” in California. It is impossible for me to look at babies and children suffering the impacts of worsening smoke, smog, allergies, heat, natural disasters, and infectious diseases and not see that the most powerful industry in history has unloaded the cost of their business onto the least powerful. I am passionate about this topic because I see climate change as a crime against children, who are especially vulnerable to its effects.
I love this book because of its moral clarity and historical detail. It’s an essential book for anyone trying to understand the politics that have paralyzed action for so long.
Dr. Mann describes how, for decades, the fossil fuel industry has waged war on the planet and humanity (not to mention climate scientists) through propaganda, lobbying, and purchasing politicians, even though they’ve known for 50 years what they were doing.
It changed how I interpret many things I see on social media; I feel better equipped to recognize bots from the industry and petrostates.
Shortlisted for the FT/McKinsey Business Book of the Year award
A renowned climate scientist shows how fossil fuel companies have waged a thirty-year campaign to deflect blame and responsibility and delay action on climate change, and offers a battle plan for how we can save the planet.
Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told can slow climate change. But the inordinate emphasis on individual behavior is the result of a marketing campaign that has succeeded in placing the responsibility for fixing climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals.
Brian Fagan is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous books about archaeology, the past, and climate change for general audiences. I was asked to write my first climate change book (on El Niños) and was astounded to find that few archaeologists or historians focused on the subject, whether ancient or modern. Now that’s all changed, thanks to the revolution in paleoclimatology. I’m convinced that the past has much to tell us about climate change in the future. Apart from that, the subject is fascinating and vital.
The Third Horseman combines a discussion of climate change with a major disaster, the great famine of the fourteenth century. Vividly written and fast-paced, this well-written book makes history enjoyable. The author wears his research lightly, which makes for a rattling good story. Not a global book, but it will make you think.
The incredible true story of how a cycle of rain, cold, disease, and warfare created the worst famine in European history—years before the Black Death, from the author of Justinian's Flea and the forthcoming Miracle Cure
In May 1315, it started to rain. For the seven disastrous years that followed, Europeans would be visited by a series of curses unseen since the third book of Exodus: floods, ice, failures of crops and cattle, and epidemics not just of disease, but of pike, sword, and spear. All told, six million lives—one-eighth of Europe’s total population—would be lost.
Brian Fagan is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of numerous books about archaeology, the past, and climate change for general audiences. I was asked to write my first climate change book (on El Niños) and was astounded to find that few archaeologists or historians focused on the subject, whether ancient or modern. Now that’s all changed, thanks to the revolution in paleoclimatology. I’m convinced that the past has much to tell us about climate change in the future. Apart from that, the subject is fascinating and vital.
Written by a first-rate historian of wide learning, this is one of those rare books that causes one to rethink your assumptions about history. White brings climate change to the forefront in a book that ranges widely over the European settlement of America and looks at it from a climatic perspective. This is technically an academic book but is so nicely written that you’ll be glued to the page.
When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia, and its effects were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, and winters when even the Rio Grande froze. This period of climate change has come to be known as the Little Ice Age, and it played a decisive role in Europe's encounter with the lands and peoples of North America. In A Cold Welcome, Sam White tells the story of this crucial period in world history, from Europe's earliest expeditions in an…
All my life, I’ve been aware that there are many layers to reality, many of which are human fabrications. Some are physical, like roads. Some are social, like healthcare. But the ones that control our lives the most, and that determine our global outcomes (poverty, war and ecological degradation for example), are ideological. The most powerful of these is our economic system. If we are to address the meta-crisis, I feel passionately that we need to be able to question and reimagine the economy. All the books I’ve chosen have been really important in helping me to think differently about things we usually take for granted.
I love this book because of how beautiful and hopeful it is. The author pulls together amazing stories from her life to gradually weave an understanding of the meta-crisis we find ourselves in. I was captivated by the way she contrasts her family’s indigenous American culture with our modern approaches to both science and the economy.
I love Robin’s prose, which is exquisitely written. But perhaps what I value the most is the fact that she writes with optimism, giving me the courage to get up every day and think about how to put her wisdom into practice.
Called the work of "a mesmerizing storyteller with deep compassion and memorable prose" (Publishers Weekly) and the book that, "anyone interested in natural history, botany, protecting nature, or Native American culture will love," by Library Journal, Braiding Sweetgrass is poised to be a classic of nature writing. As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer asks questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces indigenous teachings that consider plants and animals to be our oldest teachers. Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take "us on a journey that is…
Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the culture and stories of my place, the Mississippi Delta. I began my education in the beauty shop, where my mother “fixed” hair six days a week. I continued my education in the pool hall when I was 13 or 14, listening to the braggarts and fools who pontificated about every subject under the sun. I escaped to Memphis in the late 60s and became a hippie, drinking in the experience of Memphis’ electric streets. These experiences informed my thinking and helped me become a writer and filmmaker.
This is a comprehensive history of the Mississippi River in general and the Flood of 1927 in particular. Beautifully written and exhaustively researched, it was incredibly insightful and full of context, especially about the relations between the ruling-class planters and their African American workers. The influx of Italian, Lebanese, and Chinese immigrants is detailed and explains much of the Delta's cultural diversity.
The book also tells the story of the government’s response to the devastating flood, ultimately propelling Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to the presidency in 1928.
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.
An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of almost one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of African Americans north, and transformed American society and politics forever.
The flood brought with it a human storm: white and black collided, honor…
I’ve been obsessed with making the future a better place since I was 8 years old and spent my evenings hanging out in a local community center. I realized that things got better when people who cared showed up for each other. I am now a philanthropic futurist and have spent my career dedicated to helping visionary leaders build a more beautiful and equitable future. All of the books on this list have inspired me, and I hope they inspire you, too. If we all do our small part, we can ensure we have a Star Trek future and not a Hunger Games future.
I don’t usually read science fiction, but this book completely changed my perspective. It was an eye-opening experience, vividly illustrating what the climate crisis could look like if we don’t take significant action now. I was hooked by how realistic the scenarios felt, even though the story is fiction.
I found myself thinking deeply about the potential consequences of inaction and how urgent it is to address the climate crisis. The fictional eyewitness accounts made it even more impactful, giving me a sense of immediacy and personal connection to the issue. I didn’t expect a science fiction novel to be so relevant to our current world, but this one is a must-read for everyone.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…
Hans Ohanian is a physicist who has taught at several universities before retiring to engage in full-time research, writing, and acting as reviewer for several scientific journals. In one of his first books he included two chapters on “Energy, entropy, and environment” and “Nuclear energy.” This gave him valuable expertise for reviewing the five great books he recommends here.
The first edition of this charming book was published in 2011 under the title How Bad are Bananas? For Mike Berners-Lee, this question is about the carbon footprint of bananas, but for me, it evokes the memory of some awful days I once spent on a riverboat on the Amazon with nothing to eat but bananas.
The book is a genuine delight, full of interesting carbon footprints arranged from small to large. Here are a few samples: short e-mail is 0.0004 kg CO2, Google search is 0.0006, grocery paper bag is 0.012, apple is 0.032, banana is 0.110, ice cream is 0.500, driving a midsize car 1 mile is 0.630, energy of 1 kW-hr taken from US electric grid is 0.650… The largest human carbon footprint listed is 56 trillion for all worldwide activity in a year.
The Carbon Footprint of Everything breaks items down by the amount of carbon they produce, creating a calorie guide for the carbon-conscious. With engaging writing, leading carbon expert Mike Berners-Lee shares new carbon calculations based on recent research. He considers the impact of the pandemic on the carbon battle—especially the embattled global supply chain—and adds items we didn’t consider a decade ago, like bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
Supported by solid research, cross-referenced with other expert sources, illustrated with easy-to-follow charts and graphs, and written with Berners-Lee’s trademark sense of humor, The Carbon Footprint of Everything should be on everyone’s bookshelf.
I was never going to hack it as a scientist. So I became a journalist instead. After all, bothcareers stem from a sense of wonder about the world and asking questions, looking for answers, and accepting that there might not be any. In 2018, I started my narrative podcast Wild Thing,whichlet me explore some of our weirder collective fascinations (like aliens) using science, history,psychology, and humor. I’d never aimed the podcast at kids, but I realized that all those bigopen-ended questions that I had about everything were the same kinds of questions that kidshad - which really set me up to write the Wild Thing book series.
That discovery would shake ourworld, change our outlook on the universe, and answer the question of whether we’realone.
Sarah Stewart Johnson, a planetary scientist, has spent her life thinking about thispossibility and delves into both her and our obsession with the Red Planet in this beautifully written book. Part memoir, part historical account, and part scientific exploration, thisbook made me want to ditch a career in journalism and take up astrobiology. You’ll never look atMars the same way again.
As a new wave of interplanetary exploration unfolds, a talented young planetary scientist charts our centuries-old obsession with Mars.
'Beautifully written, emotive - a love letter to a planet' DERMOT O'LEARY, BBC Radio 2
Mars - bewilderingly empty, coated in red dust - is an unlikely place to pin our hopes of finding life elsewhere. And yet, right now multiple spacecraft are circling, sweeping over Terra Sabaea, Syrtis Major, the dunes of Elysium and Mare Sirenum - on the brink, perhaps, of a discovery that would inspire humankind as much as any in our history.
Youth play such a significant role in the history of our struggles for justice–and yet most teenagers I meet in the classroom have limited access to these important stories. These stories are more relevant than ever as we see current youth-led activism for #BlackLivesMatter and Youth4Climate Marches. When I talk to youth about historical youth-led protests, their eyes light up–they make these connections lightning fast and say–why aren’t we being taught about things like this more in school?
This book, an anthology from women on the frontline of addressing Climate Change, is a must-read for our teams, including essays from a number of young women leading the charge, including Xiye Bastida Patrick and Alexandria Villaseñor. The book is remarkable in how clear-sighted each writer/storyteller is and how each essay rings with hope.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
“A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?”—The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that is more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration. While it’s clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they…
