66 books like Nature's Best Hope

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. 

If I’m being completely honest, I bought this book because of my very large professional crush on both of the editors. I work in climate science, so I have signed up to have my heart destroyed over and over again. I read about all the species that are dying and threatened, the ecosystems collapsing, the fishermen fighting for their livelihoods, and the coastal communities slammed by storms.

This book covered all these topics, but if you’re going to learn about this, (as we all should), we also have to be given the reasons to keep at it. We have to not lose the will to fight or the ability to see beautiful, generative, and imaginative solutions and outcomes. This book helps with that, too. 

I worry that people don’t hear enough about solutions to the climate crisis, but, thankfully, Paul Hawken and his collaborators lay many of them out in this book.

They focus not on the flashy technologies that often grab headlines—and not just on the reduction of fossil fuels—but on the power of a healthy, living Earth to heal itself. Of course, we need to be partners in this healing, and Hawken illuminates the people, organizations, and approaches that are doing just that.

At a time when businesses are targeting net zero carbon emissions, Net Positive is a rallying cry for leaders to embrace a wider definition of sustainability.

As Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever, who I’ve had the privilege of interviewing, and Andrew Winston explain net positive companies improve the lives of everyone they touch, increasing long-term shareholder returns in the process; take ownership of social and environmental impacts their business models create, viewing these as opportunities to innovate; and partner with competitors, civil society and governments to drive transformative change. 

Although some concepts presented in this book were not new to me, the authors’ examples add meaningful perspective. Net Positive affirmed my belief in purpose-led organizations and the power of business to do more.

It’s hard to ignore the personal testimony of Sir David Attenborough, based on 70 years of exploring and documenting the natural world. Like Attenborough’s films, this is a masterpiece in storytelling and making science and nature accessible. This has been his enduring legacy. But this book is different. Here, he combines a severe warning about the breakdown in the web of life with hopeful solutions aimed at rewilding the land and oceans. His message is clear: we can turn the precipitous decline of life on earth due to human impacts; but we need to act fast and at scale. I especially like how he distills the essence in a quote that says: “in this world, a species can only thrive when everything else around it thrives too.”

As someone who hoarded toilet paper weeks before the 2020 shortage, I relate to the frustration of watching history repeat itself (or at least rhyme with itself) because people are often too distracted to focus on planning for looming crises.

Bina Venkataraman gets to the “why” of this often-fatal flaw as she explores the nature of human decision-making. This book provides tangible narratives as a springboard to answer these questions: How can we use wisdom from our ancestors to better inform our personal, professional, and policy decisions? How can we incentivize (or glitter bomb) long-term planning? And how can we see ourselves as future ancestors in order to be better stewards of the planet?

A perfect selection for corporate, government, and non-profit retreats and professional development conferences!  

I chose Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change because I live in Connecticut and my own family and friend group have been gravely impacted by tick-borne infections. In fact, the subplot of my novel focuses on the frustrating story of a family seeking answers to this “mystery” illness.

We are at a moment where climate change is accelerating new and worsening pathogenic diseases and public health isn’t catching up fast enough. Mary Beth Pfeiffer provides a well-researched glimpse into the politics and pain of tick-borne infections in a climate-changing world.

I recommend this book as a community conversation starter because, more and more, citizens are coming together to share medical resources and put pressure on the public health community to act. 

Youth climate activist Zahra Biabani has tapped into something many climate activists have yet to learn. Doom doesn’t work. It causes people to retreat into their vices (or under their covers) and, in many cases, it paralyzes entire fledgling movements.

My own work at the community level reflects what Biabani has shared in her well-organized book of carefully-curated hope bombs – hopeful stories inspire positive bursts of brain chemicals, which motivate action. She provides clear examples of climate-centered successes from around the world, and ends with “what you can do.”

This would be a fantastic discussion book for climate clubs of all ages, municipal or non-profit environmental groups, and larger climate-centered conferences.

A conservation classic, Against Extinction is a comprehensive and absorbing story of conservation over the last hundred years. Bill Adams explores the history, context, and legacy of conservation. Often quoted as the ‘UK voice of conservation’ Bill Adams, Professor of Conservation and Development in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, is an authoritative writer on this critical global tale. 

Meeting Professor Adams in discussion for my own research has been both insightful and deeply interesting. His reflections on this evolving movement are poignant and for me, so helpful in framing and distilling the words of my picture book conservation stories.

Indigenous communities and land dispossession are the subjects of Crimes Against Nature, although Jacoby also brings white transgressors of federal policy into his book about the dark history of the American conservation movement. The rural communities he describes engaged in survival practices that quickly became defined and punished as crimes: hunting, fishing, tree-cutting, and foraging. Jacoby includes eastern parks in his assessment, writing about the Adirondacks before turning to Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. At the heart of this beautifully written book is the tension between what constitutes private and public space in American history, and how rural white and Indigenous Americans have often lived in the borderlands between them.