From my list on deepening your understanding of climate change, what it means, and what to do about it, and give you hope.
Why am I passionate about this?
I got energized about the environment, climate, and energy as a physics undergrad during the first energy crisis. Since then, I’ve worked in activist groups (Anti-nuclear, the wrong side: Now I fight climate change as penance for the sins of my youth), held policy positions in the governments of the United States and Canada, worked in two international organizations, and taught energy, climate, and environmental policy at Harvard, Michigan, and now UCLA. There’s so much written on climate change that it’s a rare pleasure to find something that cuts through the noise and says something original or important. So I’m delighted to recommend these, which include a couple of overlooked gems.
Edward's book list on deepening your understanding of climate change, what it means, and what to do about it, and give you hope
Why did Edward love this book?
I’ve long been a fan of Robinson’s fiction. This recent book tells the story of how humanity navigates the climate crisis, starting a few years from now and going maybe 30 years into the future, centered on the people leading the new (fictitious) UN organization of the title.
Robinson pulls all the strands together plausibly – increasingly severe impacts, everyone thrashing around trying responses, and conflict. He doesn’t shy away from violence, errors, tragic choices, or the vast scale of disruption and suffering climate change holds in store. Yet I find it a strangely optimistic book. The worst doesn’t happen. People and nations eventually pull together, more or less. Sustained intense efforts stop further climate change (collapsing what will take 100+ years into 25 to keep the plot moving) and preserve a livable world with some movement toward justice and sustainability.
I find it a more or less credible illustration…
20 authors picked The Ministry for the Future as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
“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…