Jorge Daniel Taillant is a cryoactivist, a term he coined to describe someone that works to protect the cryosphere, ie. the Earth’s frozen environment. Founder of a globally prized non-profit protecting human rights and promoting environmental justice he helped get the world’s first glacier law passed in South America. He now devotes 100% of his time to tackling climate change in an emergency effort to slow global warming … and to protect glaciers.
John Englander brings rising tides to our dinner table discussions. As a Florida resident living 5 minutes from the beach, this is a very real issue to me. But no matter where you live, sea-level rise will change your lifestyle, whether it’s because of the changing coastline, or due to entire economies that will change as the oceans advance over land, because of affected property values across entire countries and regions, or because of the waves of climate refugees that will have to seek new homes.
Entire countries like Maldives, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu are already planning a mass move to new terrain. Englander masters climate science to show us just how the seas have, are, and will continue to change in our currently accelerating climate warming.
First published in 2012, High Tide on Main Street blazed a new trail in understanding the driving forces behind climate change and its most profound, unstoppable, and least-understood effect, Sea Level Rise (SLR).
In easy-to-understand language, oceanographer and explorer John Englander explains how SLR will become the most permanent effect of climate change. By focusing on sea level, he also provides excellent insights into greenhouse gas emissions - the forces that drive climate change.
One reviewer said: “the most understandable book on climate change I have read to date…”
While we are already feeling the effects of disastrous climate change…
The
Geography of Riskgets to the heart of why the harm from climate-worsened disasters
continues to grow: communities keep building in places destined to burn and
flood.
Through first-hand accounts, Gaul exposes how decisions made long ago
can trap people in homes and places that are unsafe. Gaul’s investigative
reporting confirms what I learned in my years as a policymaker at the White
House—that the best-intentioned choices can increase risk exposure
exponentially.
The book lays bare how public policy all too often provides perverse
incentives to encourage people to live on America’s coastlines despite the
great cost to human safety and the economy.
This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history―but who bears the brunt of these monster storms?
Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion), Sandy ($72 billion), Harvey ($125 billion), and Maria ($90 billion). With more property than ever in harm’s way, and the planet and oceans warming dangerously, it won’t be long before we see a $250 billion hurricane. Why? Because Americans have built $3 trillion worth of property in some of the riskiest places on earth: barrier islands and coastal floodplains. And they…
After half a lifetime working all over the world as an environmental scientist, I am now a full-time writer of fiction and non-fiction. I’ve studied the effects of oil industry waste in Yemen, monitored groundwater contaminated with radioactive tritium from bomb-making sites in Europe, and remediated oil pits in the South American jungle. I ran Australia’s national climate adaptation program and was CEO of Australia’s national marine science agency, which does much of the research on the Great Barrier Reef. And everywhere I’ve gone, I’ve seen how environmental destruction hurts people, societies, and, inevitably, our future. Each of my six novels and my non-fiction examines this issue in different ways.
The only non-fiction book on my list, this prescient, chilling work examines the geopolitics of climate change.
Written in 2008 by an ex-naval officer turned journalist, this book works on two levels. First, cogent explanations of the science and interviews with senior military personnel from America and Great Britain. Then, eight scenarios that describe how the world might react as emissions rise.
Scenario One: 2045. The average global temperature is 2.8°C higher than in 1990. Prognosis: Awful.
And the scary thing is that’s pretty close to the trajectory we are currently on.
Dwindling resources. Massive population shifts. Natural disasters. Spreading epidemics. Drought. Rising sea levels. Plummeting agricultural yields. Crashing economies. Political extremism. These are just some of the expected consequences of runaway climate change in the decades ahead - and any of them could tip the world towards conflict. Bold, unflinching, and based on exhaustive research, "Climate Wars" grippingly reveals how world leaders are likely to react, and promises to be one of the most important books of the coming years.
Today, we're faced with massive shifts in the environment that challenge who we are as humans. Scientists have proposed that we have left the Holocene and entered the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans, to mark the significance of our increasingly dominant role in a changing environment. But the problem right now is that we are having trouble seeing the future that is revealing itself because we continue to see it in our old ways of knowing. The books I have chosen show us the world that is coming. My hope is that, where some will resist the message of scientists, more may be swayed by writers, painters, photographers, musicians, and filmmakers.
In this beautifully written book, Ghosh tackles a central question that really motivates me. How do we describe the world we are changing? In answering this question, Ghosh ponders why climate change is so hard to explain; why it is so hard to write about in novels and fiction. For me, this book is a thought-provoking quest into both the need for evocative literature on this topic and the hazards of drifting into science fiction or being dismissed as alarmist non-fiction. But in his explanation of the challenges of communicating climate change, Ghosh gave me a stronger vocabulary for doing so.
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability--at the level of literature, history, and politics--to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. The extreme nature of today's climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the…
As a teenager I loved the post-apocalyptic genre, especially John Wyndham and H G Wells, and as a scientist I’ve become increasingly aware of the threats to society, especially from climate change and pandemics. But it seems to me that any collapse will be gradual: yes, the weather will worsen, and the seas will rise; but those won’t happen overnight. We’re unlikely to see a pandemic that kills everyone, but we could well see a train of smaller ones. This is the world of Truth Sister: it’s changed, but we’ve had time to adapt. The books in my list have different takes on how a post-civilisation world might look. Enjoy!
Itäranta is a Finnish author now living in the UK, and Memory of Water was nominated for several SF prizes.
This time, climate change has produced a serious scarcity of water, and the book, about how a young tea master's apprentice becomes possessed of important knowledge, touches on how people’s behaviour can become more primitive, against a backdrop of increasing military suppression. Again, its strength is its believability.
With the lyricism of Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, and the world building brilliance of Atwood, Emmi Itaranta's effortless and poignant debut novel is a coming of age story full of emotional drama and wonderment. 'Where itaranta shines is in her understated but compelling characters' Red star review, Publishers Weekly. Some secrets demand betrayal. 'You're seventeen, and of age now, and therefore old enough to understand what I'm going to tell you,' my father said. 'This place doesn't exist.' 'I'll remember,' I told him, but didn't realise until later what kind of promise I had made. When Noria Kaitio reaches…
My name is Jake Bittle, and I’m a staff writer at the environmental magazine Grist, where I cover climate change and energy.I’m also the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, published by Simon & Schuster. In that book I try to explore how human beings interact with nature, and how we try to control nature by building a systematic and inflexible society. This is a theme that has always captivated me, ever since I moved as a teenager to a Florida subdivision built on the edge of a swamp, and it’s something I’m always on the lookout for in fiction as well as nonfiction.
This book was a significant inspiration for my own book, and remains one of the best and deepest accounts of how climate change is affecting the United States, in any medium.
Moving from the wetlands of the Eastern Seaboard to an eroding village in coastal Louisiana to a Pensacola neighborhood burdened by high flood insurance costs, Rush shows in intimate detail how sea-level rise alters individual lives and transforms small communities, displaying a patience and compassion that too few journalists have.
FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF 2018
A GUARDIAN, NPR's SCIENCE FRIDAY, PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018
Hailed as "deeply felt" (New York Times), "a revelation" (Pacific Standard), and "the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing" (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.
With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change…
As a teenager I loved the post-apocalyptic genre, especially John Wyndham and H G Wells, and as a scientist I’ve become increasingly aware of the threats to society, especially from climate change and pandemics. But it seems to me that any collapse will be gradual: yes, the weather will worsen, and the seas will rise; but those won’t happen overnight. We’re unlikely to see a pandemic that kills everyone, but we could well see a train of smaller ones. This is the world of Truth Sister: it’s changed, but we’ve had time to adapt. The books in my list have different takes on how a post-civilisation world might look. Enjoy!
This early-21st-century novel takes rising sea levels as its starting point, and tracks young Mara as she leaves her home island and heads south, towards supposed safety.
I liked that not only does Mara encounter the starving people of the Netherworld, but also the privileged elite who live in “sky cities”. The growing gap between rich and poor, powerful and powerless, has resonances for our own societies today.
The fifteenth anniversary edition of Exodus, a startling, thrilling novel set in a dystopian future ravaged by global warming
It is 2099 - and the world is gradually drowning, as mighty Arctic ice floes melt, the seas rise and land disappears forever beneath storm-tossed waves. For fifteen-year-old Mara, her family and community, huddled on the fast-disappearing island of Wing, the new century brings flight. Packed into tiny boats, a terrifying journey begins to a bizarre city that rises into the sky, built on the drowned remains of the ancient city of Glasgow. But even here there is no safety and,…
As an author who, in my ‘other’ life, has studied psychology and social work, I love to write about the impact of change on individuals and communities – what do my characters grieve, what relationships become important to them, what are the roles or goals that motivate them now and what do they need to do to survive, both individually and in their new society. And I love to be able to write about a place – a location – that I know well, hence the Sunshine Coast Hinterland as a setting for The Rise. I hope you enjoy the books that I’ve recommended as much as I have!
Set in a world where there’s water everywhere from the rising sea levels, but fresh water is a much-needed commodity, I loved that this story was about family. There’s a lovely mix of characters who are still kind – still human – and those that are out for survival and control, which kept me wanting to read to see if the main character, Baz, would find his family again. And I loved that there were places I recognised – it’s always nice to have those ‘I’ve been there!’ moments.
Six years after the Rise, Australia's coastal towns are gone, lost under the ocean's unstoppable advance. The survivors have retreated to a series of newly formed islands off the coast of New South Wales, seeking to rebuild their lives with limited resources, destructive weather, and fierce competition amongst communities.
And not all are successful . . .
Baz is a fresh water merchant, desalinating saltwater and bartering this valuable commodity throughout the struggling island communities. But his real mission is something closer to his heart, the one thing that has plagued him since the catastrophic rise in water levels: he…
