Books About Climate Change

In his travelogue of our near future, David Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await — food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action.

Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation.

In 26 essays — one for each letter of the alphabet — Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Kolbert takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future. Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker and beautifully illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming, and darkly humorous — a unique examination of our changing world.

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award in Nonfiction, Fire Weather is a stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind — from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce.

Learn the story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism.

An urgent, resounding call to protect 50 percent of the earth’s land by 2050 – thereby saving millions of its species – and a candid assessment of the health of our planet and our role in conserving it, from the award-winning author of The Experience of Place and veteran New Yorker staff writer.

Global Weirdness enlarges our understanding of how climate change affects our daily lives, and arms us with the incontrovertible facts we need to make informed decisions about the future of the planet, and of humankind.

The Carbon Almanac is a collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers, and illustrators that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next. Drawing on over 1,000 data points, the book uses cartoons, quotes, illustrations, tables, histories, and articles to lay out carbon’s impact on our food system, ocean acidity, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, extreme weather events, the economy, human health, and best and worst-case scenarios. Visually engaging and built to share, The Carbon Almanac is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.

You might think it’s an impossible task: Secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope — but only if we listen to the science before it’s too late. We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.

The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it?

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet.

A timely, eye-opening book about climate change and energy generation that focuses on the consequences of nuclear power production, from award-winning author William T. Vollmann.

A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.

Discover the landmark trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of climate change — updated and abridged into a single novel.

While everything appears to be collapsing around us – ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, the end of cheap oil, water shortages, global famine, wars – we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children’s children. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight helps us understand – and heal – our relationship to the world, to each other, and to our natural resources.

In The Future We Choose, Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac — who led negotiations for the United Nations during the historic Paris Agreement of 2015 — have written a cautionary but optimistic book about the world’s changing climate and the fate of humanity.

An investigative narrative that dives into the waste embedded in our daily lives — and shows how individuals and communities are making a real difference for health, prosperity, quality of life, and the fight against climate change, by a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Over the course of a year, Ehrlich experiences firsthand the myriad expressions of cold, giving us marvelous histories of wind, water, snow, and ice, of ocean currents and weather cycles. We share Ehrlich’s experience of the thrills of cold, but also her questions: What will happen to us if we are “deseasoned”? If winter ends, will we survive?

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.

Compiled by social scientist and researcher Tina Limpert, this collection of stirring words is intended to enlighten, prompt change, provide encouragement, and deepen readers’ conviction. Celebrating activism, focusing on solutions, and avoiding apathy and pessimism, this book is a call to action.

From a writer and expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than thirty years, a brilliant, big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to address climate change. Fire and Flood focuses on the malign power of key business interests, arguing that those same interests could flip the story very quickly — if they can get ahead of a looming economic catastrophe.