5 New Books to Read for Earth Day

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich

 

The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Nathaniel Rich’s groundbreaking chronicle of that decade, which became an instant journalistic phenomenon. Now expanded into book form, Losing Earth tells the human story of climate change in even richer, more intimate terms. It reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The book carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves. (April 9, 2019)

Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth by Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper

 

Burn offers bold new solutions to climate change that can begin right now. It looks beyond renewable biomass or carbon capture energy systems to offer a bigger and bolder vision for the next phase of human progress, moving carbon from wasted sources. The authors state, “Those few among us who have glimpsed the possibility for a new carbon economy may seem naive. But these are neither moonshots nor science fiction. They are economically viable reconceptions for our global industrial model.” (February 26,  2019)

 

Surviving Global Warming: Why Eliminating Greenhouse Gases Isn’t Enough by Roger A. Sedjo

 

This provocative and important overview of the challenges of and possible approaches to climate change by Roger A. Sedjo, an expert and shared recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize,  is essential reading for policy makers, climate scientists, and lay persons alike. Sedjo addresses sea-level rise, agricultural productivity, destruction of forests and biodiversity, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, and geo-engineering strategies. (March 19, 2019)

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

 

Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on The End of Nature author Bill McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history — and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity. (April 16, 2019)

 

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

 

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. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today. Like An Inconvenient Truth and Silent Spring before it, The Uninhabitable Earth is both a meditation on the devastation we have brought upon ourselves and an impassioned call to action. (February 19, 2019)