Climate Change Politics

Building a Resilient Tomorrow does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: Climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects.

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. But what could you achieve with $1 trillion? You could solve the problem of the pandemic, for one, and eradicate malaria, and maybe cure all disease. You could end global poverty.

Even leading capitalists admit that capitalism is broken. Green Swans is a manifesto for system change designed to serve people, planet, and prosperity. In his 20th book, John Elkington - dubbed the "Godfather of Sustainability" - explores new forms of capitalism fit for the 21st century.

Yes, the world faces substantial environmental challenges - climate change, pollution, and extinction. But the surprisingly good news is that we have solutions to these problems. In the past 50 years, a remarkable number of environmental problems have been solved while substantial progress is ongoing on others. The Optimistic Environmentalist chronicles these remarkable success stories. Endangered species - from bald eagles to gray whales - pulled back from the precipice of extinction.

A former endangered species biologist looks at the ongoing sixth mass extinction through the prism of human behavior, personal experience, ecology, evolutionary biology, and contemporary conservation efforts. He provides new insights into factors triggering the current mass extinction event and examines conventional wisdom regarding human intelligence. The author suggests—as humanity edges ever closer to disappearing forever—a clear-eyed, real-world rationale for resignation but also acceptance.

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse. We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond.

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

From former New York Times Science writer Tatiana Schlossberg comes Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have, a fascinating and unexpectedly entertaining look at the way climate change and environmental pollution are intimately involved in our everyday life - in everything we use, buy, eat, wear, and how we get around - and have consequences that extend far beyond our lives.

As global warming accelerates, droughts last longer, floods rise higher, and super-storms become more frequent. With increasing numbers of people on the move as a result, the business of containing them - border fortification - is booming. In Storming the Wall, Todd Miller travels around the world to connect the dots between climate-ravaged communities, the corporations cashing in on border militarization, and emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability.

One of the essential books of our time, Reclaiming the Sacred draws on the work of thousands of psychologists and economists, cosmologists and activists, saints and poets to ground us in our inherent joy, purpose, and belonging—both for our own sakes and the sake of the world. It starts with an overview of the science of happiness, highlighting the things that most nourish human well-being—and some that don’t, most notably money and possessions.

Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.

Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, was asked by the British government to direct the largest study ever conducted into the reality of global warming and the possible ways of remedying it. Backed by full government resources, Stern answers the most urgent questions of our time: what will be the cost of global warming - and what can we do about it?

Deforestation. Desertification. Species extinction. Global warming. Growing threats to food and water. The driving issues of our times are the result of one huge problem: Us. As the population continues to grow, our problems will increase. And this means that every way we look at it, a planet of 10 billion people is likely to be a nightmare. Stephen Emmott, a scientist whose lab is at the forefront of research into complex natural systems, sounds the alarm. This is a snapshot of our planet, and our species, approaching a crisis, and a stark analysis of where this leaves us.

We're Doomed, Now What? addresses the crisis that is our time through a series of brilliant, moving, and original essays on climate change, war, literature, and loss from one of the most provocative and iconoclastic minds of his generation.

While reporting just outside of Darfur, Stephan Faris discovered that climate change was at the root of that conflict, and he began to wonder what current and impending - and largely unanticipated - crises such changes have in store for the world. Forecast provides the answers. Global warming will spur the spread of many diseases. Italy has already experienced its first climate-change epidemic of a tropical disease, and malaria is gaining ground in Africa.

The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: an effervescent mad scientist who would fertilize the seas, a pigeon obsessive bent on bringing back the extinct, a low-level government functionary in China doing his best to clean up his city, and more. These scientists, billionaires, and ordinary people are all working toward saving the best home humanity is ever likely to have.

For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable.

Do our children have a right to inherit a livable planet? Is the government obliged to protect it? Twenty-one young people from across America have sued the federal government over climate change, charging that actions promoting a fossil fuel economy violate their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property. As the World Burns by investigative reporter Lee van der Voo follows the plight of the young plaintiffs, chronicling their legal battle as their childhoods are consumed by another year of drought and wildfire, floods and hurricanes, and tumultuous politics.

The Agile City engages the fundamental question: what to do about it? Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming - and blunt its effects - by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly. Adapting buildings (39 percent of greenhouse-gas emission) and communities (slashing the 33 percent of transportation related emissions) offers numerous other benefits that tax gimmicks and massive alternative-energy investments can't match.