Climate change is causing Earth’s temperature to rise and natural disasters to occur more frequently. We will never be able to recover if we do not become increasingly conscious. And the best way to become conscious is to start by reading some interesting Climate Change books.
Recognizing the multitude of facts about the state of our planet is just the beginning. Having explored those facts, you’ll want to explore the interconnections between them; ranging from the disproportionate effects of climate change on Native populations to corporate profits.
Here are my 15 must-read climate change books that you should read in 2022. These are ordered according to my personal preference. In addition to many other books, these are the ones that climate activists and beginners alike will find useful. Feel free to give me your recommendations, if any.
#1
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. A team of physicists, chemists, biologists, engineers, political scientists, and economists helped him to develop recommendations on what should be done to stop the planet’s slide toward certain environmental disasters. His book explains how and why we should strive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net-zero levels and also provides details on what we can do to accomplish this profound objective.
Despite the challenges we face, he presents them with clarity. He describes how technology already helps reduce emissions based on his understanding of innovation and the challenges of introducing new ideas to the market. In addition, he detailed what can be done to improve the effectiveness of current technologies, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these innovations.
To conclude, he outlines a concrete and practical plan for attaining zero emissions-not just describing policies that government should adopt, but also what individual citizens can do to ensure that their government and employers are held accountable. While the goal of achieving zero emissions is not going to be easy, following Bill Gates’ plan makes it possible.
Author | Bill Gates |
Pages | 272 |
My completion time | 11 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#2
The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future
A Waterstones Paperback of the Year and a shortlisted Foyles Book of the Year is probably one of the best books of non-fiction you will read this year – selected as a Book of the Year by the Sunday Times, Spectator, and New Statesman.
If your anxiety about climate change is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are only scratching the surface of what might happen to the planet. Climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that claims it is not happening at all.
It is worse, much worse than you think.
Since the 1970s, the term “Anthropocene” has gained traction as a term to describe the era of geologic change we are now experiencing, one that is marked by human involvement in the lives of the planet.
It is one thing to say that we have ravaged the natural world, something that is for sure true, but it is another to suggest even the smallest possibility that we may have merely provoked it. It is engineering a climate system in ignorance and then denial, and perhaps until it destroys us, it will be at war with us for many centuries.
It will alter life as we know it, transforming us into a nightmare on a planet no longer nurturing a world of abundance.
Author | David Wallace-Wells |
Pages | 336 |
My completion time | 16 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#3
Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist
We are paying the price for a broken economy. Deflationary financial crises. Disparate wealth distribution. Intense pressure on the environment. Can this be sustained? Is there a solution?
Oxford academic Kate Raworth presents the seven deadly mistakes of economics in Doughnut Economics and proposes a revolutionary rethinking of the system that has brought us to our current point of ruin.
Doughnut Economics, which moves beyond conventional economic theory and unlimited growth, focuses on the sweet spot: a way to meet all our needs without overburdening the planet.
Author | Kate Raworth |
Pages | 384 |
My completion time | 20 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#4
Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters
Climate is changing, but the how and why aren’t as clear as you might think. Fundamental questions remain unanswered about how the climate responds to human influence and what the effects will be.
In reality, the slow and deliberate process of moving research reports to public media – a process corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation – leads to blunders and panic when it comes to climate change.
Steven Koonin shares his decades of experience in Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, drawing from his position as a top scientist in the Obama administration to provide the latest insight and expert perspective free of political agendas.
A fascinating, insightful, and surprising book, it gives readers the knowledge they need to understand the climate issue as well as make better choices about science media. As Koonin explains where science comes from and how it relates to our everyday lives, he takes readers behind the headlines into the more nuanced science itself.
His book dispels commonly held myths and reveals little-known factors: global temperatures have decreased from 1940 to 1970 despite dramatic increases in greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, our models for predicting the future aren’t accurate in describing past environmental conditions, suggesting they are deeply flawed.
In addition to addressing society’s response to a changing climate, Koonin uses data-driven analysis to explain why many of the suggested solutions would be ineffective and to argue for alternatives, such as adaptation and geoengineering, that might ensure humanity’s survival. “Unsettled” presents climate science as a reality check with a hint of optimism. We examine what we know and don’t know about climate change and how it all impacts our future.
Author | Steven E. Koonin |
Pages | 320 |
My completion time | 16 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#5
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Bringing together the best researchers, scientists, and policymakers from around the globe, an international coalition has come together for the first time to offer realistic and bold solutions to climate change.
Even though some of these techniques are well-known, some of them may be new to you, all of them are economically viable, and more and more communities are implementing them.
All of these solutions, whether they are improving production and consumption of food, educating girls in lower-income countries, could slow the warming of the globe, and even reverse it if implemented globally over the next thirty years.
Author | Paul Hawken |
Pages | 256 |
My completion time | 12 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#6
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference: Expanded Edition
“Everything needs to change. And it has to start today” – Greta Thunberg’s history-making, ground-breaking speeches have become the voice of a generation.
In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day. As a result of her actions, a global movement was launched for action on climate change, inspiring millions of students to join strikes for our planet, and forcing governments to listen to her. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Featuring Greta’s words for the first time, this book offers her perspective on her life. In no way is anyone too small to make a difference, a collection of speeches that have made history globally from the UN to mass demonstrations in the streets. No One Is Too Small to Make A Difference is a reminder of why we must all wake up and fight to protect the living planet, no matter how powerless we feel. Our future depends upon it.
Author | Greta Thunberg |
Pages | 112 |
My completion time | 7 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#7
There Is No Planet B: A Handbook for the Make or Break Years – Updated Edition
Concerns about world hunger, climate change, biodiversity, antibiotics, plastics, and pandemics are endless. Is it better for all of us to become vegetarians? How is aviation going to change in a low-carbon world? How is technology going to change? And, given the global challenges we face, what can you and I do, individually?
A course of action is outlined by Mike Berners-Lee that is practical, enjoyable, full of hope, and based on numbers. The goal of this book is to paint a broad picture of the environmental and economic challenges we face today, as they apply to the way we live and think, and to trace their roots.
With this updated edition, you will find information on protests, pandemics, wildfires, investments, carbon targets, and, of course, what you can do.
Author | Mike Berners-Lee |
Pages | 336 |
My completion time | 18 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#8
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
One of the notable book mentions of the decade is the international bestseller The Sixth Extinction. Regarding Elizabeth Kolbert as one of the most important respectful writers on the environment.
Under a White Sky is an uphaul. As humanity struggles to reverse the impact we have had on our atmosphere, oceans, forests, rivers – indeed, on the very topography of the globe – within a few decades, she explains the enormous challenges that we face.
Taking a hard look at how we are reshaping our world, she explores Under a White Sky. On her journey, she encounters biologists who are working to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a small pool in the middle of the Mojave desert. Engineers use Iceland’s volcanic rock to create a way to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Physicists considering shooting diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth, changing the sky from blue to white. And Australians who are developing ‘super coral’ that can survive on a hotter globe.
Under a White Sky is equally inspiring, horrifying, and darkly comic, offering an entirely original approach to exploring our future.
Author | Elizabeth Kolbert |
Pages | 256 |
My completion time | 15 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#9
Our Planet: The official companion to the ground-breaking Netflix original Attenborough series with a special foreword by David Attenborough
Photographs of maps and graphics were specially commissioned for this book. Compelling writing expanded to the TV stories giving the reader a depth of information that is not possible on screen. The book is prefaced by Sir David Attenborough, gives us a completely new perspective of the planet, which we call home.
The science of Our Planet uncovers some of the world’s rarest creatures from deep oceans to remote forests to ice caps! we will take a trip deep into our natural world.
From the wildebeest migrations in Africa to the penguin colonies in Antarctica, the most amazing sights on Earth come to life in unimaginable ways as the book reveals how humans are altering the planet’s ecosystems. In one concise narrative, this book communicates a fundamental point:
In the event we don’t act now to preserve our planet, we will not be able to appreciate the beauty we see in this book any longer.
Author | Alastair Fothergill |
Pages | 320 |
My completion time | 20 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#10
The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here
Using The Story of More, Hope Jahren examines how human habits affect the environment. Throughout this book, she presents us with the science behind some of the key inventions, ranging from large-scale farming to automobiles, that, while they help us, emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
From superstorms to rising sea levels, she explains the effects of global warming and the actions we can all take to stem the damage. A fascinating explanation of the mechanisms of global warming and a gripping story told in Jahren’s unique words, The Story of More is the essential pocket primer on climate change, one that will leave a lasting impression on all readers.
Author | Hope Jahren |
Pages | 224 |
My completion time | 14 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#11
On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal
This is Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, examining the climate crisis as both a political as well as a spiritual crisis. In a rousing call to action for a planet on the verge of collapse, this rousing work covers everything from ecological time to our culture of ‘perpetual now’ and rising white supremacy.
Naomi Klein’s books have defined our era for more than two decades, chronicling human and planetary abuse and calling for justice. In “On Fire,” she combines her rich body of writing from the frontlines of climate breakdown with fresh material on the staggeringly high stakes of what we must do to address it.
Klein chronicles the rising challenge of climate if we’re willing to alter the systems that create it, from ghostly Great Barrier Reefs to smoke-choked skies in the Pacific Northwest to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.
With climate change posing an imminent threat to the future of our species, “On Fire” captures the urgent urgencies of the crisis.
Author | Naomi Klein |
Pages | 336 |
My completion time | 22 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#12
This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
Humanity and, indeed, life on this planet are facing a critical time, and Extinction Rebellion is taking action in that direction. By taking action on climate breakdown, Extinction Rebellion inspires a whole generation. The book is a journey that will effectively make you an activist of the Extinction Rebellion.
We no longer have time to ignore the global ecological and climate crisis. This is our last chance to save the planet as we know it. To say it differently, they meant that no other time is right to act radically. We must rebel now or never.
This book contains the truth and the actions taken by the Extinction Rebellion, a global movement of ordinary people. It includes facts you can use to arm yourself, stories to empower you, pages you can fill in and pages you can rip out, along with instructions on how to rebel – from hosting a roadblock to fighting for your right to free speech. This book is a roller coaster.
Author | Extinction Rebellion Group |
Pages | 208 |
My completion time | 12 Days |
My personal rating | 4.5 out of 5.0 stars |
#13
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
It is not difficult to detect a new renaissance in the climate movement: the emergence of leaders who are more experimental with leadership styles, more committed to feminism, and grounded in compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration.
To change everything, we need all voices and all agents of change, yet women and girls often are not included in conversations. More than an issue of bias, it’s a dynamic that sets us up for failure.
Women leading the fight against climate change in America provide the expertise and insights in All We Can Save. Advancing to a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation about climate change, these are the women scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers across generations, geographic areas.
They present a range of perspectives on how we can radically transform society quickly and effectively.
Author | Ayana Elizabeth Johnson |
Pages | 448 |
My completion time | 30 Days |
My personal rating | 5.0 out of 5.0 stars |
#14
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans and Our Quest to Understand Earth’s Past Mass Extinctions
Do we now face the apocalypse?
In five separate moments in time, life on Earth was brought to the edge of extinction by fire, ice, poison gas, suffocation, and an asteroid.
Scientists are now able to find clues about what causes these catastrophes by using revolutionary technology. As they explore past worlds with guillotines for mouths and dragonflies the size of seagulls, they examine how life survived despite all odds and what this ominous chapter can teach us about our future.
Without the wit, lyricism, and clarity that Peter Brannen brings to every page, a book about one apocalypse – let alone five – would have been daunting to read.
Author | Peter Brannen |
Pages | 352 |
My completion time | 23 Days |
My personal rating | 4.8 out of 5.0 stars |
#15
The Precipice: ‘A book that seems made for the present moment’ New Yorker
In this insightful and important book, the author makes the case that the biggest challenge facing our generation is to keep humanity alive.
Our species could survive for billions of years as long as we keep evolving. That would be enough time for us to conquer disease, poverty, and injustice, and to flourish in ways that are unimaginable today. Yet this immense future is at risk.
Humanity entered a new era when it gained access to nuclear weapons. We now face existential catastrophes – dangers we won’t be able to escape. These dangers have only multiplied from climate change to engineered pathogens and artificial intelligence. It won’t be long before it’s too late if we don’t get to a safe place quickly.
A book based on over ten years of research, The Precipice takes a fresh look at the cutting-edge science behind the risks we face. It places these risks against mankind’s greater story: demonstrating how eradicating them is one of the most pressing moral issues we face today.
Author | Toby Ord |
Pages | 480 |
My completion time | 30 Days |
My personal rating | 4.5 out of 5.0 stars |
In this Podcast Series of Conscious Citizens, we will learn about the concerning matter of Climate Change. Humanity faces the greatest threat from climate change, and it is important to address this issue as a matter of major concern. We will go through the impact of climate change on Humankind, the solutions that will define our fate, and the technological innovations that can help.
Climate risks pose serious threats to Kenya’s sustainable development goals. India and Kenya share a lot of similar concerns, in this talk of Conscious Citizens, Abhilash will discuss with Lynn the different aspects of climate issues concerning Kenya.