By May, spring semesters are coming to an end, and teachers and students are looking forward to summer. For many that means an escape from classes; for others, it’s a chance to catch up, to look ahead, or to explore something new.
In the first four bookshelves of 2024, Yale Climate Connections took deep dives into topics related to climate change: American politics, Black history and climate justice, women’s history and gender politics, and environmental studies. With this month’s bookshelf, we return to the main subject: climate change itself. We invite readers to create individual reading lists by selecting six books from the 12 new titles described below. Think of it as creating a syllabus for your own briskly-paced summer course.
Here’s how it works.
Everyone should start with Elizabeth Kolbert’s entertaining if still ominous overview of climate change, H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z.
Thereafter, you can choose which book you want to read to complete the five modules covered by this refresher course.
For the module on climate science, you can review its history or reflect on its conceptual foundations.
The second module on human sciences examines how climate change will affect our lives. The first title focuses on social institutions and communities; the second on our brains in particular.
Ways to respond to the causes and consequences of climate change are addressed in the third and fourth modules — on carbon policies and technologies and on economics. Choose one title from each set.
The course ends with a module on climate action, with a choice of titles that map out possible courses of action for communities and individuals. We have solved big problems before, the first reminds us; we can find the wherewithal, and the time, to do it again, argues the second. Either will make a fitting conclusion for your summer course.
Start yours now. And relax: You won’t have to complete a final paper or exam to pass it!
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers.
Introduction to your summer course on climate change
H Is for Hope: Climate Change from A to Z by Elizabeth Kolbert (Ten Speed Press 2024, 160 pages, $24.99)
In twenty-six essays, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future. In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the landscape of climate change — from “A,” for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world’s first climate model in 1894, to “Z,” for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Along the way, she learns to fly an all-electric plane (“E”), experiments with the effects of extreme temperature (“T”), and struggles with the deep uncertainty of climate change (“U”). Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker and illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming, and humorous — a unique examination of changing world.
Climate science module: Choose one of these two titles.
The Story of Earth’s Climate in 25 Discoveries: How Scientists Found the Connections Between Climate and Life by Donald R. Prothero (Columbia University Press 2024, 480 pages. $38.00)
In this lively and entertaining book, Donald R. Prothero explores the astonishing connections between climate and life through the ages, telling the remarkable stories of the scientists who made crucial discoveries. Journeying through the intertwined evolution of climate and life, he tackles questions such as: Why do we have phytoplankton to thank for the air we breathe? What kind of climate was necessary for the rise of the dinosaurs — or the mammals, their successors? When and how have climatic changes caused mass extinctions? Prothero concludes with the Ice Ages and the Holocene, the role of climate in human history, and the perils of anthropogenic climate change. Understanding why the climate has changed in the past, this timely book shows, is essential to grasping the gravity of how radically human activity is altering the climate today.
Predicting Our Climate Future: What We Know, What We Don’t Know, And What We Can’t Know by David Stainforth (Oxford University Press 2024, 368 pages, $24.95
Climate change raises new, foundational challenges in science. It requires us to question what we know and how we know it. The subject is important for society, but history tells us that scientists can get things wrong before they get them right. How, then, can we judge what information is reliable and what is open to question? Stainforth goes to the heart of the climate problem to answer this question. He describes the fundamental characteristics of climate change and shows how they undermine the application of traditional research methods, demanding new approaches to both scientific and societal questions. This book takes the reader on a journey through the maths of complexity, the physics of climate, philosophical questions regarding the origins of knowledge, and the use of natural science in the economics and policy of climate change.
Human sciences module: Choose one of these two titles.
Slow Burn: The Hidden Costs of a Warming World by R. Jisung Park (Princeton University Press 2024, 336 pages, $29.95)
It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change. In Slow Burn, R. Jisung Park encourages us to view climate change through a different lens: one that focuses less on the possibility of mass climate extinction in a theoretical future, and more on the everyday implications of climate change here and now. By investigating how the physical phenomenon of climate change interacts with social and economic institutions, Park illustrates how climate change may act as an amplifier of inequality. Wealthier households and corporations may adapt quickly, but, without targeted interventions, less advantaged communities may not. Viewing climate change as a slow and unequal burn comes with an important silver lining. We can begin to overcome our climate anxiety, Park shows us, when we begin to tackle these problems locally.
The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains by Clayton Page Aldern (Dutton 2024, 336 pages, $30.00)
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. Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it is about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior — and a most startling portrait of environmental influences. His book is an unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood.
Carbon policies and technologies module: Choose one of these two titles.
Making Climate Tech Work: Policies That Drive Innovation by Alon Tal (Island Press 2024, 312 pages, $35.00 paperback)
In Making Climate Tech Work, environmental policy expert Alon Tal demystifies climate innovation programs around the world — no policy background needed. Beginning with a review of government’s general role in technology policy development, Tal assesses each policy alternative, describing eye-opening experiments in diverse countries, presenting a range of case studies, interviewing leading decarbonization experts, and interpreting new empirical data. And he distills the benefits and drawbacks of their policies. He concludes by addressing two commonly overlooked issues in climate policy: disruption of workers’ livelihoods from the clean energy transition; and integrating the Global South into the planet’s new low-carbon economy. Making Climate Tech Work serves as an essential primer for anyone interested in climate solutions.
Zero-Carbon Industry: Transforming Technologies and Policies to Achieve Sustainable Prosperity by Jeffrey Rissman (Columbia University Press 2024, 400 pages, $35.00)
This book delivers a first-of-its-kind road map for the zero-carbon industrial transition, spotlighting the breakthrough innovations transforming the manufacturing sector and the policies that can accelerate this global shift. Jeffrey Rissman illustrates the scope of the challenge, diving into the workings of heavy polluters like steel, chemicals, plastics, cement, and concrete. He examines ways to affordably decarbonize manufacturing, such as electrifying industrial processes, using hydrogen, deploying carbon capture and storage, and growing material efficiency with lightweighting and 3D printing. But technologies are only part of the picture. Engaging and comprehensive, Zero-Carbon Industry is the definitive guide to decarbonizing the vast — yet often overlooked — global industrial sector.
Yale Climate Connections published an excerpt from Rissman’s book earlier this year.
Economics module: Choose one of these three titles.
Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis and Protect Our Most Precious Assets by Paula Diperna (Wiley 2023, 272 pages, $29.95)
In Pricing the Priceless: The Financial Transformation to Value the Planet, Solve the Climate Crisis, and Protect Our Most Precious Assets, renowned environmental strategist, speaker, world traveler and author Paula DiPerna brings a unique voice and optic to demystify and unveil today’s most fascinating financial disruption — pricing the priceless to flip conventional ideas of how we value natural assets and why. She asks the provocative question long ignored: Why do we value the indispensable atmosphere at zero, but dispensable production in the trillions? She digs into alternatives, with real-life examples from around the globe of fascinating and pioneering financial innovations — controversial and paradoxical, but essential. Pricing the Priceless provides a landmark answer to a critical question: What is money for?
The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet by Brett Christophers (Verso Books 2024, 432 pages, $29.95)
What if our understanding of capitalism and climate is back to front? What if the problem is not that transitioning to renewables is too expensive, but that saving the planet is not sufficiently profitable? This is Brett Christophers’ claim. The global economy is moving too slowly toward sustainability because the return on green investment is too low. Today’s consensus is that the key to curbing climate change is to produce green electricity and electrify everything possible. The main economic barrier in that project has seemingly been removed. But while prices of solar and wind power have tumbled, the golden era of renewables has yet to materialize. The problem is that investment is driven by profit, not price; solar and wind farms remain marginal businesses. An essential intervention, The Price Is Wrong is factually illuminating & politically far-reaching.
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito (Astra House 2024, 288 pages, $27.00)
In this international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society — more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution. Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production. By returning to a system of social ownership, he argues, we can restore abundance and focus on activities essential for human life, effectively reversing climate change and saving the planet.
Climate action module: Choose one of these two titles.
Solvable: How We Healed the Earth, and How We Can Do It Again by Susan Solomon (University of Chicago Press 2024, 312 pages, $26.00)
We solved planet-threatening problems before, Susan Solomon argues, and we can do it again. Solomon knows firsthand what those solutions entail. She first gained international fame as the leader of an expedition to Antarctica in 1986, making discoveries that were key to healing the damaged ozone layer. Solomon, an atmospheric scientist, connects this triumph to the inside stories of other past environmental victories. The path to success begins when an environmental problem becomes both personal and perceptible to the general public. Effective change takes place in tandem with consumer pressure when legislation and regulation yield practical solutions. Healing the planet is a long game won not by fear and panic but by the union of public, political, and regulatory pressure. The problems facing our planet are Solvable. Solomon shows us how.
Climate Action for Busy People by Cate Mingoya-Lafortune (Island Press 2024, 216 pages, $27.00 paperback)
Climate Action for Busy People is a hopeful and realistic road map for individuals and groups who want to boost climate preparedness and move the needle toward environmental justice. Drawing from her professional and personal success in climate adaptation and community organizing, Mingoya-LaFortune begins with a brief history of why our communities look the way they do (spoiler, it’s not an accident!) and how that affects how vulnerable we are to climate risks. Each chapter will help readers scale up their actions, from identifying climate solutions that an individual or small group can pull off in a handful of weekends, like tree plantings, to advocating for change at the municipal level through coalition-building and data collection. It’s not too late for people of all ages and skill levels to create climate safe neighborhoods.
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