Charlene D’Avanzo: This year we earthlings have witnessed shocking changes in our climate – devastating floods in South Asia, record-breaking heat waves in Europe and
India, unprecedented wildfires across the planet. Unfortunately we now know what
“climate is everything” actually means – that it impacts all of us, everywhere.

Annually EARTH-ORG posts that year’s Best Climate Books To Read. Below are several from their 2022 and 2023 lists that I especially recommend.

The New Climate War, by Michael Mann. Climate Superhero Michael Mann published his now-famous ‘hockey stick’ graph in 1999 showing our impact on average temperature rise. Attacked and dismissed by the fossil fuel industry, Mann never gave up and pushed for the emerging field of climate science to be recognized. Described as a fascinating untangling of the intricate web of misinformation, misdirection and deflection perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry since climate change became an incontrovertible reality in the book Mann, cautiously optimistic,
argues that we have the technical and or intellectual inability to achieve systemic change. What we lack is the political needed to do so.

Under A White Sky, by Elizabeth Kolbert is described as “immensely readable, vividly describing everything from the flooding marshlands of Louisiana to the mind-bogglingly exciting developments in genetic engineering” – latest technological fixes underway that might or might not work.

Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet by Noam Chomsky & Robert Pollin. Two intellectual and progressive economists lay out catastrophic consequences of warming and a realistic blueprint for change they call the Green New Deal.

The Climate Book by Greta Thunberg. The famous climate activist features essays by over a hundred experts – from oceanographers and meteorologists to economists and geophysicists – who show us what we need to know fight disasters and halt warming.

I end with a plug for my own books including Cold Blood, Hot Sea that feature climate change warming understories.