Education and Climate Information
The Frog will explore The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions by Heidi Roop in the first 100 days of 2024
In the first `100 days of 2024 we will explore 100 climate solutions that may “empower you to evaluate, engage, and act” to address on-going climate change as an individual on your terms.
I am the son of a librarian and I love books. I love to read and read as much as I can. I am finding myself reading more on my e-book reader these days, enjoying the instant gratification of reading a book that I’ve discovered almost immediately in a convenient format.
I think Mom would be disappointed a bit as she loved the bookstore browse, choose, buy, repeat cycle that resulted in the stacks of unread books in the home library. She also liked the visceral sensory experience of opening and holding a book, which you certainly do not get from an e-reader. And that new (and old) book smell!
All that said, I do have a love/hate relationship with climate change books. Many of them are tough to read. I challenge you to get through Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas, The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells, or The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet by Jeff Goodell.
Check the status of your mental health, pick ’em up and read as long as you can. If you do take a shot at them be sure to drop a comment or review below. And if you need some brain bleach afterwards, I recommend Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in with Unexpected Resilience and Create Power by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone and All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson
There are a number of hopeful books that you can use to convince yourself that we have it in us to find and execute the solutions to keep the planet from killing us, including Naomi Klein’s controversial and well-written This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. I will let you figure out the controversy. I would put How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates in the same bucket.
The breakthrough we need, Bill, is for the billionaires to step up…
If you want a combination read, start with Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming edited by Paul Hawken, followed up with Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World by Katharine Hayhoe. Add Heidi Roop’s book The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to 100 Climate Solutions for Everyone and you will be all set for a good read with a wide coverage of the issues!
And I loved the snarky irreverence of pissed-off grizzled veteran Michael Mann’s The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet. As a contrast, Greta Thunberg’s No One is Too small to Make a Difference is written with the strong voice of a young activist. I also encourage you to read Greta’s The Climate Book: The Facts and Solutions which is an excellent primer with her take on solutions.
And we all should read Our House is on Fire: Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis which is written by the Thunberg family, telling the story of the family crisis that led Greta to decide “to go on strike from school, igniting a worldwide rebellion”.
And for more, here is a really good, curated list of climate change books from Earth.org. Another good list from Penguin Random House, a list from goodreads, and another list from Wikipedia.
To escape the sobering non-fiction, there is a whole genre of climate fiction, or “cli-fi” that you can dive into. I am an avowed science fiction pleasure reader and have not explored the cli-fi booklist extensively, with the exception of one of my favorite books Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Highly recommended! Here is a curated list of climate fiction books that you may find compelling.
And we all should read The Ministry For the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. “Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis”.
So read about the diversity of expressions and interpretations of climate change, in any form that suits your style, preferences, and values. And as much as I love real books, alas, like chocolate and coffee, there is an environmental and climate cost for the production of paper to make the books I so love. As Heidi points out,”in 2019, over 40 percent of Penguin Random House’s carbon dioxide output came from the paper used in its books”. It is an industry that is hard to decarbonize.
If it concerns you, and it should, check for the Forest Stewardship Council designation on the copyright page, showing that the publisher is concerned about sustainable sourcing for their paper.
One solutions is to read digitally, but there are likely trade-offs that you will have to consider mostly regarding fair compensation for authors. And many have opinions on their use, including The Atlantic Monthly’s belief that Ebooks Are an Abomination and Psychology Today’s take on The Case for Paper: Books vs e-Readers.
Whatever you decide, I hope your choices are fulfilling and help enrich your understanding of the climate crisis. As John Green put it, “great books help you understand, and they help you feel understood.”
I would love to hear from you about your recommendations.
Today a reader, tomorrow a leader
Margaret Fuller
And enjoy that new (and old) book smell, explained by a chemist..
Next Up: Climate Action 100: Celebrate Success and Express Gratitude
Howard Creel
#rescuethatfrog
Email: rescuethatfrog@gmail.com