Nonfiction about Climate Change

Cover image for The atlas of disappearing places :

The Atlas of Disappearing Places 

by Christina Conklin and Marina Psaros

Through a rich combination of place-based storytelling, clear explanations of climate science and policy, and beautifully rendered maps that use a unique ink-on-dried-seaweed technique, this book depicts twenty locations across the globe, from Shanghai and Antarctica to Houston and the Cook Islands. Each chapter paints a portrait of an existential threat in a particular place, detailing what will be lost if we do not take bold action now.

Cover image for Hot, flat, and crowded :

Hot, Flat, and Crowded 

by Thomas Friedman

Friedman proposes an ambitious national strategy to address key issues in climate change and energy shortages, identifying the factors that have contributed to current circumstances while outlining an American-led revolution of clean-technology solutions.
Cover image for Windfall :

Windfall by McKenzie Funk

Funk shares the stories of entrepreneurs who are realizing marketing opportunities associated with global warming, from Israeli artificial snow-makers and private firefighters in California to fund managers backing Sudanese warlords and the Dutch architects of floating cities.

Cover image for How to avoid a climate disaster :

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster 

by Bill Gates

Gates draws on the input of experts in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science and finance to create an accessible, concrete plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid certain environmental disaster.

Cover image for Electrify :

Electrify by Saul Griffith

Griffith uses his deep understanding of U.S. energy flows, materials, and clean energy technologies to show that decarbonizing in time to meet climate goals is not only possible, but can be done without major sacrifices in our lifestyles, creating more jobs and a cleaner, healthier environment.

Cover image for Hurricane lizards and plastic squid :

Hurricane Lizards & Plastic Squid 

by Thor Hanson

Biologist Hanson tells the remarkable story of how plants and animals are responding to climate change: adjusting, evolving, and sometimes dying out. Anole lizards have grown larger toe pads, to grip more tightly in frequent hurricanes. Warm waters cause the development of Humboldt squid to alter so dramatically that fishermen mistake them for different species.
Cover image for Drawdown :

Drawdown edited by Paul Hawken

In the face of widespread fear and apathy, an international coalition of researchers, professionals, and activists have come together to offer a set of realistic and bold solutions to climate change.

Cover image for The story of more :

The Story of More by Hope Jahren

Geobiologist Jahren describes how the science behind key inventions has helped us, but ultimately hurt the earth, and offers science-based tools for fighting back.

Cover image for Paradise :

Paradise by Lizzie Johnson

San Francisco Chronicle report Johnson draws on years of on-the-ground reporting and reams of public record and provides a first-hand account of California's Camp Fire -- the nation's deadliest wildfire in a century, investigating root causes and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds.

Cover image for On fire :

On Fire by Naomi Klein

Klein presents comprehensive, long-form essays linking current political and economic choices to environmental consequences, explaining how bold climate action can also provide a blueprint for a just and thriving society.

Cover image for This changes everything :

This Changes Everything 

by Naomi Klein

Klein offers an explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.

Cover image for The sixth extinction :

The Sixth Extinction 

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Drawing on the work of geologists, botanists, marine biologists and other researchers, Kolbert discusses the five devastating mass extinctions on earth and predicts the coming of a sixth.

Cover image for Under a white sky :

Under a White Sky 

by Elizabeth Kolbert

Kolbert introduces myriad innovations that offer ways to avert disaster - or may produce new disasters, ones that haven't been and perhaps cannot be anticipated. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. Paradoxically, the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation.
Cover image for On time and water

On Time and Water 

by Andri Snær Magnason

In this book, Magnason takes a literary approach to climate change. In the next hundred years, the nature of water on Earth will undergo a fundamental change. Glaciers will melt, the level of the sea will rise, and its acidity will change more than it has in the past 50 million years. These changes will affect all life on earth, everyone that we know, and everyone that we love.
Cover image for Losing Earth :

Losing Earth by Nathaniel Rich

An account of the failures that prevented the world from committing to taking measures against climate change documents key negotiations against the backdrop of 1980s history while explaining what the choices of the past mean for today's world.
Cover image for The ocean of life :

The Ocean of Life 

by Callum Roberts

Marine conservationist Roberts traces the human race's relationship to the ocean, identifying the consequences of modern fishing, pollution, and climate change on marine life while making urgent recommendations for reversing damage. 
Cover image for The uninhabitable earth :

The Uninhabitable Earth 

by David Wallace-Wells

In his travelogue of our near future, Wallace-Wells brings into stark relief the climate troubles that await--food shortages, refugee emergencies, and other crises that will reshape the globe. But the world will be remade by warming in more profound ways as well, transforming our politics, our culture, our relationship to technology, and our sense of history. It will be all-encompassing, shaping and distorting nearly every aspect of human life as it is lived today.
Cover image for The nature fix :

The Nature Fix by Florence Williams

An investigation into the restorative benefits of nature draws on cutting-edge research and Williams’s explorations with international nature therapy programs to examine the relationship between nature and human cognition, mood and creativity.

Cover image for Half-earth :

Half-Earth by Edward O. Wilson

A conclusion to the trilogy by Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the National Book Award-finalist The Meaning of Human Existence, argues that humanity must consider the histories of millions of other Earth species and increase the planet's regions of natural reserves in order to prevent future mass extinctions.