What are the all-time best books that have ever been written and published about climate change?
To some extent, this is a purely subjective question. What one reader finds informative and moving, another reader may find unoriginal and uninspired.
There are so many climate change books out there now, with more published almost every week. This makes it hard for even experienced readers of climate fiction, climate nonfiction, and climate poetry to know where to start.
Reading lists like our “All-Time Best Climate Change Books” list offer a great starting point in your search for good climate change books to read. They may not be definitive, but they don’t have to be. All they have to do is help us find some great books that most people with an interest in climate themes will appreciate reading.
Book Inclusion Criteria
We selected books for this list based on the following criteria: accuracy, significance, engagement, and popularity. For more information on our book inclusion criteria, please visit our About page.
Do you know of a book that should be on this list? Let us know!
Top Ten Best Climate Change Books of All Time
Comparing fiction and nonfiction is like comparing apples and oranges. They’re both great, but they’re not the same. Therefore, we decided to make our top ten climate change book list by including five great works of climate fiction and five great works of climate nonfiction.
Honestly, though, picking a few titles doesn’t do justice to the growing body of wonderful climate fiction and climate fiction in print today. If you’d like to see more top titles, please check out our Best Climate Fiction and Best Climate Nonfiction pages.
We also made the difficult decision not to include any climate poetry books in the top ten at this time. We’ve seen some great climate poetry books, but there simply aren’t very many out there at this time. If you’re interested in climate poetry, please check out our Best Climate Poetry page.
Top Five Climate Fiction
- Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler
- Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson
- Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson
- The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi
- Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver
Top Five Climate Nonfiction
- All We Can Save edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson
- Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency by Mark Lynas
- Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein
- Overheated by Kate Aronoff
More Great Climate Change Books
But wait, there’s more! Here are more titles that didn’t make it into the top ten, but still deserve special attention. If you know of any good climate change books that don’t appear on this list or anywhere on this site, let us know. We’ll check them out and see if we can find a good place for them here.
- Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller
- The Petroleum Papers by Geoff Dembicki
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