The 2024 United States elections will have a tremendous impact on climate policy in the U.S. and beyond. The presidential election in particular will play a decisive role in the general course of the federal government’s response to the climate crisis moving forward. Regardless of the outcome, climate justice advocates and everyone else concerned or alarmed about the climate crisis will have their work cut out for them.
Whether you’re looking for analysis of the climate politics that brought us to this moment or proposals for climate action going forward, reading a good book about climate change is always a good place to start. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the election and other climate news, a good climate book can help you understand what’s happening and decide what specific approaches to climate advocacy and climate justice may be right for you and your community. This is true no matter how favorable or unfavorable the policy landscape at the federal level may be in 2025 and beyond.
The following twelve books offer insights into past and present climate politics, public policy actions taken so far, and new approaches to climate action moving forward. This reading list is based on the 12 books to read about climate action ahead of the election reading list by Michael Svoboda at Yale Climate Connections.
This is actually one of the Michael Svoboda climate reading lists that I’ve taken the most issue with. I haven’t read all of these titles, but there are a few I have my doubts about based on the summaries and reviews.
Landing the Paris Agreement is written by the former chief U.S. negotiator on climate change. He certainly has valuable perspective to offer and does seem to be a serious advocate for more rapid and effective climate action. But given the dubious track record of the U.S. in international climate negotiations, I take anything said by any official representative of the U.S. with a grain of salt. It’s definitely still worth reading, but I would keep in mind the problematic relationship between U.S. administrations (yes, even the Democrats!) and climate policy.
Similarly, I am even more skeptical of anything that anyone associated with the military industrial complex has to say about climate change. Threat Multiplier is written by Sherri Goodman, the Pentagon’s first Chief Environmental Officer. Given the fact that the U.S. military emissions are the largest of any country worldwide, readers should be highly skeptical of anything that anyone has to say about how “green.” However, the primary focus of this book is analysis of the climate crisis as a threat multiplier, not singing the praises of the U.S. military’s emissions reductions efforts. Therefore, it may provide valuable information and context related to the intersection between international security concerns and the climate crisis, even though it must be taken with a grain of salt.
My concern about Climate Radicals has nothing to do with the author, who I have no previous familiarity with. Instead, I’m concerned about the main premise of the book! The book sounds like a critique of radical climate actions and praise of the Inflation Reduction Act — which, by the way, would not have been remotely possible without the tireless efforts of frontline climate justice organizers, including some who engaged in actions that the author would surely consider “radical.”
On the bright side, there are some books on this list that lean in a more progressive or even radical direction.
The most radical book on this list — and likely many such lists — is Overshoot: How The World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton. You may have heard of Malm’s previous book How To Blow Up A Pipeline which was adapted into a 2022 film of the same name. Since the book and film are nonfiction and fiction respectively, they’re quite different in terms of their actual content. But they both speak well to the motivations, objectives, and character of militant climate actions such as sabotage of pipeline infrastructure, or less militant property destruction such as slashing tires or interfering with equipment on fossil fuel development sites. Even if you object to strategies and tactics that involve property destruction, these works play a vital role in explaining why people take such actions and shifting the Overton window to make it very clear to broader audiences that passing some mild climate legislation or suing a fossil fuel company is not, in fact, a radical climate act. Honestly, given the horrific short-term and long-term consequences of the climate crisis, responding to polluters with legal action and civil disobedience rather than militant uprisings is a profoundly restrained and circumspect approach.
I’m particularly excited to read What If We Get It Right? by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, co-editor of the amazing All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. As of this writing, What If We Get It Right? is the next book on my climate nonfiction reading list. It continues the vital work of All We Can Save by focusing on visions of a future characterized by successful climate solutions and transformative climate justice. The visions explored in both books aren’t just fanciful dreams of random things we wish we could see in the world. They’re rooted in the lived experiences of people in frontline communities and the evidence provided by experts in many relevant fields. Both books serve as excellent roadmaps to what people who support climate solutions and climate justice can create together in the near-term and long-term. This makes them vital reading at any time of year, but especially when considering the impact of elections and public policy on the climate crisis and the movement for climate justice.
With all of that said, I hope you find this list informative and even enjoyable. The climate crisis itself is often stressful, but reading about it can help by leaving us better-informed and more prepared to take our preferred forms of climate action.
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!
Climate Books To Read Before The 2024 Election
Each book features a description adapted from the description provided by the publisher. The book cover and title link to a Universal Book Link (UBL) that lets you choose where to buy the book.
It took nearly sixty years for a meaningful climate change bill to run the political gauntlet from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office. Why?
Glacial: The Inside Story of Climate Politics is the first Inside-the-Beltway account to lay bare the machinations of what went wrong in Washington—how and why our leaders failed to act on climate change as mounting scientific evidence underscored the urgency to do so.
The good news today is that public opinion is at its highest level of support for climate action, from corporate boardrooms embracing sustainability for business reasons to movements led by passionate younger generations who can’t afford to stand mute because it is they who will inherit the worst environmental catastrophes.
From the U.S. lead negotiator on climate change, an inside account of the seven-year negotiation that culminated in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015—and where the international climate effort needs to go from here.
The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change was one of the most difficult and hopeful achievements of the twenty-first century: 195 nations finally agreed, after 20 years of trying, to establish an ambitious, operational regime to address one of the greatest civilizational challenges of our time.
In Landing the Paris Climate Agreement, Todd Stern, the chief US negotiator on climate change, provides an engaging account from inside the rooms where it happened: the full, charged, seven-year story of how the Paris Agreement came to be, following an arc from Copenhagen, to Durban, to the secret U.S.-China climate deal in 2014, to Paris itself.
A scathing critique of proposals to geoengineer our way out of climate disaster by the bestselling author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline
It might soon be far too hot on this planet. What do we do then? In the era of “overshoot,” schemes abound for turning down the heat–not now, but a few decades down the road. We’re being told that we can return to liveable temperatures by means of technologies for removing CO2 from the air or blocking incoming sunlight.
In Overshoot, two leading climate scholars subject the plans for saving the planet after it’s been wrecked to critical study. Carbon dioxide removal is already having effects, as an excuse for continuing business as usual, while geoengineering promises to bail out humanity if the heat reaches critical levels.
Both distract from the one urgent task: to slash emissions now. There can be no further delay. The climate revolution is long overdue, and in the end, no technology can absolve us of its tasks.
As a journalist on the climate security beat, Peter Schwartzstein has been chased by kidnappers, badly beaten, detained by police, and told, in no uncertain terms, that he was no longer welcome in certain countries. Yet these personal brushes with violence are simply a hint of the conflict simmering in our warming world.
In The Heat and the Fury, he not only puts readers on the frontlines of climate violence but gives us the context to make sense of seemingly senseless acts. What, he asks, can ratchet down the aggression? Can cooperation on climate actually become a salve to heal old wounds?
There are no easy answers on a planet that is fast becoming a powder keg. But Schwartzstein’s incisive analysis of geopolitics, unparalleled on-the-ground reporting, and keen sense of human nature offer the clearest picture to date of the violence that threatens us all.
Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change.
More than thirty years ago, when Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon’s first Chief Environmental Officer, no one would have imagined this role for our armed forces. And yet, today, the Pentagon now considers climate in war games, disaster relief planning, international diplomacy, and even the design of its own bases.
What was the key to this dramatic change in military thinking? What keeps today’s generals and admirals up at night? How can we safeguard our national defense and our planet? No one is better poised to answer these questions than Sherri Goodman, who was at the vanguard of environmental leadership among our armed forces and civilian representatives. In Threat Multiplier, she tells the inside story of the military’s fight for global security, a tale that is as hopeful as it is harrowing.
Why is the United States struggling to enact policies to reduce carbon emissions? Conventional wisdom holds that the wealthy and powerful are to blame, as the oligarchs and corporations that wield disproportionate sway over politicians prioritize their short-term financial interests over the climate’s long-term health. David B. Spence argues that this top-down narrative misses a more important culprit—with critical consequences for the energy transition.
Climate of Contempt offers a voter-centric, bottom-up explanation of national climate and energy politics, one that pinpoints bitter partisanship as the key impediment to transitioning to a net zero carbon future.
Spence explores the effects of polarization, partisanship, and propaganda on energy policy and considers how to build a broader climate coalition. He contends that cooperation on this crucial issue is still possible, but it will require sustained person-to-person engagement across ideological and partisan boundaries to foster a more productive dialogue.
Are radical climate activists hurting the cause?
In Climate Radicals, Cameron Abadi profiles the fascinating activists of Letzte Generation, known for gluing themselves to street intersections and throwing food on works of art; Ende Gelande, which demands the immediate phaseout of coal by occupying mines; and the German leaders of the global coalition Fridays for Future, which organizes school strikes (on Fridays) and many other large-scale demonstrations.
Abadi finds that the groups’ uncompromising stances and outrage over narrowly defined policy failures have led them to extreme acts of publicity that feed their sense of urgency. In contrast, Joe Biden’s American Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 represents the most significant move toward green energy in US history.
Face the truth of climate change, accept your fears, and become the hero that humanity needs.
Facing the Climate Emergency gives people the tools to confront the climate emergency, face their negative emotions, and channel them into protecting humanity and the natural world.
Written for the suffering multitudes struggling to cope and looking for answers, Facing the Climate Emergency provides the motivation, guidance, and support needed to leave “normal” behind and travel the path of the climate warrior, rising to the challenge of our time.
“Everything is sad,” wrote the Ancient poets. But is this sadness merely a human experience, projected onto the world, or is there a gloom attributable to the world itself? Could the universe be forever weeping the “tears of things”?
In Sad Planets, Dominic Pettman and Eugene Thacker explore some of the key “negative affects” – both eternal and emergent – associated with climate change, environmental destruction, and cosmic solitude. In so doing they unearth something so obvious that it has gone largely unnoticed: the question of how we should feel about climate change.
Spanning a wide range of topics – from the history of cosmology to the “existential threat” of climate change – this book is a reckoning with the limits of human existence and comprehension.
Our planet is a fascinating and complex place, but the challenges we face can seem overwhelming. How does our climate actually work? Should we worry about the global supply of drinking water? How much land do we need to grow food? And can technology help reverse the damage we’ve done?
In Atlas of a Threatened Planet, award-winning book and graphic designer Esther Gonstalla digs into these questions and many more through her attractive and easy-to-understand infographics. These accessible and fun illustrations will show readers that, although the threats are grave, not all is lost. Changes in technology, infrastructure, and our outlook can still help us protect the places we love.
Atlas of a Threatened Planet will spark your curiosity and invite you to see the Earth in a new way. It is written for all who want to understand the interlocking pieces of our home—and fight for the best ideas and strategies to save it.
From one of the world’s leading climate scientists, a heart- and mind-changing book that offers a hopeful and attainable vision for restoring the atmosphere and ending the climate crisis.
Climate change is here. From the millions displaced by the floods in Pakistan to Californian and Canadian towns incinerated by wildfires, we are experiencing the anguish that climate change causes. Fossil fuels are making the planet unlivable, and they are deadly. We know that we must cut emissions if we are going to limit the catastrophes, but is that enough?
In Into the Clear Blue Sky, climate scientist and chair of the Global Carbon Project Rob Jackson explains that we need to redefine our goals. As he argues here, we shouldn’t only be trying to stabilize the Earth’s temperature at some arbitrary value. Instead, we can restore the atmosphere itself in a lifetime—and this should be our moral duty.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “With a thoughtfully curated series of essays, poetry, and conversations, the brilliant scientist and climate expert Ayana Elizabeth Johnson has assembled a group of dynamic people who are willing to imagine what seems impossible, and articulate those visions with enthusiastic clarity.”—Roxane Gay
Our climate future is not yet written. What if we act as if we love the future?
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.
Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.
If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it—this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.
With grace, humor, and humanity, Johnson invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question together: What if we get it right?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.