What to read to understand climate change
CLIMATE CHANGE touches everything. It is reshaping weather systems and coastlines, altering where crops can be grown, which diseases thrive, and how armies fight. Rising temperatures affect geopolitics, migration, ecosystems and the economy. It will remake societies and the world. In November, delegates will flock to Egypt for COP27, this years edition of the annual UN climate confab. The science, economics and politics of climate change are so legion, complicated and interconnected they can be hard to get a handle on. These six books and one report offer an excellent introduction to the climate crisis. What We Know About Climate Change. By Kerry Emanuel. MIT Press; 88 pages; $15.95. Blackwells; 11.99 This primerfirst published in 2007 and substantially updated since, most recently in 2018is an accessible introduction to the science of climate change. Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist and meteorologist at MIT, canters through how and why the Earths systems changed in the past, how humans have affected them by burning fossil fuels, and describes the main unanswered questions in climate science. He also summarises the politics of climate change. Though Mr Emanuel is a self-described conservative, he is no partisan. He criticises politicians of all stripes for failing to rise to the enormous challenge climate change represents. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. By Elizabeth Kolbert. Picador; 302 pages; $15.99. Bloomsbury; 12.99 The fact that climate change is causing change and damage to the planets biodiversity is widely known. But the great extent and potentially catastrophic consequences of this crisis are not. Human societies depend on healthy ecosystems, and damage to them poses as great a risk as any other feature of climate change. In The Sixth Extinction Elizabeth Kolbert, of the New Yorker magazine, documents Earths five previous mass extinctions and looks at evidence that another is underway. She presents a variety of case studies, including of bats killed off by fungus, coral reefs weakened and wasted by ocean acidification, and the ever-decreasing numbers of amphibians. The result is, somehow, simultaneously uplifting and depressing. It is a reminder of the breadth and beauty of life on the planet, as well as its ongoing devastation. (Read our full review, from 2014.) How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. By Bill Gates. Knopf; 272 pages; $26.95. Allen Lane; 20 Unlike Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, two tech billionaires obsessed with the idea of settling space, Bill Gatess response to the climate crisis is more down to earth. One of the worlds most influential philanthropists, Mr Gates thinks that green innovation must accelerate significantly if the costs of climate change are to be manageable. He writes sensibly about the low-carbon technologies that he thinks have the most potential, and the ways in which they should be implemented. He is keen on nuclear power, decarbonising electricity and particularly bullish on carbon pricingall of which are increasingly gaining traction. None of his arguments is particularly new, but that is part of their attraction. They are realistic, considered suggestions on how countries and businesses might organise themselves in the face of a monumental challenge, offered by someone with first-hand experience of changing the world. (Read our full review, from 2021.) Climate Justice. By Mary Robinson. Bloomsbury Publishing; 176 pages; $16 and 9.99 After serving as Irelands first female president and the UNs High Commissioner on Human Rights, Mary Robinson set up an NGO that focuses mostly on improving lives in Africa. Doing so, she says, taught her just how disproportionately climate change affects the worlds poorest, who are least responsible for causing it. In this book, Ms Robinson tells the stories of people whose lives and livelihoods have been harmed by rising temperatures. The issues it raises about international justice are particularly worth thinking about ahead of COP27, given that many delegates to the conference want to discuss whether and how much compensation rich countries should pay for the global warming their emissions have caused. The IPCCs Sixth Assessment Report: Summaries for policymakers Working Group I: Physical science (published August 2021) Working Group II: Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (published February 2022) Working Group III: Mitigation (published April 2022) Every few years since 1990 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released encyclopaedic reports assessing the state of climate science. The sixth looked at the physical science, the impacts of climate change and possibilities for mitigation. These are remarkable works of scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors. Pithier summaries of the report are negotiated and signed off by policymakerssometimes presenting watered-down versions of the main reports findings. Their conclusions are nonetheless stark: climate change is widespread, rapid and intensifying and the world must quickly and completely curtail greenhouse-gas emissions to avert catastrophe. The reports also propose emergency policies that might mitigate or limit the damage done by extreme warming. They are an essential guide to the scientific consensus on climate change. How to Blow Up a Pipeline. By Andreas Malm. Verso Books; 208 pages; $19.95 and 10.99 Despite its eye-catching title, this book is not a how-to guide to terrorism. Yet it is an impassioned argument for climate activists to move beyond non-violent protests and to damage the infrastructure that underpins the fossil-fuel economy. The author, a Swedish academic, does not advise hurting people. He offers an account of what has, and has not, been achieved by climate resistance, especially by protesters in rich countries. He looks at massive sit-ins in Europe in the early 2000s; demonstrations against oil pipelines led by Native Americans, such as the one at Standing Rock; youth activism whipped up by Greta Thunberg and her peers; as well as the newer incarnations of climate groups including Extinction Rebellion. Even for those who disapprove of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, it is a useful guide to the noisiest climate activist voices. The Ministry for the Future. By Kim Robinson. Orbit; 576 pages; $30. Little, Brown; 20 Climate change is not an easy subject for novelists. It is most often tackled through science fiction, which inevitably makes the issue seem removed from reality. The Ministry for the Future, Kim Robinsons sprawling, wonkish novel, readdresses that problem. Set in the near future, it is by no means far-fetched. Fatal levels of heat and humiditywhich in the books terrifying opening kill some 20m people across Indias northern plainsare becoming more common in the real world. Mr Robinsons tale, which revolves around a United Nations agency given the task of averting total climate catastrophe, is also notable for its focus on diplomacy and international co-operationas frustrating and slow as they might bealongside flashier technological solutions. It is a book that helps the reader to think about the consequences of climate change and the messy, imperfect ways humanity might respond to it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Also try: The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World. By Oliver Morton. Princeton University Press; 440 pages; $16.95. Granta; 12.99 As the pace of climate change quickens, so too do the more outlandish discussions of how it might be averted. Among the most controversial suggestions for dealing with climate change is geoengineering, in which humans wilfully intervene in climate processes to bring temperatures down. In this book one of our senior editors discusses the science and history of these strategies, and their potential implications, including ethical challenges that would arise if they were attempted. Our own correspondents and editors write regularly about climate change. A lengthy article from 2021 considered the challenges of stabilising the climate. More recently an article on Asias energy transition (from October 2022) followed another lengthy one on the general costs of shifting to cleaner sources of power. This one looked at the challenges of measuring emissions and more. Correction (October 31st, 2022): An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to Mary Robinson as Irelands first female prime minister. She was the countrys first female president. No woman has ever served as taoiseach. Sorry.