Climate-themed books that will change the way you see the world and yourself

Leah ThomasShe is the founder of Intersectional Environmentalist, a platform that advocates for climate issues to include all levels of marginalization including race, disability, and class. The Intersectional EnvironmentalistIt is a good place to start for anyone who wants to be involved in or learn more about environmental justice. In this book, Thomas also includes essays and thoughts from 30 contributors, like José González, the founder of Latino OutdoorsSophia Li, a climate journalist, speaks out against anti-Asian racism, and how racism intersects with environmental justice.

This novel, originally published in Spanish, is reproduced here. La mucama de OmicunléRita Indiana, a Dominican writer and musician, explores environmental justice through gendered art and music to tell a story about capitalism and climate change. In Tentacle, the Caribbean has become a barren, nearly destroyed land overtaken by brown sludge — this sludge, which ends up being a biological hazard, is quickly spreading across the Atlantic Ocean. Acilde Figueroa, a young maid, is given the task of saving the ocean and humanity. Acilde must travel back to the past in order to accomplish the impossible. But before that, a sacred anemone aids her in becoming the man she always knew. Set in the near future and always looking towards the past TentacleThis ambitious work spans time and space while simultaneously addressing the climate crisis through a singular lens.

This is a masterpiece in investigative writing. Yellow DirtThis is the heartbreaking and harrowing story of how governments and corporations have harmed generations Navajos through uranium mines on the Navajo Reservation (which borders Utah and New Mexico) from the 1930s until the 1960s. After the mines were closed, cancer rates, miscarriages, and birth complications rose in the Navajo community. Unbeknownst to the Navajos, they were being intentionally poisoned by governing bodies that were very much aware of uranium’s fatal impacts. Yellow DirtThis is a story about one of the most horrific acts of environmental violence against innocent people. It also demands justice for the Navajos.

Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, an Indigenous writer of mixed heritage, is Allison Adelle Hedge Coke. She was born in Texas but was raised in North Carolina and Canada. Her poetry collection also includes poems from Texas. StreamingHer Indigenous background and current state of the planet are used to ask important questions about the future. Her poetry explores what lies ahead for us if this road continues and the horrors others are currently experiencing. In graceful lyricism, she also shows us the beauty and fragility of the Earth. StreamingThis is an urgent read in a chaotic world. It is a call to action and reflection.

Heartbreakingly, for decades we’ve witnessed majestic predators, like snow leopards and white-tipped sharks, go extinct or become endangered. While conservation efforts have been made to address this problem, the human-caused climate crisis is accelerating and these animals are now in greater danger than ever. Their former positions at the top of their food chain are being lost. And if they’re in danger, then so are we. In Where the Wild Things Were, science journalist William Stolzenburg explores the consequence of these predators’ absence, showing that we are all intertwined in delicate, beautiful ways.

Octavia Butler was one of the most formidable Afrofuturist authors, and her work offers many lessons applicable to issues of environmental injustice and the climate crisis’ disproportionate impact on Black people. Originally a futuristic novel when Butler published it in 1993, it’s now sobering to realize that the book, set in 2024, is quickly becoming the present. Parable of the SowerThe post-apocalyptic novel is about Lauren Olamina, a 15-year-old girl who grows up in the chaos and anarchy of the global climate crisis. California is full with water shortages and chaos on the streets. People are robbers and murderers just to survive. Lauren is sheltered inside a gated community with her protective preacher father and other family members, all while her hyper-empathy — a debilitating sensitivity to the emotions of others — puts her in increasing danger. Lauren must act if she wants her loved ones to be safe from the devastation and if she wants humanity to thrive.

Created by Jean-Marc Rochette & Jacques Lob SnowpiercerLe Transperceneige (originally published in French) was written by Benjamin Legrand with the second volume written by Olivier Bocquet. The graphic novel portrays a world where government leaders released chemicals into the air to prevent the destruction caused by a man-made climate change. The Earth quickly becomes uninhabitable — spending a few minutes in the cold leads to death. But a luxury train founded by Mr. Wilford becomes a line for salvation, with humanity’s most powerful fleeing to first-class cabins. There is oppression at the back of the train. “Unticketed” passengers — people who forced their way onto the train to survive — are made to eat protein blocks made out of bugs and resort to cannibalism. Snowpiercer is a commentary about class and the climate crisis, with themes sure to resonate. It was adapted into a 2013 movie directed by Bong Joon-ho and starring Chris Evans, and it’s also inspired the currently airing TNT show of the same name, starring Daveed Diggs and Jennifer Connelly.

A botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Robin Wall Kimmerer braids her different threads of knowledge into this compelling read that is “as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical,” according to journalist and author Elizabeth Gilbert. Kimmerer uses Indigenous biocultural knowledge to teach readers about living organisms like asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass, and how they’re an intrinsic part of our world. Humans’ relationship to nature, Kimmerer argues, is more than reciprocal. We are inseparable with every living creature and organism in the world. This is why it is important to understand. Sweetgrass braidingThis is how we can restore the balance that has been lost.

Robert Macfarlane is a master of the art of nature writing. He draws on science, myth, literature, and folktale to tell an epic story of what lies below the Earth, in lands that have captured humans’ fascination since the beginning of our time. He examines the Bronze Age funeral chambers and catacombs below Paris, prehistoric art from Norwegian sea caves, underground fungal networks that allow trees to communicate, and prehistoric art in Norwegian marine caves. He also writes about sunken places where nuclear debris will live for the next 100 years.

In this beautiful book, Macfarlane ponders whether we are good caretakers of this Earth we’ve been given — from the land above to everything fantastical and mysterious below.

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Nylah Burton, a Chicago-based writer. Follow her on Twitter @yumcoconutmilk.

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