Electrify. An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future by Saul Griffith. In Electrify, Griffith lays out a detailed blueprint—optimistic but feasible—for fighting climate change while creating millions of new jobs and a healthier environment. Griffith’s plan can be summed up simply: electrify everything. He explains exactly what it would take to transform our infrastructure, update our grid, and adapt our households to make this possible.
Drawdown. The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming by Paul Hawken. This book presents the 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world.
Regeneration. Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation by Paul Hawken. This book is a follow-up to the previous-listed book – Drawdown. It presents a practical approach to climate change that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a tapestry of action, policy, and transformation to end the climate crisis.
This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs the Climate by Naomi Klein. “There is still time to avoid catastrophic warming,” Kleine contends, “but not within the rules of capitalism as they are currently constructed. Which is surely the best argument there has ever been for changing those rules.” A New York Times review is linked here.
The Great Transition. Animal Agriculture Cannot be Sustained on the Planet by Lester Brown. Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we’ve waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way.
Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben opens our eyes to the kind of change we’ll need in order to make our civilization endure.
Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies by Sailesh Rao. Using the metaphor of metamorphosis, Carbon Dharma calls for our occupation of the Earth as Butterflies, to undo the damage done by the human species in its present Caterpillar stage of existence.
Madlands: A Journey to Change the Mind of a Climate Sceptic by Anna Rose. An idealistic 20-something environmentalist versus a retired right-wing finance minister: this is the story of Anna Rose’s whirlwind journey around the world with climate skeptic Nick Minchin.
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity by James Hansen – a devastating but all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years from now, if we follow the course we’re on.
The Climate Crisis: An Introductory Guide to Climate Change by David Archer – a concise and accessible overview of what we know about ongoing climate change and its impacts, and what we can do to confront the climate crisis.
Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by Naomi Oreskes – a well-documented, pulls-no-punches account of how science works and how political motives can hijack the process by which scientific information is disseminated to the public.
EcoMind: Changing the Way We Think, to Create the World We Want by Frances Moore Lappe argues that the biggest challenge to human survival isn’t our fossil fuel dependency, melting glaciers, or other calamities. Rather, it’s our faulty way of thinking about these environmental crises that robs us of power.
Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era by Amory Lovins, Marvin Odum and John W. Rowe. How business — motivated by profit, supported by civil society, sped by smart policy — can get the US completely off oil and coal by 2050, and later off natural gas as well.
Plan B 4.0 : Mobilizing to Save Civilization (revised 2009 edition) by Lester Brown explores transitioning to a new energy economy and how this will affect our lives.