With another COP starting today, and the question of climate change having played no role at all in the Dutch elections recently, and, well, for a zillion different reasons – it seems like a good time to ask the question: what books can help to make people move on this topic? (or if you think books are the wrong medium, and we should only look at TikToks or cinema movies or Netflix series, I’d love to hear arguments for that view too).
To me, the most magnificent fiction book on climate change is Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future. It is phenomenal. I hadn’t read it yet when Henry organised a seminar on the book here at Crooked Timber, but I can only say: do read it. Admittedly, the book is very long – and this might be asking too much of many people, given the very many other demands on our lives. But there’s an easy solution: listen to it. This book is perfect as an audiobook. You listen while walking, and you’ll gradually get through the entire book while enjoying your daily walk. Given the many different voices in the book, it might even be better as an audio-book than to read it from paper/screen.
But since The Ministry for the Future already was discussed at length here, let me focus on two other books that might help to centre our awareness and political debates on climate change: Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood and Kimberly Nicholas’s Under the Sky We Make. The first is fiction, the second is non-fiction for citizens. Attention: one spoiler about Birnam Wood under the fold.
Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood is not directly on climate change, but rather tells the story of an activist group that engages in urban gardening – perhaps I should write “guerrilla-gardening”, since they also engage in urban gardening on plots of unused land for which they have no permission. The book is as much about the internal frictions in anarchist activist groups as about the work they are doing (and some of the characters and group dynamics will be recognisable to anyone who has worked in bottom-up, minimally structured activist groups). Yet the main thread of the book is the tension between these well-meaning activists and billionaire-evil, and when to trust profit-maximising humans who say they want to do good. The plot in the book makes for great reading; it’s described as a ‘thriller’ and indeed could tick that box too. But it’s not a book with a happy ending. Let me put it somewhat cryptically to avoid too many spoilers: good does not win over evil in this book, and the ending left me with a sense of despair and somberness. That is in contrast to The Ministry for the Future, which ends well (despite also having its share of human violence) – but then that book has been criticised for being too optimistic. Perhaps the best is to just read a whole pile of such fiction books, so that realism, pessimism, and much-needed-hope are all in the mix?
Kimberly Nicholas’s book Under the Sky We Make is a popular science book – not just climate science, but also climate politics and climate actions. Nicholas is an American climate scientist who teaches at Lund University in Sweden. She has written a book for those who want to know: how bad is climate change? What will happen if this continues? What needs to be done? How and by whom? And what can I, reader of this book, do? She has written an extremely readable book that answers these questions. I suspect anyone can read this, not just people who are used to read scientific or policy reports. There are technical and scientific details, but they are in the footnotes. Nicholas is clearly addressing the 10% richest in the world, whose consumption patterns are incompatible with stabilising the climate. She is not shy of calling out Americans for having lifestyles that are most of all responsible for global warming. And I guess that as an American, who also writes on how she changed her own life, she has more of an authority to do so than others.
What I particularly liked about this book is that it doesn’t fall for the individual behaviour vs policies and structures dichotomy. Both are needed, and she describes what we can do with the most impact: minimize flying and driving, turn your diet as much plants-based as possible, don’t put your money with a dirty bank or pension fund, and join the climate movement: protest, write letters, vote for a green Party. Nicholas talks about our “exploitation mindset”, which is focussed on short-term preference-satisfaction, profit, and using nature for our own desire-satisfaction, as the deeper thing that needs to change: it needs to be replaced with a “regeneration mindset” that values all living beings and the meeting of their needs.
All in all, this makes for an excellent book for citizens who need to start from square zero, or nearby. I’d also recommend Nicholas’s book over Hannah Ritchie’s, which was reviewed here a while ago, since that book has no theory of change, no politics, and doesn’t understand “activism” or collective action. But, if I do compare them, I should also add that Ritchie pays more attention to the Global South, which fits well with the “radical impartiality” principle of the effective altruism movement, which Richie seems to identify with.
Which other books – or movies, or something else – would you recommend to make people move to think about, and act upon, climate, biodiversity and environmental issues?
{ 21 comments }
Kevin Carson 11.10.25 at 8:31 pm
I recommend A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys
Shimon Edelman 11.10.25 at 9:18 pm
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass caused me (along with many others, I imagine) to get involved in climate activism.
Tim Worstall 11.11.25 at 10:26 am
There’s always the 1200 pages of the Stern Review of course.
Target the cost of the externality, impose a carbon tax to do so and we’re largely done. Bit of tidying up around the edges perhaps, modest investments in base techs possibly. Can also be read as well, if you’re not going to impose a carbon tax at that $80 per tonne CO2-e then you’re not being serious.
Works for me…..
Lee A. Arnold 11.11.25 at 9:10 pm
Michael Mann (co-author of the original “hockey stick” paper, 1999) writes popular books and all are highly recommended, but especially his recent book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis (2023). It is sui generis. It is a climatological-biogeochemical history of the earth by its main geological eons, eras, periods & epochs, with special attention to the settings at each extinction event. At every juncture, he stops to relate it to the applicable conditions of today, including up-to-date science findings and possible counterarguments. This is the best sort of pop science book, and it showcases what is possibly the most advanced, up-to-date view of the climate crisis available.
I’m not sure that carbon taxes are necessary, acceptable to many, or properly calculable. The world is doing just fine in switching to renewables, and, unless temperatures suddenly cool down for a while before returning to their climb upwards, the public’s political taste for renewables will grow only stronger. Yet carbon taxes may remain unacceptable to people, due to the hiddenness and complexities of the processes of calculation, incidence, and the inevitable corporate capture.
As to whether carbon taxes are even properly calculable, here we get into a discussion of where policymakers draw their lines. For one thing, just consider the effects of accelerated climate change on the survivability (or resilience) of biodiversity in the fragmented remaining wildlife ecosystems: it will be increasingly devastating. The attempt by economists to price incalculable, ineffable values by way of estimating “ecosystem services” mostly draws attention to their discipline’s hollowness and the decreasing value of economic advice generally, and not just in the face of the awe and beauty of evolution (or creation, take your pick).
More non-fiction:
MFB 11.12.25 at 11:08 am
I’d like to speak up for Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker. Admittedly it’s mainly about the extinction of all wildlife as a result of human activities, but a lot of it is set in Finland in a future where the Finns first tried to turn their tundras into vast grasslands for cattle grazing only to have the grass die away as things warmed up. Depressing, but fairly realistic and a good take on the oligarch culture.
Mike on the Internet 11.14.25 at 3:30 am
Lee A Arnold @4
-The world is not doing just fine in switching to renewables. It is supplementing a still-growing demand for fossil fuels with renewables.
-Whether carbon taxes are understandable or acceptable to regular people has no bearing on whether they are necessary or effective in reducing greehouse gas emissions. Besides, carbon taxes are relatively simple to explain and justify, as far as market solutions go.
-Correct carbon prices do not need to be calculable, and holding out for a demonstrably correct market price is little more than obstruction. Taxing something harmful to the public interest, for the purpose of reducing its production/consumption, is a political act and need not not concern itself with accurately reflecting anyone’s idea of true market value. Compare the example of tobacco taxes; a goverment need not stabilize the price at a level that reflects the true public cost of smoking, but can justifiably ratchet it upwards until people stop smoking. Until the oceans stop warming, the correct price on GHG emissions is simply “more”.
Lee A. Arnold 11.14.25 at 12:48 pm
We obviously need to do much more. My point is that renewables are growing at a faster rate than fossil fuel use already, without the imposition of carbon taxes. Perhaps more thinking should be done about the reasons for this.
Why? Because the argument that “Whether carbon taxes are understandable or acceptable to regular people has no bearing on whether they are necessary or effective” is a judgment from market theory, NOT an observation of political reality. People hate taxes, and most are far more supportive of simple laws or planning policies to support renewables growth.
jlowe 11.14.25 at 3:06 pm
Carbon Criminals and Climate Crimes by Ronald C. Kramer
JPL 11.15.25 at 11:48 pm
I’m a big believer in the importance of literature in “moving citizens” to revise their understanding of significant problems. (And I wish poetry played a more significant role in our current cultural scene.) But important works of fiction with serious practical intent are usually effective on a large scale only when the book is made into a film. So to any fiction writer aiming to have a serious positive impact on the public’s understanding of climate change, I would suggest a story, set in the present, in which the American Republican party and their role in blocking any serious tackling of the problem of climate change is clearly the villain. As big a villain as anyone could imagine. Workable ways of dealing with the problem of carbon emissions and alternative energy sources, etc., are already known; Democrats and the people (including Republican voters) are, apart from the malignant political influence of the Republicans, already on board with the idea of effectively impeding global warming; the Republican party remains a key point of obstruction. The novel should be a roman-a-clef, and seriously researched on the inner workings of the anti-climate mechanisms and misguided economic interests that are being pursued by the Republican-fossil fuel plutocracy. The astonishing depravity of the depths some people will go, simply for more money– money, of all things– for their own selves, to knowingly bring about the extinction not only of human life, but of all life in the universe (so far there is no good evidence of any other appearance of the divine phenomenon of life), since this planet would be heading for a state similar to Venus, where no life is possible, all should be brought out and the individuals responsible exposed. A happy ending is nice, but, faute de mieux, a tragedy can be even better than a comedy in focusing an audience’s positive responses. (Have there not been one or two previous films that have successfully addressed this problem? I’ll bet such have been noted here at Crooked Timber.)
JPL 11.16.25 at 12:14 am
BTW, in the event all life in the universe were extinguished, the universe would go on existing, with all the properties it currently has, but it would not, and would never again, be known to exist. A universe with life and action in it, which would have the possibility of mathematics, language, knowledge, understanding and reflection, seems like a good reason behind the creation myths. I seem to be remembering Michael Frayn; has he done something along these lines?
engels 11.16.25 at 5:52 pm
in the event all life in the universe were extinguished, the universe would go on existing, with all the properties it currently has, but it would not, and would never again, be known to exist
Never say never
https://www.livescience.com/dark-energy-could-lead-to-a-second-and-third-and-fourth-big-bang-new-research-suggests
JPL 11.16.25 at 10:05 pm
“Never say never.”
Interesting. Sadly, any evidence of our current attempt would be inaccessible to the denizens of the subsequent attempt. For that matter, under that hypothesis, there could have been previous attempts that we can’t have access to. If the dependency pathways for a big bang are assumed to be open-ended in both directions– toward the initial conditions and toward the unfolding of the results– then the conditions for an explanation of why matter and energy (of both kinds, which seem to be in some sort of reciprocal relation) came into existence in the first place would be absent. How about a novel/film, a mystery, called “God goes back to the drawing board”? But there’s another mystery: What are the conditions for the appearance in any universe of the phenomenon of purposeful adaptive action?
Raskos 11.17.25 at 6:09 am
@9
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy might satisfy your requirement for fiction that combines climate science with the machinations of government.
engels 11.17.25 at 4:17 pm
How about a novel/film
Groundhog Aeon?
steven t johnson 11.17.25 at 8:32 pm
Sorry, can’t resist….The recent release Bugonia has a happy ending and the planet is saved. The credits say it was based on a South Korean film, Save the Green Planet!
KT2 11.18.25 at 4:36 am
Ingrid, you are #12 in a 3136 list !!! of – seemingly worthy, ymmv – books w links re; “Which other books – or movies, or something else – would you recommend to make people move to think about, and act upon, climate, biodiversity and environmental issues?”
(Holiday bumper scroll thru).
“How to provision sustainably
From Crossing the Sacred Sea [Cruzando el mar sagrado]
by Nathan A. Strait
(View Zotero library on zotero.org)
Sue Nichols Zimmerman (2025) Plainsong Farm integrates Christian formation with sustainable agriculture: visitors come to the working farm in Michigan to learn about agricultural, environmental and spiritual practices [u]
Grace O’Connor, Kimberley Reis, Ingrid Burkett, & Cheryl Desha (2025) The ‘farmily’ that changed me: an ethnography and autoethnography of small-scale farming and Agrarian worldviews in Australia [d]
James Campbell & Rob Jones(2024) Don’t panic! We CAN save the planet [i]
Jason A. Heppler (2024) Silicon Valley and the environmental inequalities of high-tech urbanism [i]
Angela Kallhoff & Eva Liedauer [ed] (2024) Greentopia: utopian thought in the Anthropocene [i] [d]
…
[‘Our’ Andrew Leigh is before your entry Ingrid. A travesty!]
Andrew Leigh (2024) How economics explains the world: a short history of humanity [or: The shortest history of economics] [i]
…
Ingrid Robeyns (2024) Limitarianism: the case against extreme wealth [i]
…
George Perkins Marsh(1864/2003) Man and nature [i] [u]
Justus Liebig & John Blyth(1843/1859) Familiar letters on chemistry: in its relations to physiology, dietetics, agriculture, commerce, and political economy [o] [u]
William Cobbett (1821/1979) Cottage economy [i] [u]
Thomas Paine (1796/1987) Agrarian justice [i] [u]
Copyright © 2010–2025 Nathan A. Strait(contact me)
14th edition, last updated: 1 October 2025 (View Zotero library on zotero.org)
Statistics: authors, journals, publishers
URL of this page: https://sea.nathanstrait.com/provisioning-sustainably
Serendipity found above as I searched…
– “ingrid robyens” Arthur P. J. Mol
… at this mention and a bit of history re Dutch researchers;
; “”However, the strong critique of capitalism that formed the basis of the Environmental Sociology Section of the ASA began to break down in 2003. In October–November 2003, a conference was organized at the University of Wisconsin in honor of Schnaiberg and the treadmill of production perspective, constituting a neo-Marxist tradition central to U.S. environmental sociology that depicted the conflict between capitalism’s accumulation tendencies and the environment. Yet, the conference as it turned out had a dual agenda, since Dutch ecomodernists Arthur P. J. Mol and Gert Spaargaren were also invited.33”
The last paragraph in “Eco-Marxism and Prometheus Unbound” will surely have John Bellamy Foster listed as a traitor. Yet I liked the highlighting and juxtaposition of Eco modernism vs capitalist ecological modernization. Again – ymmv.
“Eco-Marxism and Prometheus Unbound”
by John Bellamy Foster
“This article was prepared as a paper for presentation as a keynote address to the Fourth World Congress on Marxism, Beijing, October 11–12, 2025.”
…
“In the West, the notion of ecological modernization, while unobjectionable in itself as part of a comprehensive process of environmental change, has come to stand ideologically for the restrictive model of capitalist ecological modernization. Here it is suggested that environmental problems can be addressed by technological means alone within the established social relations of capitalism in a purely reformist context. Distinct from this, socialist ecological modernization, as envisioned in China and in a few other postrevolutionary states, is substantively different. It requires a break with the social relations of capital accumulation, facilitating changes in the human relation to nature that are of a revolutionary character, aimed at the creation of an ecological civilization geared to sustainable human development.
A parallel problem arises with respect to the notion of “Prometheanism,” … “In the contemporary capitalist view, the Promethean myth has been transformed in such a way that it is seen as standing for technology and power, even for industrial revolutions.1”
…
“Theoretically, environmental sociology in the United States prior to the second decade of the present century was dominated by the Marxian critique of capitalism and its ecological degradation. This included not only those, like Schnaiberg, who subscribed to the treadmill of production framework, but also those associated with second-stage ecosocialism, many of whom were identified with the Environmental Sociology Section of the ASA.32
“However, the strong critique of capitalism that formed the basis of the Environmental Sociology Section of the ASA began to break down in 2003. In October–November 2003, a conference was organized at the University of Wisconsin in honor of Schnaiberg and the treadmill of production perspective, constituting a neo-Marxist tradition central to U.S. environmental sociology that depicted the conflict between capitalism’s accumulation tendencies and the environment. Yet, the conference as it turned out had a dual agenda, since Dutch ecomodernists Arthur P. J. Mol and Gert Spaargaren were also invited.33 These thinkers set about criticizing neo-Marxist approaches to the environment and defending capitalism’s ability to solve environmental problems simply by technological means—in effect offering a new, more nuanced human exemptionalism, which had emerged out of the environmental reform movement in Europe. The debate persisted for years. Ecological modernization—though widely recognized as theoretically and empirically weak compared to radical ecological and ecosocialist analyses—eventually gained considerable prominence due to its greater conformity to the system, with the official prestige and support that this provided. For Mol and Spaargaren, it was necessary to move away from “the ecologically inspired strand of environmental sociology.” The new ecological paradigm was accused of “coquetting with ecology,” representing an unacceptable “hybrid of sociology and ecology.” Mol and Spaargaren contended that there was no “key obstruction” to environmental reform under capitalist relations of production.34
“At their best, capitalist ecological modernists advanced the notion that technology and markets could meet environmental challenges within the capitalist system through mild, light-green reforms without changes in social relations; at their worst, they denied all need for radical ecological strategies and movements. In 2010, Mol, the leading representative of ecological modernization theory, was given the Distinguished Contribution (or lifetime) Award from the Environmental Sociology Section of the ASA, indicating that ecological modernization theory, despite its opposition to the radical ecological critique, and its general anti-environmentalist stance, was now considered within the proper purview of the discipline. This reflected a general growth of anti-environmentalism, with the percentage of Americans who considered themselves environmentalists dropping from 76 percent in 1989 to 41 percent in 2021.35
Academic ecological modernization theory had its roots in Cold War modernization theory.”
…
https://monthlyreview.org/articles/eco-marxism-and-prometheus-unbound/#en33
James 11.18.25 at 4:11 pm
One superb pairing with Robinson is Stephen Markley’s The Deluge, which very self consciously both a climate novel and in the vein of Great American Novels (for better and for worse). Keith Woodhouse had a good piece on The Deluge (amid other novels) in Public Books this past summer, and a friend told me there’s a podcast about The Deluge she listens to (although I don’t remember the name).
nonrenormalizable 11.19.25 at 1:55 pm
I haven’t watched it, but I believe Adam McKay’s “Don’t Look Up” was supposed to be (at least in part) an allegory for humanity’s response to climate change. A quick search pulls up this brief review of it here by Chris Bertram, with the focus more on addressing global problems in general and how the US’s internal politics acts gets in the way of the rest of the world solving them — as reaffirmed by recent attempts to regulate the emissions of shipping traffic. I think this was before you started writing here, Ingrid, so I wonder what your thoughts on this (apparently divisive) film are (if you’ve seen it).
nonrenormalizable 11.19.25 at 1:56 pm
Moving away from media depictions, I found the acute phase of the Covid pandemic to encapsulate the world’s current willingness and readiness to address climate change — it was a sort of “test event”, if you will — both at the level of nation states and at the level of families and individuals.
I accept that there are multiple ways to evaluate how the world as a whole fared, but my own assessment is not positive. I don’t necessarily want to rehash every policy debate etc. of that era, but in broad terms:
A lot of people, perhaps a majority, were willing or accepted the need to modify their behaviour for the benefit of the most vulnerable groups (who would otherwise die or suffer), as well as for the population as a whole (who would have to endure harsher restrictions for longer).
A lot of people, at least a significant minority, were not willing to do the above, and continued to engage in their normal behaviour, including actively participating in events that they had been told would worsen conditions for everyone, and especially themselves.
People who had otherwise not engaged politically, or who had little interest in public health, seemed to become extremely radicalised by the measures imposed to combat the crisis, and were drawn into supporting anti-system political parties and embracing wider conspiratorial thinking.
Governments that acknowledged the crisis could not provide clear and consistent messaging about the reasoning behind policies, and sometimes (rightfully or not) communicated public directives driven by second-order reasoning about public reaction (e.g. on the usefulness of masking).
Different approaches by different governments and sub-state administrations — partly due to lack of knowledge of the underlying crisis, partly due to different geographic and demographic profiles — led to perceptions of unfairness among populations under more restrictive measures.
The current media ecosystem is very diffuse and decentralised (though perhaps not in terms of funding), with few wide-reaching figures of trust and many narrow-casting (though this could still mean 100s of thousands) personalities. In the latter group, the public’s perception of their politics and inter-group relations determines their credibility.
Forming positive consensus for action in the social-media age is hard (except for humorous cases, e.g. “Boaty McBoatface”), forming negative consensus (i.e. pile-ons and “cancelling”) is easy.
Many media organisations are willing to platform and champion dissenting views to any widely agreed upon course of action, regardless of whether the dissent is in good faith and free from conflicting interests. Simultaneously, publics in many countries have been conditioned into expecting and finding the “here’s what they don’t want you to know” view on any subject, looking to find out “quo vadis”, and how any proposed change is cheating them out of what they feel they deserve.
When pushed, an advanced economy like the US can still explore and develop a cutting edge technology (mRNA vaccines) in response to a crisis, and many countries around the world still have the state capacity to quickly adopt and utilise the new technology (or indeed, develop and use an older form of vaccine).
Some of these points were apparent pre-pandemic, some may have been noted by policy makers in developing their response plans for future crises. On the whole, I find it hard to see a great improvement on them before the mid-way point of the century.
My only hope for an adequate global response to climate change is that, unlike Covid, the climate crisis is still slow-moving enough that we might have enough time to prevent or mitigate its worst effects. Unfortunately, that slow-moving nature means that it is also much easier for many people to still ignore or downplay it until we saunter past tipping points and face much more immediate disruption to our lives.
Ingrid Robeyns 11.19.25 at 3:49 pm
Thanks ‘Nonrenormalizable’. Re ‘Don’t look up’ – I did see the film but did not read Chris’ review at the time (although I’ve been part of the Crooked Timber Crew since 2006, there are periods when I am so overburdened with work + care/labour that I don’t get to read what others write, let alone write myself). I did see the movie, though, and reading Chris’s review now sadly predicted the mess we would be in. I didn’t know this film was divisive at the time – why? From what I remember, I thought it was just over the top (even for satire), but also painfully true: we have been looking away, and we are looking away. Case in point: in the Dutch elections a couple of weeks ago, there was just no talk about climate in mainstream discussions. A very large percentage of the voters see climate action as ‘left’ and the left have become framed as extremists (yes, the extreme-right is working hard and getting results). I suspect many Dutch don’t care about all the drowning and starving Pakistani and Africans (which they would perhaps deny but which their voting behaviour is affirming); but with a country that lies to a large extent under sea level, and which is also vulnerable to flash floods, one would have a self-interest to take climate change seriously. Frankly, I find it often hard not to feel down when contemplating this.
nonrenormalizable 11.19.25 at 5:39 pm
Thanks Ingrid @20, and sincere apologies for mistaking the length of your tenure on this blog — my only excuse is that I’ve only become a regular reader over the last three or four years. (Apologies also to readers for the garbled formatting of my comment @19, the big middle paragraph is supposed to be bullet-pointed.)
Having only experienced this film through the trailer and “the Discourse” (RIP?), my understanding is that part of the antipathy towards it is because it came out too soon after the height of Covid, poking at a raw wound in the psyche of its most receptive audience: fans of technocratic, science-based policy-making, who were still reeling from things like the “UV cleaning”/”bleach”/hydroxychloroquine press conferences. Those opposed to that point of view felt it was more “liberal preaching” by a director who did not seem to have the most coherent set of political views. I think there’s also a roman-a-clef sense about some of the characters, particularly the media figures, that was enjoyed/disliked by critics/fans of those figures respectively, and the discussion of those relationships also turned people off seeing it (myself included, I must admit).
I suppose that the problem with using satire in general to convey a message about an issue like climate change is that, as you say, it is an issue that the public at large seems to want to look away from. Satire may work best when the subject is something everyone wants to talk about, but can’t, either because it is prohibited by law/religion/culture, or because people are so upset/angered by the issue that they can’t express themselves properly. Otherwise, a satirical piece becomes a sort of salve to the groups of people who do want to talk about the issue, telling them “you’re not crazy for thinking that this is wrong/dangerous/important!”, while not really connecting with those who are indifferent.
From my limited knowledge of politics in the Netherlands (based on briefly living there almost two decades ago and keeping up with friends there), to a certain extent one could excuse the lack of climate discussion for this election — it does seem like other problems there are currently more pressing. And really the discussion should be taking place at the EU level, given the scope for action and the identities of the largest contributors of emissions in Europe.
But I also find it hard to believe that there was no discussion of climate change at all — what is a party like GroenLinks for otherwise? And surely policies regarding power generation, perhaps couched in terms of national security (i.e. Russia-Ukraine) rather than climate, were put to the voters?
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