Recommended Books

Freinkel treks through history, science and the global economy to assess the real impact of plastic in our lives through eight familiar plastic objects. Each one illuminates a different facet of our synthetic world to give us a new way of thinking about a substance that has become the defining medium—and metaphor—of our age. 

Having detailed the coming man-made climate disaster in her Pulitzer-winning The Sixth Extinction, Kolbert explores the costs of trying to repair the mess by more manipulation of Mother Nature. “By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic,” says the jacket.

In Net Zero the economist Professor Dieter Helm addresses the action we would all need to take, whether personal, local, national or global, if we really wanted to stop causing climate change.

Although it never plumbs the depths of worthy of a full understanding of the climate challenge, this book is well worth reading, and will elevate public awareness as fully as its own position on the Times best-seller list. Hopeful, coolly nerdy, and useful.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a dangerously unstable planet. In this edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession. 

By the founder of 350.org and dean of popular climate writing, this, his most recent book, offers us a perfect storm of the disasters that lie ahead if we don’t pay attention: artificial intelligence, genetic manipulation, and climate meltdown. Read and tremble.

Examining clean energy laws in Texas, Kansas, Arizona, and Ohio over a thirty-year time frame, Stokes argues that organized combat between advocate and opponent interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis. This book is recommended by Third Act in their 2023 Public Utilities Commission Teach-In Webinar.