Something a little bit different this week! I’m obviously a nerd, so that means I read a lot. And since you all follow what is effectively long-form content I’m assuming you all are at least a little bit nerdy just like me ;)
So I wanted to compile a list of my top Sustainable Nonfiction Recommendations. I have some Fiction recommendations as well, but wanted to keep this somewhat orderly as I could go on forever and make an endless list.
SUSTAINABILITY + CLIMATE
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
A perfect starting spot for when you want to learn more about climate crisis and the solutions out there but just don’t know where to start and are hoping for something geared towards a beginner-medium level understanding! Highly recommend! So many interesting and unique chapters!
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States--scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks, and designers, across generations, geographies, and race--and aims to advance a more representative, nuanced, and solution-oriented public conversation on the climate crisis. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future. We must summon truth, courage, and solutions to turn away from the brink and toward life-giving possibility. Curated by two climate leaders, the book is a collection and celebration of visionaries who are leading us on a path toward all we can save. - Goodreads
POLITICS + ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal by Kate Aronoff
One of the most hopeful and inspiring books I’ve read. I frequently think about it when the world feels grim. It’s a book not just on why we need a better future to stop climate crisis but on why we need a better, more equitable future to live happier, healthier, more connected lives. It focuses on the positives of radical political change through The Green New Deal and what it stands for, not just what it will protect against. Really recommend if you’re curious about the Green New Deal or want to read a vision of what a low-carbon, arts-forward, community-focused green future could look like.
A Planet to Win explores the political potential and concrete first steps of a Green New Deal. It calls for dismantling the fossil fuel industry and building beautiful landscapes of renewable energy, guaranteeing climate-friendly work and no-carbon housing and free public transit. And it shows how a Green New Deal in the United States can strengthen climate justice movements worldwide. We don’t make politics under conditions of our own choosing, and no one would choose this crisis. But crises also present opportunities. We stand on the brink of disaster—but also at the cusp of wondrous, transformative change. -Goodreads
POLITICS + CLIMATE
This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate by Naomi Klein
Or why all our other climate solutions have failed up until this point. The actual reasons why, not just because the technology wasn’t available or it was too expensive. An expose into the politics of climate crisis and a must-read for those wanting to understand climate crisis and how capitalism intersects with it deeper. This Changes Everything debunks every “green capitalism” trick.
Forget everything you think you know about global warming. It's not about carbon—it's about capitalism. The good news is that we can seize this crisis to transform our failed economic system and build something radically better.
You have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. You have been told it's impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the 'free-market' playbook. You have also been told that humanity is too greedy and selfish to rise to this challenge. In fact, all around the world, the fight back is already succeeding in ways both surprising and inspiring. - Goodreads
Special mention to No Logo also by Naomi Klein which focuses on the rise of lifestyle brands, branding, and corporations came to be as a cultural movement and how kind of messed up that made a lot of things with unchecked capitalism.
HISTORY + POLITICS
Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming by James Hoggan
The history of how big oil covered up the truth about climate change for so many decades and how they still continue to cover it. Comes with the receipts. It will make you angry and a bit depressed, so if you do check it out, consider reading the book on the Green New Deal mentioned above as a palette cleanser after. It’s an important read but definitely the most “dense” or “nonfiction-y” read on this list with maybe the exception of the book to follow.
Talk of global warming is nearly inescapable these days — but there are some who believe the concept of climate change is an elaborate hoax. Despite the input of the world’s leading climate scientists, the urgings of politicians, and the outcry of many grassroots activists, many Americans continue to ignore the warning signs of severe climate shifts. How did this happen? Climate Cover-up seeks to answer this question, describing the pollsters and public faces who have crafted careful language to refute the findings of environmental scientists.
Exploring the PR techniques, phony "think tanks," and funding used to pervert scientific fact, this book serves as a wake-up call to those who still wish to deny the inconvenient truth. -Goodreads
HISTORY + POLITICS
The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
Ever wondered why any time shit goes sideways somehow it always seems to get worse after? This is a book detailing Naomi Klein’s thesis of shock politics: it details how when large scale shocking events happen, politicians use these “unprecedented” times to push forward policy that suits themselves and hurts communities. From Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, Shock Doctrine helps connect the dots to how the world has unfolded in a way that makes you go “OMFG. It all makes sense now. BUT I AM SO MAD!” A crucial read if you want to have a better grasp on why things are messed up and why politicians never seem to do what would be best for the people.
The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman's free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement's peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.
At the core of disaster capitalism is the use of cataclysmic events to advance radical privatization combined with the privatization of the disaster response itself. By capitalizing on crises, created by nature or war, Klein argues that the disaster capitalism complex now exists as a booming new economy, and is the violent culmination of a radical economic project that has been incubating for fifty years. -Goodreads
You might be thinking “ugh, free market economics? a whole book on that?” and you’re kind of right but Klein’s writing style is approachable and easy to follow. And it’s certainly not dry. I also view this as just such an important read to inform leftist politics and worldviews that I encourage you to not look past it because of the topics being what they are.
GREENWASHING
Greenwash: Big Brands and Carbon Scams by Guy Pearse
A pretty short but sweet book that succinctly breaks down a whole plethora of corporate greenwashing initiatives. The rating for this book on Goodreads is SO LOW haha–so funny. But the tea is hot in this one.
Going green is the new black for big business. But how real is the climate-friendly revolution that's being advertised? Are big brands and the celebrities endorsing them really as green as they claim? In Greenwash, in the tradition of Fast Food Nation and No Logo, Guy Pearse looks behind the corporate façade – and what he finds will startle you.
Nothing is sacred and no one is safe from scrutiny in this exposé of carbon scams: not the Prius or the Nissan LEAF, not the World Wildlife Fund or Earth Hour, not Oprah or Leonardo DiCaprio. For consumers trying to shop the planet green, Greenwash is a wake-up call. It's also an entertaining and practical book that helps consumers to pick the truly green businesses from the greenwashers and to demand a higher environmental standard from all.
'Before I read Greenwash I thought I could no longer be shocked by the skulduggery of the marketers. How wrong I was. Read Greenwash to be reminded why advertising is called the dark art and how marketing has become the most destructive force on the planet.'—Clive Hamilton, author of Affluenza and Requiem for a Species -Goodreads
BILLIONAIRES BAD LOL
The New Prophets of Capital by Nicole Aschoff
This one’s for you if you have heard about billionaires being bad but you’re honestly not 100% sure why and figure that their philanthropy (of which they do a lot of) might actually be pretty good! A great read on how dangerous it is for individuals to hold that much wealth and power and how their existence is antithetical to an equitable world.
As severe environmental degradation, breathtaking inequality, and increasing alienation push capitalism against its own contradictions, mythmaking has become as central to sustaining our economy as profitmaking.
Enter the new prophets of capital: Sheryl Sandberg touting the capitalist work ethic as the antidote to gender inequality; John Mackey promising that free markets will heal the planet; Oprah Winfrey urging us to find solutions to poverty and alienation within ourselves; and Bill and Melinda Gates offering the generosity of the 1 percent as the answer to a persistent, systemic inequality. The new prophets of capital buttress an exploitative system, even as the cracks grow more visible. -Goodreads
RIGHTS OF NON-HUMANS, LEGAL
Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save The World by David R. Boyd
An incredibly moving book about the rights of animals, trees, and other natural entities. Written by a lawyer (but it isn’t dry at all!), the book covers various important legal cases and discusses how important it is that we start to break down our divide between humans and non-humans legally.
Palila v Hawaii. New Zealand’s Te Urewera Act. Sierra Club v Disney. These legal phrases hardly sound like the makings of a revolution, but beyond the headlines portending environmental catastrophes, a movement of immense import has been building — in courtrooms, legislatures, and communities across the globe. Cultures and laws are transforming to provide a powerful new approach to protecting the planet and the species with whom we share it.
Lawyers from California to New York are fighting to gain legal rights for chimpanzees and killer whales, and lawmakers are ending the era of keeping these intelligent animals in captivity. In Hawaii and India, judges have recognized that endangered species — from birds to lions — have the legal right to exist. Around the world, more and more laws are being passed recognizing that ecosystems — rivers, forests, mountains, and more — have legally enforceable rights. And if nature has rights, then humans have responsibilities. -Goodreads
FLINT’S WATER CRISIS
The Poisoned City: Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy by Anna Clark
We all know about the lead in Flint’s water. But how did it happen? Why did no-one respond to it immediately? Why is it still a problem? This book explains everything the hows and the whys and the wtf’s of it all. An important book and a case study for environmental racism and why we need environmental and racial justice working hand in hand.
In the first full-length account of this epic failure, The Poisoned City recounts the gripping story of Flint’s poisoned water through the people who caused it, suffered from it, and exposed it. It is a chronicle of one town, but could also be about any American city, all made precarious by the neglect of infrastructure and the erosion of democratic decision-making. Cities like Flint are set up to fail—and for the people who live and work in them, the consequences may be mortal. -Goodreads
WHY CANADA’S TAR SANDS SUCK
Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk
This one’s for my fellow Canadians, or those who are really interested in understanding the economics and politics of fossil fuels. It talks about Alberta’s oil sands: how they came to be, why they aren’t profitable (it’s true), and how dangerous it is for Canada to continue to let the tar sands run unchecked. If you want to understand Canada’s economy a bit better or understand why some people cling so dearly to the fossil fuel propaganda, this is the book. Andrew Nikiforuk is one of Canada’s best environmental journalists.
Canada has one third of the world’s oil source; it comes from the bitumen in the oil sands of Alberta. Advancements in technology and frenzied development have created the world’s largest energy project in Fort McMurray where, rather than shooting up like a fountain in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the sticky bitumen is extracted from the earth. Providing almost 20 percent of America’s fuel, much of this dirty oil is being processed in refineries in the Midwest. This out-of-control megaproject is polluting the air, poisoning the water, and destroying boreal forest at a rate almost too rapid to be imagined. In this hard-hitting book, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands and argues forcefully for change. -Goodreads
Want more recommendations?
We read a lot, and this book list is as much for ourselves as it is for you! It's super helpful to be able to reference this guide and check out if a book is or isn't worth it! Hopefully there's a few things you're inspired to add to your To-Read list!
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Additional Reading
Some Bonus Things You May or May Not Want to Check Out
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