The Climate Book
“This is the biggest story in the world”
The Climate Book is a nonfiction collection of short chapters on climate solutions, climate science, and climate action. The five main sections are organized by thematic questions: “How Climate Works,” “How Our Planet Is Changing,” “How It Affects Us,” “What We’ve Done About It,” and “What We Must Do Now.” Sections are comprised of sub-sections, each of which brings together several mini-chapters structured around key concepts. For example, a sub-section 3.8 “We are not all in the same boat,” contains six concept-oriented chapters: “Life at 1.1°C,” “Environmental Racism,” “Climate Refugees,” “Sea-level Rise and Small Islands,” “Rain in the Sahel,” Winter in Sápmi,” and “Fighting for the Forest.” The 101 mini-chapters are short, ranging from two to seven pages, and written in an accessible language even though they are authored by high-level disciplinary experts. Greta Thunberg’s voice—in section introductions and summaries, as well as introductions to sub-sections—guides the entire collection. This frames the book’s message through the lens of concerns and dreams of youth climate activists around the world. The chapters are supported by graphics, sources, and additional materials available on the book’s website.
The organization of The Climate Book—from challenges to solutions, and with each chapter introducing essential keywords and concepts—makes it accessible and adaptable a wide variety of classroom uses. Students can choose individual chapters to connect with specific topics in any subject area or engage with several (interconnected) topics through several (disciplinary) lenses. Chapters and sections can be studied as stand-alone pieces or combined in thematic or dialogical sets: for example, about consumerism (chapter 4.19) and waste (chapter 4.21); about impacts of a fossil fuel civilization (1.4); tipping points and feedback loops (1.8); future warming scenarios (chapter 2.24), geoengineering (chapter 4.8), drawdown (chapter 4.9), degrowth (chapter 4.26), systems change and creating an ecological civilization (chapters 5.2, 5.3, 5.7 and 5.16); changing forests (chapters 2.9, 2.16-18, 3.15, 4.7 and 5.21) or food systems (2.22, 3.7, 3.18, 5.5 and 5.7). Likewise, Greta’s summaries can be read alongside chapters authored by scientists, scholars or experts to compare and contrast their different registers, impacts, and highlights. For example, Greta’s introduction to Section 3.1 “The world has a fever” pairs well with chapters that talk about global heating and its wide sociobiological impacts (chapters 2.2, 2.24, 3.9, 3.17, 3.19, 4.5, 4.14, 4.24, 5.13 and 5.19-20).
Perhaps most importantly for climate literacy pedagogy, The Climate Book makes it clear that the climate emergency is not just about emissions, weather or climate science; it is also about human beliefs, attitudes and stories that guide our actions. Although it incorporates insights from leading experts in the fields of climate science, policy, economy and others, The Climate Book frames the climate emergency not as a science issue but as a socioscientific, cultural and worldview issue with existential implications across all domains of human life, from food, transportation and energy to migrations, law, justice, and socioeconomic inequality. While Greta’s voice is loud and clear, the book is not a single person’s perspective. It is instead a chorus of a broad, intersectional human collective. In its advocacy for urgent climate action and intergenerational coalitions, The Climate Book is intellectually and emotionally compelling to a broad, general audience of high schoolers and above, not merely to disciplinary specialists.
©2024 ClimateLit (Marek Oziewicz)
Link to Book’s Website: https://theclimatebook.org/
Publisher: Penguin Random House, 2022
Pages: 446
ISBN: 9780593492321
Audience: Ages 14+
Format: Nonfiction, Youth-Authored
Topics: Climate Action, Climate Emergency, Climate Justice, Climate Literacy, Climate Migration, Climate Refugees, Climate Science, Collective Climate Action, Consumerism, Degrowth, Drawdown, Ecological Civilization, Energy, Environmental Law, Feedback Loops, Food, Forests, Fossil Fuels, Geoengineering, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Greta Thunberg, Human Impact, Intergenerational Coalitions, Sea Level Rise, Solutions, Sustainable Transportation, System Change, Systems Care, Tipping Points, Waste Reduction, Wealth Inequality, Weather, Youth Climate Activism