Journal articles and white papers can wait. It's time for some
fun reads.
By Douglas Fischer, The
Daily Climate
Summertime and the
reading is easy. Or should be. Which is why climate-themed summer reading may
go over as well as a declaration that your kids have to do math homework every
morning.
But there is lighter
climate reading to be had. Literature even. Trust the staff at Daily Climate –
the ones who ferreted out articles about the CO2 dress or Lady Gaga's carbon footprint – to find the gems and the must-reads
amid the dense and the doom.
So head to the
hammock. Load the Kindle. Surely you can find room between Agatha Christie and
Danielle Steele for one or two items on this list.
Besides, like your
kids, you need to stay sharp over the summer.
Books
It's summer, so let's
start with the blockbusters:
"Flight
Behavior" by Barbara Kingsolver
"Spillover"
by David Quammen
A-list writers Barbara
Kingsolver and David Quammen both came out recently with books exploring our
changing environment. Kingsolver sets her story in Appalachia, where a
crushingly undereducated, poor, beautiful, bored housewife discovers something
horribly amiss: Millions of monarch butterflies, instead of migrating to
Mexico, are wintering much farther north in her woods.
"Flight
Behavior" mixes tensions: belief and science, wealth and poverty,
education and ignorance. The question is how – or whether – we want to steer
the world toward a better place.
"Spillover"
comes to climate change only in the last chapter. First Quammen takes us
on a global romp tracing the rise of zoonotic diseases – illnesses that jump
from animals and other species to humans. Each chapter brings a disease into
slow focus: Mysterious deaths, grim symptoms, unsuspected infection pathways.
In Quammen's hands, it's gripping stuff.
The final chapter
explores reasons why these diseases are on the rise: Huge human and livestock
populations, habitat destruction, global warming. "It could easily become
a diatribe," warns the Guardian's Alice Roberts. But Quammen "is
careful to emphasize that humans are part of the natural world, not separate
from it – and there lies the problem."
"Odds Against
Tomorrow" by Nathaniel Rich
An engaging novel
about preparing for worst-case scenarios, "Odds" seemed to predict
Hurricane Sandy when the book appeared weeks after the storm hit the East
Coast. It didn't, of course, and Rich doesn't once mention climate change. But
that's on purpose, and readers will find a surprisingly suspenseful, romantic
tale woven amid a story of adaptation and perseverance.
Short stuff
One legit question, as
the mercury settles comfortably in the triple digits: Who has time for novels?
For those stuck in traffic, or on a train, or simply looking for less
commitment, magazine articles – or a podcast – might be the ticket.
Global Warming's Terrifying New Math, by Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone
Last summer activist
and author Bill McKibben launched a movement aimed at castigating fossil fuel
companies and pushing for society to call investments in such companies morally
wrong. Read the article that set it all in motion.
Obama: Stealth Climate Warrior? by Jonathan Foley, Ensia
One of the deeper
thinkers on planetary limits and climate change argues that Obama deserves
props for limiting US emissions – and this before the president's big climate
speech last week.
Why are environmentalists taking anti-science
positions? by Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360
A veteran
environmental reporter explores the dangers environmentalists run by refusing
to listen to science that challenges their views.
Tom
Steyer: Billionaire turned climate activist by Michael Krasny, KQED's Forum
An interview with the
San Francisco investor-turned-activist who raised money for Obama – and now
finds himself now fighting the president and other Democrats who haven't
opposed the Keystone XL pipeline.
Climate of Denial by Al Gore, Rolling Stone
The former veep takes
on the media and the denial industry in a classic essay from 2011.
Looking back
The '90s are hot
again. Well, not as hot as right now, but the retro file has some goodies:
"The Corps and
the Shore" by Orrin Pilkey and Katharine Dixon (1998)
An early and prescient
critic of the Army Corps of Engineers' billion-dollar efforts to thwart nature
and protect coastal real estate, Pilkey and his co-author examine our political
and financial relationship to the beach. All the more relevant now that
sea-level rise has been outlawed in Pilkey's home state of North Carolina.
"End of the Long
Summer" by Dianne Dumanoski (2009)
Take back that part
about no doom and gloom: This book makes a powerful argument that society's
guiding values have become "dangerously obsolete" in our new era. As
summer days grow shorter and we slip into fall, we should be ready, Dumanoski warns,
for surprises.
"The Outermost
House" by Henry Beston (1928)
In the mid-1920s,
Beston spent a year in solitary on the then-deserted dunes of Cape Cod's
barrier beach and penned a memorable diary. But there's no happy ending: After
the book made it famous, the house was relocated back from the eroding beach
twice, then eventually destroyed by a fierce winter storm in 1978.
"The Age of
Missing information" by Bill McKibben (1991)
The least
environmental of McKibben's books chronicles his effort to watch a full 24 hours
of videotape from the same day from each one of the 120-plus cable channels in
the massive Fairfax County, Va., cable system. He then retreats to the
Adirondacks to ponder it all.
"Merchants of
Doubt" by Naomi Oreskes and Michael Conway (2010)
The authors trace a
nomadic group of science contrarians as they sow doubt and misinformation on
behalf of powerful industries on vital health and environmental questions. The
same suspects show up in controversies over tobacco, nutrition, pesticides, the
ozone layer and finally climate change. The authors fail to acknowledge that
these "merchants of doubt" are actually helping to move the coastline
closer to millions of Americans.
"Why People
Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our
Time" by Michael Shermer (2002)
An entertaining
read, recommended
by librarians and writers at the University of California, Berkeley, on what science
is, why science comes up short, and why humans tend to explain unknowns with
belief in things such as extraterrestrials, ghosts, superstitions, and
prejudices.
Daily Climate
publisher Peter Dykstra contributed to this list. Daily Climate is an
independent, foundation-funded news service covering climate change, energy and
the environment. Contact editor Douglas Fischer at dfischer@dailyclimate.org.
Twitter: @TheDailyClimate.