Recommended Reading

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie

It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will vanish from our oceans, and that we should reconsider having children. But in this bold, radically hopeful book, data scientist Hannah Ritchie argues that if we zoom out, a very different picture emerges. In fact, the data shows we’ve made so much progress on these problems that we could be on track to achieve true sustainability for the first time in human history. 

Climate Optimism: Celebrating Systemic Change Around the World by Zahra Biabani

The fate of humanity can be daunting, but we don’t need to live in that space. First, we need to change our attitude in order to implement nature based solutions that help mitigate climate change. Good news: there are numerous encouraging environmental trends that will change the way you think about how we can protect the planet. 

The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to the Climate Crisis by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac

Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris Agreement’s climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a regenerative world that has net-zero emissions. They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations, and each of us can, and must, do to fend off disaster.

All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson

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.

Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua

In concise, illuminating essays and interviews, Not Too Late features the voices of Indigenous activists, such as Guam-based attorney and writer Julian Aguon; climate scientists, among them Jacquelyn Gill and Edward Carr; artists, such as Marshall Islands poet and activist Kathy Jeñtil-Kijiner; and longtime organizers, including The Tyranny of Oil author Antonia Juhasz and Emergent Strategy author adrienne maree brown. Shaped by the clear-eyed wisdom of editors Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua, and enhanced by illustrations by David Solnit, Not Too Late is a guide to take us from climate crisis to climate hope.

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.

Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Monique Gray Smith, Nicole Neidhardt

This is an adaptation of Braiding Sweetgrass for young adults, which reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. With informative sidebars, reflection questions, and art from illustrator Nicole Neidhardt, Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults brings Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the lessons of plant life to a new generation.

 The Climate Optimist Handbook by Anne Therese Gennari

The Climate Change Optimist Handbook will guide you through that shift to become your own source of optimism. You will learn the psychological reasons we aren’t acting more on climate change and gain tools and mindset tips to model positive change in your community and home. A grounded and resilient leader is waiting to be born inside you—one who doesn’t just believe a better world is possible, but who is eager and excited to do everything possible to make that world a reality.

From What is to What If by Rob Hopkins

From What Is to What If is a call to action to reclaim and unleash our collective imagination, told through the stories of individuals and communities around the world who are doing it now, as we speak, and witnessing often rapid and dramatic change for the better.

How to Change Everything by Naomi Klein

How to Change Everything will provide readers with clear information about how our planet is changing, but also, more importantly, with inspiration, ideas, and tools for action. Because young people can help build a better future. Young people can help decide what happens next. Young people can help change everything.

How to be a Climate Optimist by Chris Turner

This is a book that moves past the despair and futile anger over ecological collapse and harnesses that passion toward the project of building a twenty-first century quality of life that surpasses the twentieth-century version in every way. 

All the Feeling Under the Sun by Leslie Davenport

A timely, thoughtful book that will help kids work through their feelings of anxiety and stress relating to climate change.

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.

Active Hope by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

Active Hope is about finding, and offering, our best response when facing concerns about our world situation. It offers tools that help us face the mess we're in, as well as find and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, towards a society and way of being that support the flourishing of life.

Saving Us by Katharine Hayhoe

In Saving Us, Hayhoe argues that when it comes to changing hearts and minds, facts are only one part of the equation. We need to find shared values in order to connect our unique identities to collective action. This is not another doomsday narrative about a planet on fire. It is a multilayered look at science, faith, and human psychology

Hope Matters by Elin Kelsey

Timely, evidence-based, and persuasive, Hope Matters is an argument for the place of hope in our lives and a celebration of the turn toward solutions in the face of the environmental crisis.

Climate - A New Story by Charles Eisenstein

Flipping the script on climate change, Eisenstein makes a case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction.

Commanding Hope by Thomas Homer-Dixon

In Commanding Hope, Homer-Dixon shows why and how we got here; and most importantly, the powers we possess to renew our imperiled world. This is a hopeful book.