Best summer books of 2024: Environment

Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Hannah Ritchie (Chatto & Windus/Little, Brown)

It’s hard to feel hopeful about a planet buffeted by remorseless global warming and wilderness destruction. But data scientist Ritchie makes a convincing case for the progress that has already been made on a host of environmental woes and argues that a sustainable future is still well within our grasp.

Possible: Ways to Net Zero by Chris Goodall (Profile)

We know how to make greener electricity and therefore cleaner cars. But it’s harder to cut emissions from aircraft, shipping, cement-making and other sectors that are tougher to electrify. Harder, but still possible, writes clean energy expert, Goodall, in a book that shows much progress is already being made.

The Price Is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet by Brett Christophers (Verso)

Wind and solar power grows ever cheaper and more plentiful but not at nearly a fast enough rate to fight climate change. The problem, argues this provocative book, is we have spent too long focusing on price instead of the profits that private investors and banks need to guarantee compelling returns.

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The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives by Ernest Scheyder (Ithaka/One Signal)

Reuters journalist Scheyder has had a front-row seat to an emerging climate dilemma: the urgent need for clean energy that depends on minerals that are typically dirty to extract. His book tracks the extent of opposition and the fraught geopolitics facing the building blocks of the green energy transition.

The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes our Minds, Brains and Bodies by Clayton Page Aldern (Allen Lane)

Much has been written about what a changing climate is doing to our forests, seas and crops. This book reveals the startling extent to which it affects us, from immigration judges more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days, to drugs that are less effective in high temperatures.  

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