Upbeat Books to Help Prevent Climate Change
Living the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle reveals the carbon cost of everything we do, hand shows how to reduce your carbon footprint by over 80% to 2.5 tons a person per year, by 2030.
Find the big wins to what to drop – from takeout food to bikes, cars and Internet usage. Learn the invisible carbon baked into everything, and why electric cars are not the answer.
Read more on no-dig gardening and humane slug/snail deterrents. If you live with animal friends, read up on pet-friendly gardens (some recommended flowers and fruit trees are not safe). Also avoid netting to protect food (just leave some for wildlife!)
I used to have a monster carbon footprint. I was in my second career (my first was an architect) as a real estate developer in Toronto, building award-winning condos. I drove my classic Porsche a couple of blocks to work, I drove my daughters to school.
Then at weekends, we drove to the ski resort where all the rich developers hung out. Every weekend in summer, I drove up to our cottage. Throw in a few flights a year, and I was living a 30-tonne lifestyle. Then after a falling out with business partners, I had a massive financial loss and probably a nervous breakdown.
This book shows that creating carbon minimalism is the answer. Big-picture thinking is needed like investing and supporting local indie shops (that sell food with zero food miles so no lorries are needed to transport it from central distribution houses).
Creating walkable communities with parks (trees!) and initiatives to work from home or locally, so people don’t chop down whole swathes of countryside to build ‘high speed trains’ that nobody needs.
It’s about retaining countryside so people can walk to the shops to buy healthy food, then this means populations that don’t languish in hospitals and care homes, all of which also emit huge fossil fuels to keep them running.
Lloyd Alter is a writer, public speaker, architect and inventor. He is also Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Design at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Also read his other book The Story of Upfront Carbon, about how the answer to solving climate change is for all us to ‘live with just enough’.
7 Steps to Live the 1.5 Degree Lifestyle
- Eat local, organic plant-based foods
- Avoid Single-Use Plastic
- Walk, Cycle or Take Public Transport
- Get Involved in Sharing Economies
- Live Simply – Buy Less!
- Travel Locally – Fly Less!
- Switch to Clean Green Energy
A Book of Climate Action (for busy people)
Climate Action for Busy People is a book for anyone concerned over heat waves, storms and forest fires. The time to create climate-resilient communities is now. While policy innovations are also needed, good solutions are at local level.
This book is a hopeful and realistic roadmap for individuals and groups who want to move the needle towards environmental justice.
Drawing from professional and personal success in climate adaption and community organising, the author begins with a brief history of why our communities look the way they do, and how that affects how vulnerable we are, to climate risks.
Each chapter can help readers scale up their actions. From identifying climate solutions that a person or small group can pull off in a handful of weekends (like tree plantings or de-paving parties) to advocating for change at government level.
It’s not too late for people of all ages and skill levels, to create climate-safe neighbourhoods. This book is an invaluable guide for anyone who wants to make lasting improvements, to make their communities climate-resilient.
Cate Mingoya-LaFortune is Chief Officer of Climate Resilience and Land Use for Groundwork USA. She holds a Master in City Planning and a BA in Biology, and lives in New England.
10 Climate Actions for Busy People
- Switch Off and Unplug Appliances
- Choose Greener Ways to Get Around
- Eat more plant foods!
- Use Reusable Containers and Bags
- Switch to clean green energy.
- Support Eco-friendly Companies
- Cut Down on Water Use
- Recycle Right, Donate More
- Talk About Climate With Friends
- Join Local Initiatives
- Volunteer
An Upbeat Guide to Tackling the Climate Crisis
Climate is Just the Start is a guide to tackling the planetary crisis by Mikaela Loach, a big-hearted and optimistic book to inspire young people to change the world.
Using personal stories, she explains the climate crisis, and writes about friends around the world who are being affected, and how they are fighting back.
Her stories (including confronting fossil fuel executives and even taking the UK government to court, for handing taxpayer money to oil and gas companies) are sure to inspire.
Mikaela also wrote It’s Not That Radical, an anti-dote to the whitewashed and greenwashed mainstream media’s response to climate change, which always focuses on capitalism due to bias and money from TV ads.
Capitalism requires there to be someone at the bottom to exploit from. It require inequality. How is that we already have so many solutions to the climate crisis that don’t compromise human rights or justice? But the only solutions being seriously considered are the ones that do?
Mikaela Loach is a climate justice activist, writer and medical student, who holds a degree in global health policy. She conducts workshops at international climate justice camps and local schools (one of which has even named a classroom after her!)
She is co-director of AWETHU School of Organising and has boldly challenged powerful entities, including taking the UK government to court in the ‘Paid to Pollute’ case in 2021.
A Bigger Picture (an African voice on the climate crisis)
A Bigger Picture is a book by a young climate activist, from a girl who first-hand has witnessed devastating floods, deforestation, extinction and starvation in her home country. She also saw how ‘the world’s biggest polluters are asleep at the wheel’, ignoring the Global South, where the effects of climate injustice are most fiercely felt.
This rousing manifesto for change invites you to join her, a commanding political voice that demands attention, for the biggest issue of our time.
Having dominion over the Earth is about responsibility and service to the planet and its people, because God is not a God of waste and exploitation. Vanessa Nakate
It’s a harsh reality that the most vulnerable (particularly those in poorer countries) are likely to bear the brunt of climate change, even if they contribute the least to it.
We see ourselves as something separate from Nature. We see our financial system as something outside of Nature. We see our energy system as something outside of Nature.
Nothing is outside of Nature. We would be wise to remember this. Vanessa Nakate
Vanessa Nakate is a climate justice activist from Uganda, whose Tard Foundation which installs solar panels and clean cooking stoves in Ugandan schools.
A devout Christian, she is planning after completing her studies to influence climate policy at community, national and international level.
