Books like Climate Change as Class War — picked by fans

Putting in the numbers is what Gates does in his book. Climate change is real, no question. How to address it is where the controversy comes in. I really like that from the outset, Gates proposes five questions to consider whenever climate change is discussed: what fraction of the annual carbon dioxide emission are you removing? What’s your plan for cement? How much electrical power will be needed, what’s the cost, and how much space will it take up? 

But he’s optimistic that zero emissions can be reached. He argues there are many options to explore, including nuclear, and says, contrary to much of the news reporting, don’t focus on 2030; focus instead on 2050 to give the best solutions time to emerge.

This book shook me to my core. I felt so frightened by its vision of a world destroyed by global warming that I became even more determined to help get climate deniers out of power.

I know that other people who read this book were equally inspired to learn more about climate change or even join the climate movement. It’s really one of the most influential books of our time.

In this thought-provoking book, environmental science expert and professor Frank R. Spellman, PhD, gives a clear-eyed and concise overview of climate change—explaining what is really happening to our planet, why it is happening, and what can be done about it. Emphasizing scientific data and climate change indicators, Spellman gives a sober (but not panicked) assessment of the problems (natural and human-made) that we face and looks at possible mitigating factors and solutions. Understanding Climate Change: A Practical Guide is an invaluable resource to the student, policy maker, and others facing this crisis, which is to say near all of us except, perhaps, the die-hards who reject essential science. An extensive glossary demystifies much of the jargon employed in the public arena. Given the standards set in the market, however, $89.32 is steep for a paperback book.

I love Hothouse Earth: An Inhabitant’s Guide, by Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London, because he is very good at combining a sterling knowledge of science with activism. This is exactly what I have been doing in several books on the world climate crisis during the last 25 years. While I have trouble with some of the connections he is that he is trying to make (does global warming really have a tie to vulcanism?), I really love McGuire’s easy-to-read style. The fact that he works both with the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and as an author of books, as well as work several U.K. and U.S. newspapers and magazines such as The Guardian, The [London] Times, The Observer, New Scientist, Focus, and Prospect, means that his work speaks to several audiences at once. I… show more.

This is an extraordinary study about life in and around the strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, home for Iñupiaq, Yupik, and Chukchi people and many other lively things, before and after the arrival of Russian and American colonial powers.

I admire the nuanced way in which Demuth exemplifies how capitalist and communist resource management transformed not only human but also animal cultures (whales, for example, strategize against whaling ships).

All of McAfee’s work is a testament to the power of human ingenuity and technology in changing the world.

This important book marks no exception, addressing the key problem of managing scarce natural resources in spite of a growing human population and economy. In the process, McAfee challenges some widely-held views, such as the idea that ‘you cannot have an ever-growing economy on a finite planet.’

As a matter of fact, you can and the book shows that since the mid-1990s the US economy has continued to expand while extraction of the 72 raw materials tracked by the US Geological Survey, from aluminum to timber, has diminished (even when considering imports).

To me, More from Less is a testament to the power of technical progress.

Hacker explores the connection between America’s present yawning inequality and the deliberate decisions made by key political figures throughout the last 50 years. While off-shoring and technological innovation have contributed to the ever poorer job prospects and conditions for the poor and working-class, he argues that our government is just as much to blame. We could have taken action to protect these constituencies but rather defended the interests of corporate America and the radical rich (his term for wealth conservative donors such as the Koch Brothers). The book is very well-researched and easily digestible.

One of the disadvantages to writing a book with any economics in it is just that, readers need to know a little economics to get the most out of your book.

But to grasp how oil and the dollar interact and why we wind up in repeating financial crises, you don’t have to go back and reread Keynes and Irving Fischer (on interest rates). In 2009, Nobel Prize-winning economists George Akerlof and Robert Shiller wrote this easy-to-read and easy-to-understand book that critiques traditional economics (e.g. it’s dependence on “rational” actors) and dissects the building blocks one needs to know to grasp the ins and outs of economic cycles.

Importantly, they explain why people continue to believe they can make a fortune by investing at the top of the market (the confidence multiplier and contagion). Their book leads the reader through the basics on how bubbles (irrational exuberance) and panics ensue… show more.

This book, part polemic, part reportage, is an account of Arundhati Roy’s journey into the forests of Chattisgarh, where groups of ‘Naxalites’ or Maoists have taken up arms against the Indian state, in defence of Adivasis, the indigenous inhabitants of India, for whom the forests, rivers, and hills are sacred. Unhappily these are cover vast deposits of minerals and precious resources required as ‘raw materials’ by a rapidly industrializing India. As a result, the State, which throughout the colonial period and in the early years of Independence, had, in turn, neglected and cheated the forest-dwellers, has now turned upon them with militaristic intensity to wrest resources from them. I found this narrative so powerful because Arundhati Roy makes us understand the violence of the despairing, without overtly supporting it.

This is a defence of Smith's continuing relevance. It combines an overview of Smith's life and writings together with an assessment of his long-term and enduring contribution.

What is distinctive is that second-half of the book takes up Smith's ideas thematically and analyses them in the light of contemporary issues. Norman's judgment is that mainstream academic discussion of 'economics' is too self-absorbed and would be improved by heeding Smith's inclusive insights. Impressively what could have been a heavy read is conveyed in a readable, accessible style.