Here are 100 books that The Climate Casino fans have personally recommended if you like
The Climate Casino.
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I am an economist who has written broadly on microeconomics, energy and natural resource markets, and environmental economics. My recent work in environmental economics has focused on climate change, and I’ve published a book and many articles on the topic. I think it’s important to understand that while there is a lot we understand about climate change, there is also much we don’t understand, and what the uncertainty implies about what we should do. My concern is the possibility of a climate catastrophe. What are the chances, and what should we do? Those questions have driven much of my research and writing.
This is a short introduction to the science of climate change, written by a professor of earth science at MIT, whose writings and opinions can be relied upon. The book explains a great deal about climate change in a concise but engaging manner. Highly recommended!
An updated edition of a guide to the basic science of climate change, and a call to action.
The vast majority of scientists agree that human activity has significantly increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere—most dramatically since the 1970s. Yet global warming skeptics and ill-informed elected officials continue to dismiss this broad scientific consensus. In this updated edition of his authoritative book, MIT atmospheric scientist Kerry Emanuel outlines the basic science of global warming and how the current consensus has emerged. Although it is impossible to predict exactly when the most dramatic effects of global warming will be felt, he…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
I am an economist who has written broadly on microeconomics, energy and natural resource markets, and environmental economics. My recent work in environmental economics has focused on climate change, and I’ve published a book and many articles on the topic. I think it’s important to understand that while there is a lot we understand about climate change, there is also much we don’t understand, and what the uncertainty implies about what we should do. My concern is the possibility of a climate catastrophe. What are the chances, and what should we do? Those questions have driven much of my research and writing.
This book provides a nice introduction to the science and economics of climate change. It explains, in easy-to-understand terms, the nature of the uncertainty regarding what we might expect, and it emphasizes the possibility of an extreme climate outcome. Given that possibility, it explains the importance of “radical” forms of adaptation, an example of which is geoengineering. And the book is short enough to be read in one sitting.
If you had a 10 percent chance of having a fatal car accident, you'd take necessary precautions. If your finances had a 10 percent chance of suffering a severe loss, you'd reevaluate your assets. So if we know the world is warming and there's a 10 percent chance this might eventually lead to a catastrophe beyond anything we could imagine, why aren't we doing more about climate change right now? We insure our lives against an uncertain future--why not our planet? In Climate Shock, Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter…
I am an economist who has written broadly on microeconomics, energy and natural resource markets, and environmental economics. My recent work in environmental economics has focused on climate change, and I’ve published a book and many articles on the topic. I think it’s important to understand that while there is a lot we understand about climate change, there is also much we don’t understand, and what the uncertainty implies about what we should do. My concern is the possibility of a climate catastrophe. What are the chances, and what should we do? Those questions have driven much of my research and writing.
Almost all economists would agree that the best way to reduce GHG emissions is to impose a carbon tax. Don’t subsidize electric cars, and don’t subsidize wind farms. Just tax carbon emissions. But why is that the best way to reduce emissions? This book provides an excellent explanation of why a carbon tax is the most efficient way to reduce emissions. And I also recommend this book as an introduction to the economics of climate change.
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
When I started teaching a course on the Political Economy of the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, little had been written that made the connection between environmental quality and economic inequality. Happily, this has changed over the years. The books recommended here mark the rise of a new environmentalism founded upon recognition that our impact on nature is interwoven closely with the nature of our relationships with each other.
Fifty million years ago, alligators lived north of the Arctic Circle.
We humans evolved in a much cooler world. Today Earth’s climate is changing radically, to our own peril, as we spew long-buried carbon into the sky by burning fossil fuels.
In this sophisticated yet readable book, Peter Dorman lays out the political economy of climate change, explaining why to address this unprecedented threat we must redress the inequalities of wealth and power that plague modern society.
The bad news is that this will be hard work; the good news is that it is possible. Dorman’s book is atour de force, a sobering call to action graced with rays of hope.
Climate change is a matter of extreme urgency. Integrating science and economics, this book demonstrates the need for measures to put a strict lid on cumulative carbon emissions and shows how to implement them. Using the carbon budget framework, it reveals the shortcomings of current policies and the debates around them, such as the popular enthusiasm for individual solutions and the fruitless search for 'optimal' regulation by economists and other specialists. On the political front, it explains why business opposition to the policies we need goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry, requiring a more radical rebalancing of power. This…
I am Lex Fullarton, an innovator of Australia’s first privately owned, industrial-sized solar farm. As a descendant of Australia’s 19th Century Colonials who settled here and turned an ancient productive land into a modern wasteland, I have witnessed the disasters of floods, fires, and hurricanes that plague Northern Australia firsthand. I watch temperatures rise year on year with trepidation. I see hurricanes grow in devastation and experience rising flood levels as deluges pour from the barren land. Action should have been taken decades ago, but today is the only day in our grasp. These books are not the end of the list but rather the beginning.
This book appears heavy reading and complex but it can be considered in individual sections. That makes a complex subject easier to understand. It looks specifically at the fiscal impacts of climate change and countermeasures.
The economic perspective is critical, but it is not the only consideration of the impacts of climate change, and this book reveals how social and environmental factors can relate to economic costs and benefits from a fiscal perspective.
There is now clear scientific evidence that emissions from economic activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels for energy, are causing changes to the Earths climate. A sound understanding of the economics of climate change is needed in order to underpin an effective global response to this challenge. The Stern Review is an independent, rigourous and comprehensive analysis of the economic aspects of this crucial issue. It has been conducted by Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the UK Government Economic Service, and a former Chief Economist of the World Bank. The Economics of Climate Change will be invaluable for all…
I’ve been a biblical scholar for over 35 years and have spent a lot of time reading and writing academic volumes, analyzing arguments, and teaching diverse audiences. However, some of my formative experiences were as a child on my grandparents’ North Carolina farm, to which I still feel an almost elemental connection. Perhaps that farm (and my vegetable gardening) first sparked my interest in the environment. My interest turned to advocacy through research, which set me on the path to grasping the urgency of the climate crisis and my conviction that everything must reflect this reality. I’ve poured over the scientific reports (such as by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and read lots of nonfiction.
I am in awe of Tim Beal’s ability to write about heavy subjects engagingly and invitingly. His question is deadly serious: now that humanity faces extinction due to the climate crisis, how should we live? He finds answers (or at least guideposts) in an honest (and, for some, untraditional) reading of the Bible, in which he finds resources for what faces us.
This book helped me face climate realities without dissolving into despair. I felt he was helping me reach the “acceptance” stage of grief about Earth.
With faith, hope, and compassion, acclaimed religion scholar Timothy Beal shows us how to navigate the inevitabilities of the climate crisis and the very real—and very near—possibility of human extinction
What if it’s too late to save ourselves from climate crisis? When Time is Short is a meditation for what may be a finite human future that asks how we got here to help us imagine a different relationship to the natural world.
Modern capitalism, as it emerged, drew heavily upon the Christian belief in human exceptionalism and dominion over the planet, and these ideas still undergird our largely secular…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I’m the grandson of a coal miner from a multi-generational, Ohio family. What matters most to me is having some integrity and being morally okay with folks. I never thought of myself as an environmentalist, just as someone trying to figure out what we should be learning to be decent people in this sometimes messed-up world. From there, I was taken into our environmental situation, its planetary injustice, and then onto studying the history of colonialism. This adventure cracked open my midwestern common sense and made me rethink things. Happily, it has only reinforced my commitment to, and faith in, moral relations, giving our word, being accountable, and caring.
Steve’s book is analytically challenging, but he has great examples and a knack for conceptualizing the core problems that are making it so hard for our world to grapple with climate change and things like mass extinction. He shows how there are three interlocking problems that all go back to how the modern state system was created as something competitive and uncoordinated, abstract from the land it’s on, and short-sighted with its politics.
Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to…
I'm co-founder of a grassroots social justice, civic engagement, and service organization called ForwardCT, which I started with my friend and current state representative Eleni Kavros DeGraw with the intention of mobilizing community-centered action. Our work centers on these four pillars: Connect, Inform, Serve, and Lead. Those pillars guide my work as chair of my town’s Clean Energy Commission, as teacher and facilitator of workshops and events, and as an author of books for young people. I'm drawn to the powerful use of storytelling as a tool for starting conversations, stirring up “good trouble,” and inspiring activism. Read a book, approach your library or town to host a community conversation, leave with actionable takeaways, repeat!
I chose Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change because I live in Connecticut and my own family and friend group have been gravely impacted by tick-borne infections. In fact, the subplot of my novel focuses on the frustrating story of a family seeking answers to this “mystery” illness.
We are at a moment where climate change is accelerating new and worsening pathogenic diseases and public health isn’t catching up fast enough. Mary Beth Pfeiffer provides a well-researched glimpse into the politics and pain of tick-borne infections in a climate-changing world.
I recommend this book as a community conversation starter because, more and more, citizens are coming together to share medical resources and put pressure on the public health community to act.
"Superbly written and researched." -Booklist "Builds a strong case." -Kirkus Lyme disease is spreading rapidly around the globe as ticks move into places they could not survive before. The first epidemic to emerge in the era of climate change, the disease infects half a million people in the US and Europe each year, and untold multitudes in Canada, China, Russia, and Australia. Mary Beth Pfeiffer shows how we have contributed to this growing menace, and how modern medicine has underestimated its danger. She tells the heart-rending stories of families destroyed by a single tick bite, of children disabled, and of…
I started off studying tropical rainforest creatures and saw the catastrophic impacts of modern humanity on nature and indigenous peoples. My work then focused on how to resolve conflicts between people and nature, at first in and around national parks and then more widely. I became quite good at dissecting environmental aid portfolios, and writing up what I had found in a series of books. I was also drawn into the great climate protests of 2019 and 2020, and now I'm working on pulling it all together into a book on Restoring Peace with Nature.
I was in Parliament Square at Samhain, 31 Oct 2018, when the Extinction Rebellion began. Greta Thunberg spoke there, but the mic broke so she paused at every sentence for the front rank to call out her words to those behind. The potent archetype of a virgin girl-child speaking truth to power worked its traditional magic, by exalting a thousand people, including me. Fast-forward a few years, and millions on the streets, and this little book condenses the motivation and message of climate activism: “Everyone and everything needs to change. Make the best available science the heart of politics and democracy. We must start today. We have no more excuses.” Greta offers everything important that we have been trying to say for decades. She encourages us to unify our divided minds and purposes. To me this is worthy of the most passionate engagement.
The #1 New York Times bestseller by Time's 2019 Person of the Year
"Greta Thunberg is already one of our planet's greatest advocates." -Barack Obama
The groundbreaking speeches of Greta Thunberg, the young climate activist who has become the voice of a generation, including her historic address to the United Nations
In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day in order to protest the climate crisis. Her actions sparked a global movement, inspiring millions of students to go on strike for our planet, forcing governments to listen, and earning her a…
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I am a former Shakespeare scholar who became increasingly concerned about the climate crisis after I had a son and started worrying about the world he would inherit after I died. I began to do research into climate communication, and I realized I could use my linguistic expertise to help craft messages for campaigners, policymakers, and enlightened corporations who want to drive climate action. As I learned more about the history of climate change communication, however, I realized that we couldn’t talk about the crisis effectively without knowing how to parry climate denial and fossil-fuel propaganda. So now I also research and write about climate disinformation, too.
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.
**SUNDAY TIMES AND THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**
'An epoch-defining book' Matt Haig 'If you read just one work of non-fiction this year, it should probably be this' David Sexton, Evening Standard
Selected as a Book of the Year 2019 by the Sunday Times, Spectator and New Statesman A Waterstones Paperback of the Year and shortlisted for the Foyles Book of the Year 2019 Longlisted for the PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
It is worse, much worse, than you think.
The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale, perhaps as pernicious as the one that says…