Climate Generation Partnered with Birchbark Books this spring to support educators at the Teach Climate Network Summer Institute. We asked their staff what their favorite books and stories about climate justice were.
The following are the latest favorite climate fiction and nonfiction recommendations from the booksellers of Birchbark Books!
FICTION:
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson
A powerful and intense novel spanning several generations of Dakota women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools. Robin Wall Kimmerer says “The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations.”
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
This incredible novel is a brilliant mystery that takes place on a remote island off the coast of Antarctica, where the world’s largest seed bank is stored. The family that caretakes the island are the last residents due to rising sea levels – all of the scientists and researchers have left – until a woman mysteriously washes up on shore. It is climate fiction at its finest with a truly intriguing mystery throughout.
Playground by Richard Powers
While not explicitly about climate change, Richard Powers’ latest novel is a celebration of all things oceanic, as well as a celebration of ecology and life, and how all of it can be undone before we are even aware an undoing has begun.
NONFICTION:
Hope Dies Last by Alan Weisman
This book is a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. It is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core resolve of our species against the most precarious odds we have ever faced. The owner of Birchbark Books, Louise Erdrich, says, “Hope Dies Last is a book of heroism, courage, and selfless love. Every story is a way forward. This is one of the most exciting books I’ve ever read, full of innovation. Alan Weisman has written the exact book we need to fight for our place on Earth.”
Theory of Water by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
A resonant exploration of an intricate, multi-layered relationship with the most abundant element on our planet [water]–one that, as Simpson eloquently shows, is shaping our present even as it demands a radical rethinking of how we might achieve a just future.
The Great Displacement by Jake Brittle
Written with devastating urgency, these are real-life stories and accounts collected by the author of people who have been displaced from their homes and livelihoods by hurricanes, wildfires, flooding, and more, all of which he clearly states will only get worse if climate change is left unaddressed.
Inflamed by Rupa Marya and Raj Patel
This book says so much about the injustices and inequality that permeate our medical systems in the US, and it does a deep dive into the way climate change and its dreadful repercussions have and will continue to affect the physical health of entire populations, with great emphasis on BIPOC communities.
The Heat Will Kill You First by Jeff Godell
Sometimes a title says it all.
Turtle Island by Sean Sherman (out November 11, 2025)
What better way to respect the land you’re living on than to cook food that is intimately connected to it? Exemplifying how Native foodways can teach us all to connect with the natural world around us, Turtle Island features rich narrative histories and spotlights the communities producing, gathering, and cooking these foods, including remarkable stories of ingenuity and adaptation that capture the resilience of Indigenous communities…from three-time James Beard Award-winning Oglala Lakota chef Sean Sherman.
FOR YOUNGER READERS:
Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults by Robin Wall Kimmerer & Monique Gray Smith
Braiding Sweetgrass is only 10 years old but has already become a classic text for many readers. This wonderful Young Adults edition was adapted by a talented children’s book author, Monique Gray Smith, ensuring the important stories from Indigenous scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer are accessible for younger readers.
Indigenous Environmentalism by Katrina Phillips
Katrina Phillips writes accessible nonfiction titles for kids, and her book on Indigenous Environmentalism is a wonderful introduction to the history of Indigenous relationships to nature.
Birchbark Books is an independent bookstore owned by Turtle Mountain Chippewa, award-winning author Louise Erdrich. Tucked in the Kenwood neighborhood of Minneapolis, MN, we focus on Indigenous authored and illustrated books across all genres. We exist to keep real conversations between book lovers alive. We exist to nourish and build a community based on books. We are a neighborhood bookstore, and also an international presence. We are a locus for Indigirati—literate Indigenous people who have survived over half a millennium on this continent.
The post Stories for a Changing Climate appeared first on Climate Generation.
American farmers are drowning in health insurance costs, while their German counterparts never worry about medical bills. The difference may help determine which country’s small farms are better prepared for a changing climate.
Samantha Kemnah looked out the foggy window of her home in New Berlin, New York, at the 150-acre dairy farm she and her husband, Chris, bought last year. This winter, an unprecedented cold front brought snowstorms and ice to the region.
On the Farm, the Hidden Climate Cost of the Broken U.S. Health Care System
Climate Change
A Little-Used Maneuver Could Mean More Drilling and Mining in Southern Utah’s Redrock Country
Two Utah Congress members have introduced a resolution that could end protections for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Conservation groups worry similar maneuvers on other federal lands will follow.
Lawmakers from Utah have commandeered an obscure law to unravel protections for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, potentially delivering on a Trump administration goal of undoing protections for public conservation lands across the country.
A Little-Used Maneuver Could Mean More Drilling and Mining in Southern Utah’s Redrock Country
Drought and heatwaves occurring together – known as “compound” events – have “surged” across the world since the early 2000s, a new study shows.
Compound drought and heat events (CDHEs) can have devastating effects, creating the ideal conditions for intense wildfires, such as Australia’s “Black Summer” of 2019-20 where bushfires burned 24m hectares and killed 33 people.
The research, published in Science Advances, finds that the increase in CDHEs is predominantly being driven by events that start with a heatwave.
The global area affected by such “heatwave-led” compound events has more than doubled between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, the study says.
The rapid increase in these events over the last 23 years cannot be explained solely by global warming, the authors note.
Since the late 1990s, feedbacks between the land and the atmosphere have become stronger, making heatwaves more likely to trigger drought conditions, they explain.
One of the study authors tells Carbon Brief that societies must pay greater attention to compound events, which can “cause severe impacts on ecosystems, agriculture and society”.
Compound events
CDHEs are extreme weather events where drought and heatwave conditions occur simultaneously – or shortly after each other – in the same region.
These events are often triggered by large-scale weather patterns, such as “blocking” highs, which can produce “prolonged” hot and dry conditions, according to the study.
Prof Sang-Wook Yeh is one of the study authors and a professor at the Ewha Womans University in South Korea. He tells Carbon Brief:
“When heatwaves and droughts occur together, the two hazards reinforce each other through land-atmosphere interactions. This amplifies surface heating and soil moisture deficits, making compound events more intense and damaging than single hazards.”
CDHEs can begin with either a heatwave or a drought.
The sequence of these extremes is important, the study says, as they have different drivers and impacts.
For example, in a CDHE where the heatwave was the precursor, increased direct sunshine causes more moisture loss from soils and plants, leading to a drought.
Conversely, in an event where the drought was the precursor, the lack of soil moisture means that less of the sun’s energy goes into evaporation and more goes into warming the Earth’s surface. This produces favourable conditions for heatwaves.
The study shows that the majority of CDHEs globally start out as a drought.
In recent years, there has been increasing focus on these events due to the devastating impact they have on agriculture, ecosystems and public health.
In Russia in the summer of 2010, a compound drought-heatwave event – and the associated wildfires – caused the death of nearly 55,000 people, the study notes.
The record-breaking Pacific north-west “heat dome” in 2021 triggered extreme drought conditions that caused “significant declines” in wheat yields, as well as in barley, canola and fruit production in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, says the study.
Increasing events
To assess how CDHEs are changing, the researchers use daily reanalysis data to identify droughts and heatwaves events. (Reanalysis data combines past observations with climate models to create a historical climate record.) Then, using an algorithm, they analyse how these events overlap in both time and space.
The study covers the period from 1980 to 2023 and the world’s land surface, excluding polar regions where CDHEs are rare.
The research finds that the area of land affected by CDHEs has “increased substantially” since the early 2000s.
Heatwave-led events have been the main contributor to this increase, the study says, with their spatial extent rising 110% between 1980-2001 and 2002-23, compared to a 59% increase for drought-led events.
The map below shows the global distribution of CDHEs over 1980-2023. The charts show the percentage of the land surface affected by a heatwave-led CDHE (red) or a drought-led CDHE (yellow) in a given year (left) and relative increase in each CDHE type (right).
The study finds that CDHEs have occurred most frequently in northern South America, the southern US, eastern Europe, central Africa and south Asia.
Threshold passed
The authors explain that the increase in heatwave-led CDHEs is related to rising global temperatures, but that this does not tell the whole story.
In the earlier 22-year period of 1980-2001, the study finds that the spatial extent of heatwave-led CDHEs rises by 1.6% per 1C of global temperature rise. For the more-recent period of 2022-23, this increases “nearly eightfold” to 13.1%.
The change suggests that the rapid increase in the heatwave-led CDHEs occurred after the global average temperature “surpasse[d] a certain temperature threshold”, the paper says.
This threshold is an absolute global average temperature of 14.3C, the authors estimate (based on an 11-year average), which the world passed around the year 2000.
Investigating the recent surge in heatwave-leading CDHEs further, the researchers find a “regime shift” in land-atmosphere dynamics “toward a persistently intensified state after the late 1990s”.
In other words, the way that drier soils drive higher surface temperatures, and vice versa, is becoming stronger, resulting in more heatwave-led compound events.
Daily data
The research has some advantages over other previous studies, Yeh says. For instance, the new work uses daily estimations of CDHEs, compared to monthly data used in past research. This is “important for capturing the detailed occurrence” of these events, says Yeh.
He adds that another advantage of their study is that it distinguishes the sequence of droughts and heatwaves, which allows them to “better understand the differences” in the characteristics of CDHEs.
Dr Meryem Tanarhte is a climate scientist at the University Hassan II in Morocco, and Dr Ruth Cerezo Mota is a climatologist and a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Both scientists, who were not involved in the study, agree that the daily estimations give a clearer picture of how CDHEs are changing.
Cerezo-Mota adds that another major contribution of the study is its global focus. She tells Carbon Brief that in some regions, such as Mexico and Africa, there is a lack of studies on CDHEs:
“Not because the events do not occur, but perhaps because [these regions] do not have all the data or the expertise to do so.”
However, she notes that the reanalysis data used by the study does have limitations with how it represents rainfall in some parts of the world.
Compound impacts
The study notes that if CDHEs continue to intensify – particularly events where heatwaves are the precursors – they could drive declining crop productivity, increased wildfire frequency and severe public health crises.
These impacts could be “much more rapid and severe as global warming continues”, Yeh tells Carbon Brief.
Tanarhte notes that these events can be forecasted up to 10 days ahead in many regions. Furthermore, she says, the strongest impacts can be prevented “through preparedness and adaptation”, including through “water management for agriculture, heatwave mitigation measures and wildfire mitigation”.
The study recommends reassessing current risk management strategies for these compound events. It also suggests incorporating the sequences of drought and heatwaves into compound event analysis frameworks “to enhance climate risk management”.
Cerezo-Mota says that it is clear that the world needs to be prepared for the increased occurrence of these events. She tells Carbon Brief:
“These [risk assessments and strategies] need to be carried out at the local level to understand the complexities of each region.”
The post Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Heatwaves driving recent ‘surge’ in compound drought and heat extremes
On the Farm, the Hidden Climate Cost of America’s Broken Health Care System
Should We Appease MAGA by Rewriting the Constitution?
A Little-Used Maneuver Could Mean More Drilling and Mining in Southern Utah’s Redrock Country
-
Greenhouse Gases7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change7 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Spanish-language misinformation on renewable energy spreads online, report shows
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits