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.
When carbon dioxide (CO2) is released from a factory or power plant, the gas can be captured and permanently stored underground, preventing it from driving climate change.
This is the idea underpinning carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is at the heart of many nations’ net-zero plans.
Influential organisations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), describe CCS as “critical” for cutting emissions from key sectors – and for helping to avoid dangerous global warming.
In particular, capturing CO2 is seen as one of the only viable options for decarbonising some of the world’s highest-emitting industries, such as cement production.
The UK, for example, has committed to investing as much as £21.7bn over the coming decades in its nascent CCS industry, as part of the nation’s net-zero strategy.
Yet, in the UK and elsewhere, there has been a backlash against plans for CCS.
Citing high costs, ties to the fossil-fuel industry and a “history of poor performance”, critics describe CCS as a “dangerous distraction” or a “false climate solution”.
Time and again, the outlook for the roll-out of CCS has been scaled back, as the technology has failed to deliver as quickly as expected – and as policy support has wavered.
Furthermore, critics state that the technology remains “unproven” on the scale required to make a meaningful impact on global emissions.
In this Q&A, Carbon Brief explores the role CCS is expected to play in achieving net-zero, its record to date and the reasons it has been criticised, using the UK as an example.
What is CCS?
CCS involves capturing CO2 emissions released from a large source, such as a gas power plant or a cement factory.
The CO2 is separated from the facility’s exhaust stream, generally using a chemical solvent, before being compressed into a liquid and transported via pipeline or vehicle. The CO2 is then stored by injecting it into underground reservoirs, such as depleted oil fields or saline aquifers.
The term “CCUS” is sometimes also used, referring to the “utilisation” of CO2 to make products, including fertilisers, fuels or building materials. Such uses do not necessarily lead to permanent emissions cuts, as the CO2 can end up later being released back into the atmosphere.
(“CCS” is used in this Q&A, unless quoting another organisation that specifically refers to “CCUS”.)
The infographic below shows the stages of capturing CO2 and transporting it to be either stored or used in other applications.
Carbon capture technology was originally rolled out at US and Canadian oil wells in the early 1970s as a way to achieve “enhanced oil recovery”. This involves injecting captured CO2 into depleted wells – a process that stores CO2, but also helps to extract more oil.
This remains, by far, the most significant end use for captured CO2 worldwide, with around three-quarters of it used for this purpose.
Moreover, most of the CO2 currently captured is a by-product of gas purification – the process by which fossil fuels such as methane are separated from other, unwanted substances. Selling this CO2 can make such gas projects more economically viable.
Therefore, as shown in the chart below, which is based on International Energy Agency (IEA) data, the majority of CO2 that is both captured and used today helps the fossil-fuel industry to extract and sell more oil and gas.
CCS was first proposed as a way to deal with CO2 emissions in a 1976 academic article, which imagined injecting the captured gas into the ocean.
It is only since the early 2000s that CCS has gained traction as a proposed climate solution, with a 2005 “special report” by the IPCC exploring the topic. At that time, the authors note there were just three small-scale projects trying to capture and permanently store CO2.
Installing CCS at factories or power plants and permanently storing the CO2 would mean that, in theory, such facilities could continue using fossil fuels without contributing to climate change.
Such applications are often mentioned alongside two related technologies, both of which could be used to “suck” CO2 out of the atmosphere and, thus, deliver “negative emissions”.
One is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). Crops absorb CO2 as they grow and BECCS involves a power plant burning these crops, then storing the resulting CO2.
The other technology is direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS).
These technologies are classed as “CO2 removal”, as they involve absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere using plants or machines and then storing it permanently.
By contrast, CCS installed at a factory is considered a way to avoid CO2 emitted by that specific facility from entering the atmosphere. This Q&A focuses on such applications, which account for the vast majority of existing and planned CCS.
How much CCS capacity has been built so far?
As of February 2026, there were a total of 75 operational CCS projects around the world. As noted above, almost all of them are at fossil-fuel extraction and processing sites, according to the IEA’s database.
Together, these projects capture 62.5m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) each year. This is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of Ecuador.
(This compares with the 22 CCS projects, promising to capture 40MtCO2 annually, that were operational or under construction as of 2014.)
As the chart below shows, the amount of CO2 currently being captured and stored is a tiny fraction of the total emissions from fossil-fuel use.
In a 2020 report, the IEA explained that the “story of CCUS has largely been one of unmet expectations: its potential to mitigate climate change has been recognised for decades, but deployment has been slow”.
A wave of interest in CCS in the 2000s, largely from countries in Europe and North America, focused on enabling coal power plants to continue operating with lower emissions.
This interest largely petered out, as plummeting renewable energy costs weakened the case for coal plants with CCS. Today, there are only seven operating CCS-coal plants worldwide – five in China, one in the US and one in Canada.
Yet the Paris Agreement in 2015 – and the national net-zero targets that followed – highlighted the need for deep emissions cuts in sectors that previously expected to continue emitting for decades. This, once again, has fuelled interest in the use of CCS.
In recent years, there has also been growing interest in producing low-carbon “blue” hydrogen from gas with CCS.
Hydrogen is widely seen as key for decarbonising certain sectors – particularly in industry – but analyses suggest that it may be difficult to make sufficient “green” hydrogen using renewable power on the timescales required.
As the map below shows, most CCS capacity is based in the US and Canada, with other major fossil-fuel producers such as Norway, Brazil and the Gulf states also contributing.
A surge of projects have entered the global CCS pipeline in recent years. According to the IEA, 93.7MtCO2 of capture or storage capacity is under construction as of February 2026 and another 1,279.6MtCO2 is in the “planning” stages.
“Planned” projects include any initiative at early concept, feasibility or engineering study stages and the industry has a long history of projects being cancelled or delayed.
Nevertheless, this pipeline of projects could lead to a large expansion of facilities dedicated to permanent CO2 storage that does not involve extracting more oil.
The planned projects – if they are realised – would also include significant growth in sectors where CCS is virtually non-existent, such as steel, hydrogen and cement production, as shown in the chart below.
What role is CCS expected to play in reaching net-zero?
It will be impossible to stop dangerous climate change unless the world reaches net-zero emissions, according to the IPCC. The amount of global warming – and whether the Paris Agreement temperature target can be met – depends on when net-zero is reached.
Many global pathways that have been set out for achieving net-zero, including a majority of the IPCC-assessed pathways where global warming is limited to 1.5C, rely on the use of CCS at fossil-fuel plants and industrial sites.
“These models have been quite instrumental in bringing CCS back onto the agenda,” Lina Lefstad, an ecological economist at Lund University, tells Carbon Brief.
Influential organisations relying on CCS in their net-zero scenarios range from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) through to the oil company Shell. The IEA has stated that net-zero would be “virtually impossible” without CCS.
These scenarios often include 10s to 100s of times more CCS capacity being built in the coming decades. The IEA includes 1.7GtCO2 being captured by 2035 in its net-zero scenario – nearly 30 times more than is captured today.
(Some of the much higher numbers in scenarios assessed by the IPCC have been dismissed by experts as implausible, especially given the slow rollout of CCS to date.)
When considering CCS for both emissions cuts and removals, Dr Jennifer Roberts, a researcher at the University of Strathclyde and deputy director at the UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre (UKCCSRC), tells Carbon Brief the situation is clear: