Climate Change Books & Plant Pairings
There's something quietly powerful about a flower. It pushes through cold ground and blooms without being asked, reminding us that the natural world is still doing its thing. But the planet that grows those flowers? It needs a little more from us than admiration.
Reading is a good place to start. Each flower on this list is paired with a collection of books about climate change that capture something of its spirit, such as its resilience, its fragility or its stubborn refusal to give up. Whether you're already deep in the climate conversation or just starting to pay attention, these books are hopeful, urgent and well-worth your time.
Caring about the planet doesn't have to feel overwhelming. Start right here, right now.
Sunflower Book Pairings
Not only are sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) known for their big blooms and massive height, but they are also very adaptive to their surroundings. They thrive in poor soil or changing weather conditions.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
by David Wallace-Wells
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon." -- Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
It's worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible -- food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation's Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it -- the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress.
The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation -- today's.
The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions
by Greta Thunberg
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
We still have time to change the world. From climate activist Greta Thunberg, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There's hope -- but only if we listen to the science before it's too late.
In The Climate Book, Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over 100 experts -- geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and Indigenous leaders -- to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark.
This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild's strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried? We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.
Parable of the Sower
by Octavia E Butler
"In the ongoing contest over which dystopian classic is most applicable to our time, Octavia Butler's 'Parable' books may be unmatched." -- The New Yorker
From a celebrated, award-winning author, a modern classic about a young girl fighting for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, perfect for fans of N.K. Jemisin and Margaret Atwood. Fifteen-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family and neighbors sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis.
In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy -- a debilitating sensitivity to others' emotions. Precocious and clear-eyed, Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters her small community stubbornly ignores. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith … and a startling vision of human destiny.
Hum
by Helen Phillips
A Most Anticipated Book for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Goodreads, LitHub and Book Riot
A Best Book of the Summer for Esquire, Electric Lit and Town & Country and A People Book of the Week from "one of our most profound writers of speculative fiction" (The New York Times).
This "tense dystopian thriller" (Time) and "tender portrait of love and care in an uncertain world" (Esquire) is an urgent and unflinching portrayal of a woman's fight for her family's security in a world shaped by global warming and rapid technological progress.
In a near-future world addled by climate change and inhabited by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. Desperate to resolve her family's debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking reprieve from her recent hardships and her family's addiction to their devices, May splurges on passes for her family to spend three nights respite in the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams and animals still thrive. But when her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives to save her family.
Iris Book Pairings
This physically resilient flower, mostly commonly Iris germanica or Iris sibirica (pictured here), is often used to symbolize mental and emotional strength. They also represent wisdom to do what is right and hope for a better future.
All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis
by Katharine K Wilkinson - Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
NATIONAL BESTSELLER AND SMITHSONIAN'S ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
"A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?" -- The New York Times
Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward. With essays and poems from dozens of contributors.
There is a renaissance blooming in the climate movement: leadership that's more characteristically feminine and more faithfully feminist, rooted in compassion, connection, creativity and collaboration.
While it's clear that women and girls are vital voices and agents of change for this planet, they are too often missing from the proverbial table. More than a problem of bias, it's a dynamic that sets us up for failure. To change everything, we need everyone.
All We Can Save illuminates the expertise and insights of dozens of diverse women leading on climate in the United States -- scientists, journalists, farmers, lawyers, teachers, activists, innovators, wonks and designers. These women offer a spectrum of ideas and insights for how we can rapidly, radically reshape society.
Intermixing essays with poetry and art, this book is both a balm and a guide for knowing and holding what has been done to the world, while bolstering our resolve never to give up on one another or our collective future.
The Future We Choose: The Stubborn Optimist's Guide to the Climate Crisis
by Christiana Figueres - Tom Rivett-Carnac
"One of the most inspiring books I've ever read." – Yuval Harari
A cautionary but optimistic book about the world's changing climate and the fate of humanity, from two of the architects of the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac outline two possible scenarios for our planet. In one, they describe what life on Earth will be like by 2050 if we fail to meet the Paris Agreement's climate targets. In the other, they lay out what it will be like to live in a regenerative world that has net-zero emissions.
They argue for confronting the climate crisis head-on, with determination and optimism. The Future We Choose presents our options and tells us what governments, corporations and each of us can, and must, do to fend off disaster.
A Future We Can Love: Effective Approaches to the Climate Crisis That Begin with Us
by Susan Bauer-Wu
Discover wisdom and guidance to face the climate emergency from the most influential spiritual and environmental leaders of our time.
A Future We Can Love shares dialogues on the climate emergency between dozens of visionary scientists, activists and spiritual luminaries. These important voices include indigenous scholar and artist Lyla June, medical biochemist and author Diana Beresford-Kroeger, climate scientist and Zen teacher Kritee Kanko, interfaith environmental leader Dekila Chungyalpa, Buddhist teacher Willa Blythe Baker, Rabbi Steve Leder and many more.
Through world-changing conversations, readers will embark on a four-part journey toward active hope in the face of the climate crisis: from knowledge of climate science, through the capacity for change, to the will that's needed and the actions we can take. This book will help you:
- Comfort your climate anxiety and metabolize grief or burnout into wonderment and useful energy.
- Recognize interdependence as key to our well-being and as a lens for understanding both the climate crisis and its solutions.
- Clarify why feedback loops leave us no time to wait on climate action.
- Develop your own rituals and practices for connecting to Earth and renewing hope.
- Overcome common obstacles to speaking and acting clearly on behalf of the human and wild communities most affected by the climate crisis.
A Future We Can Love inspires each of us to rise to the occasion to ensure a brighter future for generations to come.
The Carbon Almanac: It's Not Too Late
by The Carbon Almanac Network - Seth Godin
When it comes to the climate, we don't need more marketing or anxiety. We need established facts and a plan for collective action.
The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what's really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a "me" problem to a "we" problem.
The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between hundreds of writers, researchers, thinkers and illustrators that focuses on what we know, what has come before and what might happen next. Drawing on over 1,000 data points, the book uses cartoons, quotes, illustrations, tables, histories and articles to lay out carbon's impact on our food system, ocean acidity, agriculture, energy, biodiversity, extreme weather events, the economy, human health and best and worst-case scenarios.
Visually engaging and built to share, The Carbon Almanac is the definitive source for facts and the basis for a global movement to fight climate change.
H Is for Hope: Climate Change From A to Z
by Elizabeth Kolbert
In 26 essays -- one for each letter of the alphabet -- the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction takes us on a hauntingly illustrated journey through the history of climate change and the uncertainties of our future.
Climate change resists narrative -- and yet some account of what's happening is needed. Millions of lives are at stake, and upward of a million species. And there are decisions to be made, even though it's unclear who, exactly, will make them.
In H Is for Hope, Elizabeth Kolbert investigates the landscape of climate change -- from "A", for Svante Arrhenius, who created the world's first climate model in 1894, to "Z", for the Colorado River Basin, ground zero for climate change in the United States. Along the way she looks at Greta Thunburg's "blah blah blah" speech ("B"), learns to fly an all-electric plane ("E"), experiments with the effects of extreme temperatures on the human body ("T") and struggles with the deep uncertainty of the future of climate change ("U").
Adapted from essays originally published in The New Yorker and beautifully illustrated by Wesley Allsbrook, H Is for Hope is simultaneously inspiring, alarming and darkly humorous -- a unique examination of our changing world.
California Fire Poppy Book Pairings
One of the most recognized fire-follower plants. Mostly found in California, Papaver californicum's bright orange blooms sprout from the ashes of wildfires.
Fire and Flood: A People's History of Climate Change, From 1979 to the Present
by Eugene Linden
From a writer and expert who has been at the center of the fight for more than thirty years, a brilliant, big-picture reckoning with our shocking failure to address climate change. Fire and Flood focuses on the malign power of key business interests, arguing that those same interests could flip the story very quickly -- if they can get ahead of a looming economic catastrophe.
Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public's mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff's edge is now within view.
Starting with the 1980s, Linden tells the story, decade by decade, by looking at four clocks that move at different speeds: the reality of climate change itself; the scientific consensus about it, which always lags reality; public opinion and political will, which lag further still; and, perhaps most important, business and finance.
Reality marches on at its own pace, but the public will and even the science are downstream from the money, and Fire and Flood shows how devilishly effective moneyed climate-change deniers have been at slowing and even reversing the progress of our collective awakening. When a threat means certain but future disaster, but addressing it means losing present-tense profit, capitalism's response has been sadly predictable.
Now, however, the seasons of fire and flood have crossed the threshold into plain view. Linden focuses on the insurance industry as one loud canary in the coal mine: fire and flood zones in Florida and California, among other regions, are now seeing what many call "climate redlining." The whole system is teetering on the brink, and the odds of another housing collapse, for starters, are much higher than most people understand. There is a path back from the cliff, but we must pick up the pace.
Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World: Essays
by Barry Lopez
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Outside - NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
"This posthumously published collection of essays by nature writer Barry Lopez reveals an exceptional life and mind … While certainly a testament to his legacy and an ephemeral reprieve from his death in 2020, this book is more than a memorial: it offers a clear-eyed praxis of hope in what Lopez calls this 'Era of Emergencies.'" -- Scientific American
An ardent steward of the land, fearless traveler, and unrivaled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home place and the community around it -- a tragic reminder of the climate change of which he'd long warned.
At once a cri de coeur and a memoir of both pain and wonder, this remarkable collection of essays adds indelibly to Lopez's legacy and includes previously unpublished works, some written in the months before his death. They unspool memories both personal and political, among them tender, sometimes painful stories of his childhood in New York City and California, reports from expeditions to study animals and sea life, recollections of travels to Antarctica and other extraordinary places on earth and meditations on finding oneself amid vast, dramatic landscapes.
He reflects on those who taught him, including Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world. We witness poignant returns from his travels to the sanctuary of his Oregon backyard, adjacent to the McKenzie River. And in prose of searing candor, he reckons with the cycle of life, including his own, and with the dangers the earth and its people are facing.
Leopard Lily Book Pairings
Native to the damp woodlands of the Pacific Coast, these lilies (Lilium pardalinum) are accustomed to moisture and seasonal flooding. In fact, they can be planted in dry areas, but they will grow significantly shorter.
All the Water in the World
by Eiren Caffall
FINALIST FOR THE 2026 GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE
In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York's Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.
All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History.
The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science. When a superstorm breaches the city's flood walls, Nonie and her family must escape north on the Hudson.
They carry with them a book that holds their records of the lost collections. Racing on the swollen river towards what may be safety, they encounter communities that have adapted in very different and sometimes frightening ways to the new reality. But they are determined to find a way to make a new world that honors all they've saved.
Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story -- with danger, storms and a fight for survival.
I Cheerfully Refuse
by Leif Enger
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A BARNES & NOBLE BOOK CLUB PICK - A career defining tour-de-force from New York Times bestselling, award-winning and "formidably gifted" (Chicago Tribune) author of Peace Like a River Leif Enger.
A storyteller "of great humanity and huge heart" (Minneapolis Star Tribune), Leif Enger debuted in the literary world with Peace Like a River which sold over a million copies and captured readers' hearts around the globe. Now comes a new milestone in this boldly imaginative author's accomplished, resonant body of work.
Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved and pursued musician embarking under sail on a sentient Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. Rainy, an endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs and remote islands of the inland sea.
Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amidst the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea and no safe landings, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humor, generous strangers and an unexpected companion in a young girl who comes aboard.
As his innate guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy's private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his strengthening wake. A rollicking narrative in the most evocative of settings, this latest novel is a symphony against despair and a rallying cry for the future.
Terrestrial History
by Joe Mungo Reed
Hannah is a fusion scientist working alone at a remote cottage off the coast of Scotland when she sees a figure making his way from the sea. It's a visitor from the future, a young man from a human settlement on Mars, traveling backwards through time to try to make a crucial intervention in the fate of our dying planet, and he needs Hannah's help.
Laboring in the warmth of a Scottish summer, Hannah and the stranger are on the path towards a breakthrough -- and then things go terribly wrong. Joe Mungo Reed's intricately crafted novel expands from this extraordinary event, drawing together the stories of four lives reckoning with what it means to take fate into their own hands, moving from the last days of civilization on Earth through the birth of another on Mars.
Roban lives in the Colony, one of the first generation born to this sterile new outpost, where he is consumed by longing for the lost wonders of a home planet he never knew. Between Hannah and Roban, two generations, a father and a daughter, face an uncertain future in a world that's falling apart.
Andrew is a politician running to be Scotland's First Minister. Andrew believes there is still time for the human spirit to triumph, if only he can persuade people to band together. For his starkly rationalist daughter Kenzie, this idealism doesn't offer the hard tools needed to keep the rising floods at bay. And so, she signs on to work for a company that would abandon Earth for the promise of a world beyond -- in contravention of all Andrew stands for.
Wild Dark Shore
by Charlotte McConaghy
REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK - INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (FROM NUMEROUS NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED PUBLICATIONS)
A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica.
Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.
Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets.
As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it's too late -- and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.
A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.
Hydrangea Book Pairings
Hydrangea macrophylla is a hearty plant can take a beating when it comes to unpredictable weather. It does well in moist soil, won’t wash away in a flood and can handle the heat of a drought if it needs to.
The Light Pirate
by Lily Brooks-Dalton
FINALIST FOR THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE, USA TODAY BESTSELLER! Good Morning America Book Club Pick, 2022 NPR "Book We Love" and Many More Accolades!
Set in the near future, this hopeful story of survival and resilience follows Wanda -- a luminous child born out of a devastating hurricane -- as she navigates a rapidly changing world: A "symphony of beauty and heartbreak." -- Associated Press
Florida is slipping away. As devastating weather patterns and rising sea levels wreak gradual havoc on the state's infrastructure, a powerful hurricane approaches a small town on the southeastern coast.
Kirby Lowe, an electrical line worker, his pregnant wife, Frida and their two sons, Flip and Lucas, prepare for the worst. When the boys go missing just before the hurricane hits, Kirby heads out into the high winds in search of his children. Left alone, Frida goes into premature labor and gives birth to an unusual child, Wanda, whom she names after the catastrophic storm that ushers her into a society closer to collapse than ever before.
As Florida continues to unravel, Wanda grows. Moving from childhood to adulthood, adapting not only to the changing landscape but also to the people who stayed behind in a place abandoned by civilization, Wanda loses family, gains community and ultimately, seeks adventure, love and purpose in a place remade by nature.
Told in four parts -- power, water, light and time -- The Light Pirate mirrors the rhythms of the elements and the sometimes quick, sometimes slow dissolution of the world as we know it. It's a meditation on the changes we would rather not see, the future we would rather not greet and a call back to the beauty and violence of an untamable wilderness. Includes a Reading Group Guide.
The Deluge
by Stephen Markley
"This book is, simply put, a modern classic. If you read it, you'll never forget it. Prophetic, terrifying, uplifting." -- Stephen King
From the bestselling author of Ohio, a masterful American epic charting a near future approaching collapse and a nascent but strengthening solidarity. In the first decades of the 21st century, the world is convulsing, its governments mired in gridlock while a patient but unrelenting ecological crisis looms.
America is in upheaval, battered by violent weather and extreme politics. In California in 2013, Tony Pietrus, a scientist studying deposits of undersea methane, receives a death threat. His fate will become bound to a stunning cast of characters -- a broken drug addict, a star advertising strategist, a neurodivergent mathematician, a cunning eco-terrorist, an actor turned religious zealot and a brazen young activist named Kate Morris, who, in the mountains of Wyoming, begins a project that will alter the course of the decades to come.
From the Gulf Coast to Los Angeles, the Midwest to Washington, D.C., their intertwined odysseys unfold against a stark backdrop of accelerating chaos as they summon courage, galvanize a nation, fall to their own fear and find wild hope in the face of staggering odds.
As their stories hurtle toward a spectacular climax, each faces a reckoning: what will they sacrifice to salvage humanity's last chance at a future? A singular achievement, The Deluge is a once-in-a-generation novel that meets the moment as few works of art ever have.
How to Fall in Love in a Time of Unnameable Disaster
by Muriel Leung
Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction and finalist for the Gotham Book Prize
Acid rainstorms have transformed New York City into a toxic wasteland, cutting its remaining citizens off from one another. In one apartment building, an unlikely family of humans and ghosts survives.
Mira reels from a devastating breakup with her partner, Mal, whose whereabouts are unknown, while her mother is plagued by furious dreams and her grandfather, Grandpa Why, stakes his claims as a rambunctious ghost.
Across the hall, the cockroach Shin, also a ghost. As the world around them worsens, each character must learn to redefine what it means to live, die and love at the end of the world.
The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains
by Clayton Page Aldern
A New York Times Editors' Choice, Rachel Carson Environment Book Award Finalist, Sierra Magazine Must-Read Book, Financial Times Best Summer Book and MORE!
A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all. The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported.
Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health.
A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out. Aldern calls it the weight of nature. Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. Immigration judges are more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days. Umpires, to miss calls. Air pollution, heatwaves and hurricanes can warp and wear on memory, language and sensory systems.
How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it's about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior -- and the most startling portrait yet of unforeseen environmental influences on our minds.
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