Best climate book to read in 2022: Paul Hawken’s Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation.
“Everything that you can possible imagine already exists on this magical planet we call home. The beautiful, weird and wonderful creatures that we can and can’t see are our reason to be here now–to mind them, provide for them so that they may thrive, and that we may survive.
It’s time for human beings to step up and learn to become the weavers of the web of life, to restitch the threads we have broken.”
This quote is from Mary Reynolds who won the U.K’s Chelsea Flower Show in 2002, for her garden which broke the mould and let the wild and sacred in. (There’s a film based on her life, Dare to Be Wild.) She is just one of many inspiring people highlighted in the book.
Regeneration is full of solutions for the climate crisis and drawdown of CO2. You can also read much of what’s in the book at the Regeneration website which includes helpful links to organizations and resources on each of the solutions.
350 Santa Barbara is hosting a Community Climate Conversation with a discussion of this book in May or June. Read the book and join the conversation. You can borrow a copy from the public library in Goleta or Santa Barbara.
Best climate novel: Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is a near-future vision of how the climate crisis is solved. The heroine is Mary Murphy–a woman that grandmothers can relate to–who heads the United Nations’ Ministry for the Future, and her antagonist is Frank, a young man who is the sole survivor of a horrifying climate disaster. (Don’t let the first chapter put you off! It’s gruesome and painful to read, but it’s short and the rest of the novel is not painful.) The first chapter sets into motion the events that follow and explains Frank’s motivation and the motivation of the Children of Kali. Yes, read the book to find out about the Children of Kali.
You can watch Kim Stanley Robinson in this recording of a talk he gave for Fossil Free California in January 2022: From COP26 to the Ministry for the Future: An Evening with Kim Stanley Robinson. He is a delightful person who knows a lot about solutions to the climate crisis.
Best set of videos for basic information on climate change: Climate Solutions 101 from Project Drawdown.
Finally, don’t miss hearing from scientists who know about renewable energy!
If you want to be inspired by how the world can electrify everything with wind, water and solar, we highly recommend this recent video of a lecture by Professor Mark Jacobson of Stanford University: Impact of 100% Clean, Renewable Green New Deal Road Maps on Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 145 Countries. It’s pretty technical but worth watching. Jacobson is connected with The Solutions Project which has more information on the roadmaps for a transition to renewable energy.
In 2021, a group of scientists issued a Joint declaration of the global 100% renewable energy strategy group which is short and easy to read. They also have released a video which is fairly long and somewhat technical, but provides hopeful details about the probable speed of the transition to renewable energy. It took about 13 years to switch from horses to automobiles and transform our transportation system. (The image above is from a video by RethinkX which is also about the energy transition.)
For other a list of more book and audiovisual resources, see our Resources page.