Explains and offers action items in 84 compelling, bite-size chapters ... Reading The Climate Book at a deliberate pace over some weeks (it's a lot to absorb), the cumulative impact on my understanding of the crisis through its data, cross-cultural reflections, and paths for step-by-step change became mesmerizing.
Her new book is not for the faint-hearted. Even a reader well informed on the climate and biodiversity crises will find themselves more painfully aware of the nightmare into which we have been sleepwalking for decades, and from which we still show so little sign of awakening ... Her book is an admirable and monumental effort to inform such conversations with good evidence ... Some of these essays are a little heavy on graphs, statistics and technical terms for general readers. But they are copiously interpolated by Thunberg’s lively commentaries, engaging and polemical, if often repetitious. They are proof, if further proof were needed, that she is a truly exceptional figure ... One can only hope that this book, by making these crises so powerfully manifest, will inspire us to think much harder and more creatively about how to do so, by any means necessary.
Nothing small about her latest ... This time she takes on a curatorial role, convening a kind of supergroup of scientists, activists and authors, each of whom contributes a short essay about the mess we’re in ... Amid all the maps, graphs and hair-raising statistics, Thunberg’s connective essays give the book an angry moral pulse ... A valuable resource for anyone who wants an ironclad summary of the problems, combined with some credible remedies.
The best thing about Greta Thunberg’s new book is that most of it isn’t written by Greta Thunberg. That really is a compliment ... But she’s also astute enough to recognise that most of us don’t know very much about climate science. More than a rallying call, what we need is a crash course ... The result is a hefty volume that looks fantastic, with beautifully rendered charts and haunting photographs ... The most striking chapters focus on how we live in the West. The American environmentalist Bill McKibben gives a brilliant introduction to fossil fuel ... Not all the chapters sing like McKibben’s, but the book is crammed with information ... But this book is not quite the one-stop shop for climate information that Thunberg says she intended. Nuclear power barely gets a mention, though it may end up being an important part of a net-zero future.
Appealingly produced ... Thunberg herself writes with the stark conviction of youth and an activist’s directness, which is both refreshing to read and tiring. Fortunately, space is given to writers who weave messages with skill and beauty, like Peter Brannen, who takes the chemistry of the carbon cycle and presents it as the marvellous life force it is ... This book is superb at explaining the urgency and importance of preventing climate change, but despite its heft it stops too soon. There is little pragmatism over what to do about now-certain changes, which means it feels like a book whose time was 10 years ago. But perhaps it has taken this decade for an audience that’s receptive to its message to develop. History will show.
A sweeping romp through science, technology, economics, literature, and psychology ... It can sometimes feel a bit plodding ... A thoughtful gift for anyone keen to better understand the changing climate. While it is encyclopedic in nature, no single essay requires more than five minutes to read ... A remarkable contribution to climate literature—and an urgent must-read.
Impassioned ... Lucid and accessible ... While many authors sound an apocalyptic note, their doomsaying often relies on models with myriad variables, as when oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf notes that 'we have enough ice on Earth to raise sea levels by 65 metres,' a process that may unfold 'over centuries and millennia to come.' Still, this is a comprehensive and articulate shock to the system.
