Across the U.S., record temperatures are forcing us all to stay indoors where there’s AC and water. Even the bugs are trying to get into my house to escape the heat wave.
It’s like a mini-quarantine, except the danger comes from being outside at all for an extended time. So, in that spirit, here’s 3 books to keep you occupied indoors that have nothing to do with the heat wave and everything to do with the climate crisis that’s likely causing it.
The Story of More
Hope Jahren has been one of my favorite nonfiction authors since I put down Lab Girl, and The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here only re-affirms this. Her distinctive scientific voice engaged me page-to-page, speaking with as much statistics as art and lived experience.
Apart from style, the substance of Jahren’s writing makes for a preeminently important read, as she takes the reader through the current situations for just about everything to do with current environmental crises – electric cars and where their batteries come from, how we grow all our vital crops and manage fisheries, all the different problems that stem from the climate crisis and what they look like in real-time, and what can be done about it all.
The Story of More is punctuated with a reassuring and hopeful call to action, drawing – as much of the book has – on our own history to deliver ideas for positive change, which for the journey Jahren takes you on are worthwhile to hear.
Ishmael
A personal favorite of mine, Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael is a philosophical text framed by a bit of an eccentric narrative – an unnamed main character’s telepathic lessons and conversations with a gorilla, the titular Ishmael.
The book has often felt like an outlier to me in environmental literature – instead of talking about fossil fuel companies or specific scientific or economic drivers of ecological crises, Quinn goes an order of magnitude higher to ask questions about culture and human self-image. He digs deep into our history and mythology to ask how it all feeds environmental degradation and provides an alternative for us to consider – but I’ll leave the details to Quinn’s climatic explanation.
The Nature Fix
To round out the trinity of philosophical and scientific dives into environmentalism, we have Florence Williams’ The Nature Fix, which drops down from grand sociological talks to a more personal level: talking ecotherapy and the positive impact of immersion in nature on a person’s mental health. It was certainly affirming for my own life, which I try to start every day of with a small walk in nature.
The Nature Fix is probably the least immediately helpful of the three in the context of the heat wave – but you could also take it as encouragement that, once it passes, you can push off into a renewed and healing love for the outdoors.
