Climate change has been ignored for too long.
(Photo: DigitalVision / Getty Images)
Dusseldorf Everyone seems to agree that the climate crisis is the most pressing issue, the most important task in the years to come. There are goals. Opinions differ on the way – as a look at eight current books on the climate crisis shows.
1. Annette Kehnel: “We could do it differently”
The Aachen Cathedral is the best example of building material recycling. More than 20 different natural stones were used, as well as numerous large-format stones from older buildings that were reused as so-called Spolia. This is how the circular economy worked in the Middle Ages.
The Aachen Cathedral is not the only example from history by which Annette Kehnel shows in “We could also be different” what people can learn from their own past in terms of sustainability. One and a half millennia ago, monasteries were a community that practiced the sharing economy.
Even in the pre-modern era, second-hand markets in Paris were evidence of how fashion at that time was shaped by upcycling and junk shops. And everyone is probably familiar with the philosopher Diogenes in the bin, who justified voluntary renunciation as a way to freedom and a good life.
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Historian Kehnel, who is on the shortlist of the NDR non-fiction book award with her book, by no means indulges in “everything was better in the past”. She wants to broaden the perspective, to turn to the past “in order to be able to take a closer look at the future.
Annette Kehnel: We could do it differently.
Blessing
Munich 2021
488 pages
18 euros.
Because nothing is more problematic than the “short-term nature of the present”. Sure, that’s convenient, after all, you’ve settled down quite well in the present. It could have been worse. But how could it be better?
Progress, growth, prosperity – these magic formulas from the 18th and 19th centuries are now out of date, according to Kehnel. The times of Homo oeconomicus, the rational utility maximizer, are over. The problem is not economics, “but our one-dimensional understanding of what economics means”.
2. B. Grant, T. Dougherty: “Our Earth Before and After”
Benjamin Grant and Timothy Dougherty have switched perspectives. They look at the earth from above – and use 250 satellite images to show how people have changed the world and how it has become unbalanced as a result.
The volume is part of a project that aims to bring people closer to the so-called overview effect: the feeling that space travelers feel when they look down on earth from space – full of awe and gratitude for the planet.
Benjamin Grant, Timothy Dougherty: Our Earth Before and After. German translation: Nina Goldt.
Dumont
Cologne 2021
288 pages
38 euros
Accordingly, the book does not need many words, the pictures mostly speak for themselves. They show how agricultural land is created through slash and burn, how entire stretches of land disappear under water over time through new dams, how arable land and meadows had to give way to concrete deserts within a few decades. The effects of consumption, urbanization, transport and environmental disasters are frighteningly visible here at a glance.
3. Akshat Rathi: “There is a climate for everyone”
But where are the positive examples? Has nothing really changed yet? Yes, says Akshat Rathi, a London-based journalist at Bloomberg News who is not looking for scapegoats but for role models. For those who see climate change as an opportunity to do something better.
In “Climate is for everyone”, Rathi shows 60 young people from 50 countries on all continents. Climate activists who serve as role models. A chapter is dedicated to each. They are engaging, touching, encouraging stories.
By Raina Ivanova, for example, a schoolgirl from Hamburg who, in 2019, together with Greta Thunberg and 14 other young people in New York, filed a complaint with the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. By Lesein Mutunkei, a student from Kenya who plants a tree every time he scores a goal in football – and has already convinced hundreds to do the same.
Akshat Rathi (Ed.): Climate is there for everyone. German translation: Larissa Rabe.
Blanvalet
Munich 2021
320 pages
18 euros.
By Carlos Zackhras, a student from the Marshall Islands, whose homeland only causes 0.00001 percent of the world’s CO2 emissions. But in whose homeland the people not only fight against dengue fever and flu, but also with the ever higher waves that flood the island. They alone cannot save the climate, Rathi knows that too, but they encourage courage – and may be contagious.
4. Marc Engelhardt: “The climate fighters”
Some people “don’t complain about impending dangers. They don’t wait for someone else to act for them. They do not allow themselves to be paralyzed for fear of what is to come. But they fight for the climate, with all means at their disposal. ”
And that is precisely where the freelance journalist Marc Engelhardt and his colleagues from the journalist network Weltreporter accompanied these people. Commitment to climate change, as is clear in “Die Klimakampf”, is not just a matter for the younger generation.
The authors also report on Florence Nishida, 83, who teaches the people in her Los Angeles neighborhood how to grow fruits and vegetables to show them how much their lives depend on that of the earth. Or Seu Fiado, a Brazilian smallholder farmer with no schooling who cleared more forest for years to create more fields, but then began to rethink.
Marc Engelhardt (Ed.): The climate fighters.
Penguin
Munich 2021
336 pages
16 euros.
The title will be released on November 9th.
Today, as a climate guardian, he has committed himself to reforesting his plantation, “a good hectare of land on which CO2 is now naturally converted into oxygen.” Almost all of the book’s protagonists now earn their living fighting the climate catastrophe. That gives hope that it is worth getting involved.
5. Fred Vargas: “Climate Change – An Appeal”
The current life is also comfortable. “We’d like to continue like this, because it makes sense that getting on a plane with flashing sneakers is much more fun than chopping potatoes. Definitely. But now we have arrived. In the third revolution. ”
For Fred Vargas, the third revolution is climate change that humanity must stop. Exactly, the well-known crime writer from France, who has also been an important voice of climate activism since her speech at the 2008 climate summit in Helsinki.
Vargas, who holds a PhD in archaeozoology, took this text as the starting point for her book, in which she appeals to people to inform themselves and not just to believe everything in the government. However, this separation pushes them a little too far.
Fred Vargas: Climate Change – An Appeal. German translation: Waltraud Schwarze.
limes
Munich 2021
288 pages
14 euros.
We, the good citizens, them, the bad politicians – isn’t climate change more of a collective task? Yes, the author finally admits that too. And puts together a long list of to-dos, from fighting international tax fraud to insulating foams in buildings.
6. Elizabeth Kolbert: “We are climate changers”
And another great writer: Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize winner. The American science journalist doesn’t dwell on long preliminary skirmishes, but goes straight into her chapter structure, for which she uses the elements – water, earth, air. Her book is a great report, she goes to the problem, observes, describes. How people repeatedly adapted the natural conditions to their needs. And nature took back what it needs.
Elizabeth Kolbert: We climate changers. How man creates the nature of the future. German translation: Ulrike Bischoff.
Suhrkamp
Berlin 2021
239 pages
25 euros.
Kolbert tells of a visit to Iceland’s lava fields, where experts working with Edda Aradóttir are trying to store CO2 in rock. Or Ruth Gates, who is doing research in a bay near Marine Corps Base Hawaii to breed stress-resistant coral reefs for Australia. Kolbert experiences many such stories, sometimes opening eyes, sometimes giving hope, which teach the reader one thing above all else: humility.
7. Svend Andersen: “The way out of the climate crisis”
Svend Andersen already has it because of his job. Andersen, a German living in Canada, is a greenhouse gas accountant. Yes, this profession really exists. Andersen has made climate protection his life’s work, dealing with “the core of the problem” every day, with emissions, with their causes and with methods of reducing them.
He looks astonished at the inactivity of the masses, he writes in “The way out of the climate crisis”. Perhaps it is more exciting to report on forest fires, cyclones or droughts. But these are the effects of the problem, not the causes.
Svend Andersen with Marc Bielefeld: The way out of the climate crisis.
Quadriga
Cologne 2021
320 pages
20 Euros
Andersen and his agency advise cities, municipalities and governments on how to meet the 1.5 degree target. In his book, he has now brought together all aspects of the greenhouse gas problem that are important from his point of view – and also removes the illusion from the reader that “we can reduce emissions sufficiently through our personal behavior alone”. This requires a greater effort – from politics, business, society. Andersen shows the ways concretely.
8. C. Figueres, T. Rivett Carnac: “The future in our hands”
Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett Carnac do the same. The author of “The future in our hands” are the main architects of the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015. Figueres, daughter of the three-time President of Costa Rica, was Secretary General of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change for six years. Rivett Carnac, British environmental economist, her senior advisor at the time.
After their time at the UN, they founded the consulting firm “Global Optimism”. The name is program. Because despite all the drama of the situation, they believe, you have to show a kind of courageous determination to face challenges.
Christiana Figueres, Tom Rivett Carnac: The future in our hands. How we survive the climate crisis. German translation: Henning Dedekind, CH Beck.
Suhrkamp
Munich 2021
216 pages
22 euros.
In “The future in our hands” they coined the term “stubborn optimism”: if everyone participates, the climate change project can succeed. For this purpose, the authors draft a concrete ten-point plan with suggestions that everyone can or should follow. For now, today, tomorrow, this month, this year, until 2030.
Climate change is not the task of a single person, a single nation, climate change is the task of the entire world. Since one country after the other signed the Paris Climate Agreement, the authors have been optimistic that the project can succeed. When everyone does their part.
As practice-oriented as the author duo is for a long time, in the end it asks the reader a little pathetically to tell a new, very own story: “The story of our survival. And a prosperous existence. “
More: Bill Gates: “How we can prevent the climate catastrophe”