A Brief Climate Change Reading List

The fossil fuel industry and its allies have fueled a massive disinformation campaign on the subject of climate change. If you’re looking for honest reporting and informed opinion on the subject, check out the following six books:

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know, by Joseph Romm (Oxford University Press, 2015) Lost in a sea of data and jargon? Romm’s scientific primer answers essential questions such as “What is the difference between weather and climate?” and “What will the impacts of sea-level rise be?”

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond (Penguin Books, 2005) Easter Island, Angkor, Copán: We’ve been down this road before. That’s the message Diamond sends with Collapse, through eye-opening case studies of self-inflicted environmental catastrophe throughout history.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert (Henry Holt & Co., 2014) Farewell, Golden Toad: Amphibians are going extinct at 45,000 times the historical background rate. The New Yorker’s Kolbert documents the tragic evidence of mass species loss due to human activity.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, by Naomi Klein (Simon & Schuster, 2014) Perhaps the most challenging of the books on the list, This Changes Everything exposes the often terrible socio-environmental costs of privatization, deregulation, and other tenets of neoliberal economics.

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken (Penguin Books, 2017) For those who fear all is lost, Hawken provides an antidote—dozens of them, actually. Drawdown compiles proven methods to reduce CO2 emissions and increase efficiency, in arenas from agriculture to architecture.

Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, by Bill McKibben (Henry Holt & Co., 2010) McKibben, writing during the Great Recession, characterizes the society and systems we need to build in response to climate change: slower, smaller, more durable, decentralized, and, possibly, more rewarding.

• The Climate Is Changing. So Must Architecture.

  Carbon dioxide causes global warming. Buildings emit almost half of the carbon dioxide in the U.S. That has to stop.

  

• Insurance and Climate Change: Risk too Great to Ignore

  Washington state insurance commissioner Mike Kreidler discusses how regulators, policy providers, and architects can work together to prepare and protect the built environment.

  

• Attaining the AIA 2030 Commitment Benchmarks

  ARCHITECT spoke with five signatory firms about how they attained such energy savings—and why it matters.

  

• Material Strategies for Sustainable Construction

  Next-generation material approaches must increasingly address material effects both within and beyond an architectural project.

  

• The Proven Value of Resilient Design

  Houston's recently completed Buffalo Bayou Park weathered the flooding of Hurricane Harvey with limited damage, thanks to the foresightedness of Page and SWA Group.

  

• ASU’s High Standard for High-Performance Building

  Arizona State University’s campus architect explains the Tempe, Ariz., institution’s sustainable development process.

  

• Education and the Performance Imperative

  Ali Malkawi and Gordon Gill discuss their recent Harvard GSD studio and the need for heightened climate awareness in architecture schools.

  

• What It Takes to Go Net-Zero

  Architects share their experiences in net-zero building, from persuading uncertain clients to dealing with extreme weather.

  

• A Brief Climate Change Reading List

  Six books that present the truths and consequences of our global addiction to fossil fuels.