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We Are Eating The Earth: The race to fix our food system and save our climate | Michael Grunwald

 

Humanity has cleared a land mass the size of Asia plus Europe to grow food, and our food system generates about a third of our carbon emissions. We need to slow our relentless expansion of farmland into nature. In We Are Eating The Earth, Grunwald points out that we are making it worse by embracing solutions that sound sustainable but make it even harder to grow more food with less land. He also tells the stories of scientists and entrepreneurs pursuing better solutions; from a tough jungle crop called pongamia to genetically-edited cattle embryos, from Impossible Whoppers to a non-polluting pesticide that uses the technology behind the COVID vaccines to constipate beetles to death.

Grunwald builds his narrative around a food and land expert named Tim Searchinger, chronicling Searchinger’s uphill battles against bad science and bad politics, both driven by the overwhelming influence of agricultural interests. He proposes a different path that could save our planet for future generations—through better policy, technology, and behaviour, and with a new land ethic that recognises that every acre matters.

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The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet | Leah Thomas

 

The Intersectional Environmentalist bridges the gap between environmentalism and social justice and outlines how climate activism cannot succeed without addressing systemic oppression, racism and inequality. From Indigenous peoples to low-income neighbourhoods, Thomas demonstrates how environmental issues disproportionately affect marginalised communities and challenges readers to adopt an inclusive approach to sustainability.

Thomas blends activism, science, and storytelling to highlight the interconnectedness of environmental and social struggles. The book is both a manifesto and a practical guide, offering actionable steps for individuals and organisations to centre equity in their environmental efforts. Whether you’re new to intersectional environmentalism or already engaged in climate justice work, this book offers an indispensable primer for anyone wanting to make a difference, featuring empowering insight from activists around the globe.

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The Savage Landscape | Cal Flyn

 

A modern  journey into the heart of what we call wilderness, The Savage Landscape weaves together adventure, philosophy and personal reflection, asking urgent questions about humanity’s relationship with the natural world and the meaning of wild places in an era when no corner of the planet remains untouched. Flyn’s lyrical prose carries readers from the ocean floor to volcanic peaks, blending awe-inspiring landscapes with deep historical and cultural insights.

What makes this book exceptional is its refusal to romanticise wilderness. Instead, Flyn confronts the complexities of how humans have shaped—and been shaped by—the wild, challenging readers to reconsider their own relationship with the untamed. The result is a work that is as intellectually stimulating as it is beautifully written, leaving you with a sharper understanding of the wild’s enduring, if complicated, hold on the human spirit.

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Ecocivilization | Jeremy Lent

 

As climate chaos, inequality, and social fragmentation intensify, humanity faces an imminent choice, argues the renowned ecological thinker Jeremy Lent. We can either continue with a system built on extraction and endless growth – or we can reimagine civilization itself.
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The result is Ecocivilization, a radical yet feasible alternative to a world built on exploitation, accumulation and elite power. In arguing that most people instinctively yearn for justice, mutuality, and dignity, Lent maps a path towards a more equal and humane world in which the ecosystems that sustain us are protected and cherished, while our own species flourishes sustainably. A must-read.

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The Future: A User’s Guide | Florence Gaub

 

 

If you are paralysed by fear whenever you think of what lies ahead, futurologist Florence Gaub’s book is the perfect antidote, briskly challenging that notion that we have no say in the future, either as individuals or citizens. Her advice to everyone, whether or not they are policymakers, is to combine creativity with and knowledge to imagine the best, prepare for the worst and – perhaps hardest of all – to accommodate surprise. A refreshing, empowering take on the near and far horizon.

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The Wild Edge of Sorrow | Frances Weller

 

 

Solastalgia – the word used to describe the grief we feel at the loss of beloved landscapes, creature and ecosystems – is woven through Frances Weller’s much-loved work about the importance of embracing, rather than denying our personal and existential grief. “Grief,” he writes, “offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground.” Profound, poetic and comforting, this is a book to stir the soul of anyone who has loved and lost.

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No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies | Julian Aguon

 

‘A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love – of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors – warms the heart and moves the spirit.’ – Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon’s No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples.

Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness.

A powerful and bold voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm.

In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

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The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea | Jeffrey Marlow

 

The deep sea is one of our planet’s last frontiers. Here, where the light cannot reach, lies a strange, wonderful and breathtaking world, teeming with scientific marvels and lessons for the future of life on this planet. In The Dark Frontier, marine microbiologist and explorer Jeffrey Marlow plunges us into the ocean’s depths and invites us to witness close-up encounters with its hidden brilliance. Translucent shrimp dance through sulphurous vents, crabs stretch twelve feet from claw to claw and the eerie chalk-white towers of the ‘Lost City’ loom.

Immersive and illuminating, Marlow’s journeys reveal alarming warning signs as well: we are irrevocably changing the deep sea before we have even had a chance to understand it. This book offers insights into the ways in which the twinned forces of exploration and exploitation have shaped our relationship with the ocean. It shows how life can thrive in even the most extreme conditions, and reveals critical links between the deep sea and life on land.

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Feminism for a World on Fire | Natasha Walter

 

Clear-eyed, eloquent and cogent, Natasha Walters’s argument that the eco-crisis is a feminist crisis could not come at a better moment. Wildfires, floods, heat domes, pollution and rising seas are not the only dangers facing women: authoritarian states, online misogyny and climate breakdown are endangering their wellbeing, lives and safety too. Yet Western feminism, Walter  suggests, has become side-tracked into consumer-driven self-empowerment in a way that serves neither women nor the planet. The response, she argues, is a rooted feminism that connects to other movements for equality and environmental protection to build the caring, flourishing world that is still within our grasp.

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The Response | David Shukman

“This fascinating and gripping book has the power to open our eyes and shift our thinking in ways that few others can. Read on and get ready.” -Kate Raworth

In this timely account of Britain’s response to wildfires, heatwaves and flooding, David Shukman, the BBC’s former science and environment correspondent, doesn’t pull his punches. Why, he asks, is Britain, one of the richest nations in the world, so ill-prepared for such disasters, and why is its track record in dealing with them so terrible? Shukman’s investigation provides a gripping account of the new extremes that our bodies, buildings and landscapes face in Britain and around the world – and what we can do about them.