Each day we face new threats born of the natural world that have been made into ongoing catastrophes by the entrenched inequalities of our human systems--specifically racial capitalism, extractive economics and industries, and a culture that values profit over people. W.E.B. DuBois wrote decades ago of racial labor inequalities, “As the South goes, so goes the nation;” what we learn from the ongoing climate justice crisis in the Gulf of Mexico and across the global South is that what happens in the South first, will eventually happen everywhere.
We also know that brilliant, brave, and creative organizers, union leaders, and activists have been working to build strategies that center the people of the South, and specifically the people of the Gulf and Caribbean to help lead the way in the transition to a new climate future that builds economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy. This movement, called “Just Transition,” is on our minds each summer as hurricane season looms in the South while fires rage out West.
This booklist is a mix of books about the Just Transition movement (though many of the best writings of this movement remain online and in pamphlet form and are not yet collected into books), Environmental Racism, Climate Justice--the idea that environmentalism is not complete without a consideration of human systems including inequalities and oppressions--, and histories and stories about Katrina, Maria, and the Gulf coast in our nation’s history.
If you would like to learn more about the Just Transition Movement here is a great introduction from the Climate Justice Alliance: https://climatejusticealliance.org/just-transition/
Our hearts and minds continue to be with the people of the Gulf who are working to stabilize their lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida. With so much happening in the world it can be easy to move quickly from one disaster to the next, numb in our heartbreak, but we ask that all people across the global South and around the world keep their eyes on the Gulf and send resources to the organizers who are on the ground and from the small and medium-sized towns that most need support right now.
Here are a few of the organizations and mutual aid funds we recommend:
Another Gulf is Possible Mutual Aid Fund
Cooperation Jackson Mutual Aid Fund by a group who are building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi, anchored by a network of cooperatives and worker-owned, democratically self-managed enterprises.
Foundation for Louisiana: a Black-led, social justice philanthropy org founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina
House of Tulip rapid response fund for transgender and gender non-conforming community members directly impacted by Hurricane Ida. Cashapp $HouseofTulip Venmo: @HouseofTulip PayPal: PayPal.me/HouseofTulip
IDA Relief for Small Black Neighborhoods https://www.gofundme.com/f/ida-relief-for-small-black-neighborhoods
Pointe-au-chien Tribe Mutual Aid Fund for tribe members
RISE St. James A Black-led environmental justice organization. Donate: secure.acceptiva.com/?cst=aYnMTV
Join journalist Devi Lockwood as she bikes around the world collecting personal stories about how flood, fire, drought, and rising seas are changing communities.
It’s official: 2020 will be remembered as the year when apocalyptic climate predictions finally came true.
The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook is an invitation to get involved in the movement to build a just and sustainable world in the face of the most urgent challenge our species has ever faced.
This book presents a timely perspective that puts working-class people at the forefront of achieving sustainability.
In "There's Something In The Water", Ingrid R. G. Waldron examines the legacy of environmental racism and its health impacts in Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, using Nova Scotia as a case study, and the grassroots resistance activities by Indigenous and Black communities against the pollution and poisoning of their communities.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Provocative and illuminating essays from women at the forefront of the climate movement who are harnessing truth, courage, and solutions to lead humanity forward.
“A powerful read that fills one with, dare I say . . . hope?”—The New York Times
** LONGLISTED FOR THE JAMES CROPPER WAINWRIGHT PRIZE LONGLIST 2022 **
"Will open the minds of even the most ardent denier of climate change and/or systemic racism. If there's one book that will help you to be an effective activist for climate justice, it's this one." Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, author of This is Why I Resist: Don't Define My Black Identity
This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.
It has become impossible to deny that the planet is warming, and that governments must act.
** Los Angeles Times bestseller **
It's warming. It's us. We're sure. It's bad. But we can fix it.
A beautiful and engaging guide to global warming's impacts around the world
Our planet is in peril. Seas are rising, oceans are acidifying, ice is melting, coasts are flooding, species are dying, and communities are faltering.
'Deep adaptation' refers to the personal and collective changes that might help us to prepare for - and live with - a climate-influenced breakdown or collapse of our societies. It is a framework for responding to the terrifying realization of increasing disruption by committing ourselves to reducing suffering while saving more of society and the natural world.
"Pithy, funny, exasperated, and informed…You cannot read a more important hundred pages than Stop Saving the Planet!" —Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands
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Current economic growth strategies around the world are rapidly depleting the natural resources and ecosystem services that we depend on. Just Transitions provides a comprehensive overview of these challenges from a Global South perspective.
Gen Z's first "existential toolkit" for combating eco-guilt and burnout while advocating for climate justice.
A youth movement is reenergizing global environmental activism.
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The definitive firsthand account of California’s Camp Fire, the nation’s deadliest wildfire in a century, Paradise is a riveting examination of what went wrong and how to avert future tragedies as the climate crisis unfolds.
Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.
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The violence wrought by climate change, toxic drift, deforestation, oil spills, and the environmental aftermath of war takes place gradually and often invisibly.
It is beyond debate that human beings are the primary cause of climate change. Many think of climate change as primarily a scientific, economic, or political problem, and those perspectives inform Kevin O'Brien's analysis. But O'Brien argues that we should respond to climate change first and foremost as a case of systematic and structural violence.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Winner of the 2019 National Book Award in Nonfiction
A brilliant, haunting and unforgettable memoir from a stunning new talent about the inexorable pull of home and family, set in a shotgun house in New Orleans East.
Winner of the National Book Award
Jesmyn Ward, two-time National Book Award winner and author of Sing, Unburied, Sing, delivers a gritty but tender novel about family and poverty in the days leading up to Hurricane Katrina.
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In the field of 'climate change', no terrain goes uncontested. The terminological tug of war between activists and corporations, scientists and governments, has seen radical notions of 'sustainability' emptied of urgency and subordinated to the interests of capital.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina made landfall near New Orleans leaving death and destruction across the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Gulf Coast counties. The lethargic and inept emergency response that followed exposed institutional flaws, poor planning, and false assumptions that are built into the emergency response and homeland security plans and programs.
Winner of the Bancroft Prize
The definitive history of Katrina: an epic of citymaking, revealing how engineers and oil executives, politicians and musicians, and neighbors black and white built New Orleans, then watched it sink under the weight of their competing ambitions.
A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of the Year
The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism
#1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Naomi Klein makes the case for a Green New Deal in this “keenly argued, well-researched, and impassioned” manifesto (The Washington Post).
An instant bestseller, On Fire shows Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challen
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast states of Louisiana and Mississippi. The storm devastated the region and its citizens. But its devastation did not reach across racial and class lines equally.
“As advocate for the forgotten and the ignored, Mary Robinson has not only shone a light on human suffering, but illuminated a better future for our world.” -Barack Obama
“The antidote for your climate change paralysis.” -Sierra
“Insightful and optimistic.” -The Guardian
In The Extractive Zone Macarena G mez-Barris traces the political, aesthetic, and performative practices that emerge in opposition to the ruinous effects of extractive capital.
• New York Times bestseller •
The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world
Root Shock: How Tearing Up City Neighborhoods Hurts America, and What We Can Do about It (Paperback)
Like a sequel to the prescient warnings of urbanist Jane Jacobs, Dr. Mindy Thompson Fullilove reveals the disturbing effects of decades of insensitive urban renewal projects on communities of color. For those whose homes and neighborhoods were bulldozed, the urban modernization projects that swept America starting in 1949 were nothing short of an assault.
An outstanding resource for students of African American history, government policy, sociology, and human rights, as well as readers interested in socioeconomics in the United States today, this book examines why the divisions between the areas heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina and those left unscathed largely coincided with the color lines in New Orleans neighborhoods; and establishes how A
When Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, hundreds of thousands were left behind to suffer the ravages of destruction, disease, and even death. The majority of these people were black; nearly all were poor. The Federal government's slow response to local appeals for help is by now notorious.
With a new foreword by the author—Chris Rose’s New York Times bestselling collection: “A gripping book about life’s challenges in post-Katrina New Orleans…packed with heart, honesty, and wit” (New Republic).
Celebrated as a local classic and heaped with national praise, 1 Dead in Attic is a brilliant collection of colum
Environmental Racism in the United States and Canada: Seeking Justice and Sustainability (Hardcover)
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From the 19th-century extermination of the buffalo in the American West to Alaska's Project Chariot (a Cold War initiative that planned to use atomic bombs to blast out a harbor on Eskimo land) to the struggle for recovery and justice in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria in 2017, this book provides readers with an enhanced understanding of how poor and minority people are affected by natura
Association for Humanist Sociology 2007 Book Award co-winner
One community's fight against industrial contamination and environmental racism
Julian Steward Award 2006 Runner-Up
A critical look at the movement for environmental justice
Clean and White offers a history of environmental racism in the United States focusing on constructions of race and hygiene
Uncovers the systemic problems that expose poor communities to environmental hazards
A "powerful and indispensable" look at the devastating consequences of environmental racism (Gerald Markowitz) and what we can do to remedy its toxic effects on marginalized communities -- featuring a new preface on COVID-19 risk factors.
The essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. “Hope Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet?" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction).
“Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature
The call for Climate Justice promises a renewed grassroots response to the climate crisis. This emerging movement is rooted in land-based and urban communities around the world that have experienced the most severe impacts of global climate changes.
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An urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy
Winner of the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award, sponsored by the International Studies Association (ISA)
"Should be required reading for the most committed Green New Dealers and their opponents alike.”&m
This book provides an accessible but intellectually rigorous introduction to the global social movement for 'climate justice' and addresses the socially uneven consequences of anthropogenic climate change.
An urgent, on-the-ground look at some of the “new American radicals” who have laid everything on the line to build a stronger climate justice movement
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Love in a Time of Climate Change challenges readers to develop a loving response to climate change, which disproportionately harms the poor, threatens future generations, and damages God's creation.
An urgent and definitive collection of essays from leaders and experts championing the Green New Deal—and a detailed playbook for how we can win it—including contributions by leading activists and progressive writers like Varshini Prakash, Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Bill McKibben, Rev William Barber II, and more.
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This modern-day Silent Spring addresses climate change head on, arguing that the solution to this global crisis lies in sustainable, biologically diverse farms
Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (Paperback)
An engaging conversation with Noam Chomsky—revered public intellectual and Manufacturing Consent author—about climate change, capitalism, and how a global Green New Deal can save the planet.
Climate change: watershed or endgame?
Planetary Solidarity brings together leading Latina, womanist, Asian American, Anglican American, South American, Asian, European, and African woman theologians on the issues of doctrine, women, and climate justice.
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An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life.
"Relax," writes author Mary DeMocker, "this isn't another light bulb list. It's not another overwhelming pile of parental 'to dos' designed to shrink your family's carbon footprint through eco-superheroism." Instead, DeMocker lays out a lively, empowering, and doable blueprint for engaging families in the urgent endeavor of climate revolution.
Tips, tools, advice, and activities for raising eco-friendly kids while nurturing compassion, resilience, and community engagement.
From the 1960s to the present, activists, artists, and science fiction writers have imagined the consequences of climate change and its impacts on our future.
World-renowned environmental activist and physicist Vandana Shiva calls for a radical shift in the values that govern democracies, condemning the role that unrestricted capitalism has played in the destruction of environments and livelihoods. She explores the issues she helped bring to international attention—genetic food engineering, culture theft, and natural resource privatization&md
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The Nature of Hope focuses on the dynamics of environmental activism at the local level, examining the environmental and political cultures that emerge in the context of conflict.
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A global energy war is underway. It is man versus nature, fossil fuel versus clean energy, the haves versus the have-nots, and, fundamentally, an extractive economy versus a regenerative economy.
“Let this book immerse you in the many worlds of environmental justice.”—Naomi Klein
We are living in a precarious environmental and political moment. In the United States and in the world, environmental injustices have manifested across racial and class divides in devastatingly disproportionate ways.
Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere.
"Beyond Katrina" is poet Natasha Trethewey's very personal profile of her natal Mississippi Gulf Coast and of the people there whose lives were forever changed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
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Washington Post • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020
Finalist • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction
Kirkus Reviews • Best Nonfiction Books of 2020
Library Journal • Best Science & Technology Books of 2020
Booklist • 10 Top Sci-Tech Books of 2020
New York Times Book Review • Editor's Choice
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All politics are climate politics in the twenty-first century—and this bold book argues for a Green New Deal that confronts both climate change and inequality
Winner • Pulitzer Prize for History
Winner • Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction
Finalist • National Book Critics Circle Award (Nonfiction)
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Washington Post, NPR, Library Journal, and gCaptain
Booklist Editors’ Choice (History)
Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming?
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Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth.
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The Medicine Wheel built by Indigenous people acknowledges that ecosystems experience unpredictable recurring cycles and that people and the environment are interconnected. The Western science knowledge framework is incomplete unless localized intergenerational knowledge is respected and becomes part of the problem-definition and solution process.
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.
In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visit
"We are in a fight for our lives. Hurricanes Irma and Mar a unmasked the colonialism we face in Puerto Rico, and the inequality it fosters, creating a fierce humanitarian crisis. Now we must find a path forward to equality and sustainability, a path driven by communities, not investors.
Between Earth and Empire focuses on the crucial position of humanity at the present moment in Earth History. We have left the Cenozoic, the “new period of life,” and are now in the midst of the Necrocene, a period of mass extinction and reversal.
Development Drowned and Reborn is a "Blues geography" of New Orleans, one that compels readers to return to the history of the Black freedom struggle there to reckon with its unfinished business. Reading contemporary policies of abandonment against the grain, Clyde Woods explores how Hurricane Katrina brought long-standing structures of domination into view.
Finalist for the 2013 PEN/Faulkner Award
Katrina was not just a hurricane. The death, destruction, and misery wreaked on New Orleans cannot be blamed on nature’s fury alone.
There is no such thing as a 'natural' disaster, writes Romain Huret in his introduction to this multidisciplinary study of the events surrounding and the legacy of Hurricane Katrina. Though nature produced Katrina's rising waters and destructive winds, a vast array of manmade factors shaped the scope of the storm's impact as well as the local and national response to it.
In 2008, three years after Hurricane Katrina cut a deadly path along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, researchers J. Steven Picou and Keith Nicholls conducted a survey of the survivors in Louisiana and Mississippi, receiving more than twenty-five hundred responses, and followed up two years later with their than five hundred of the initial respondents.
With a new epilogue about Bill Gates's global agenda and how we can resist the billionaires' war on life