Shaping the Climate Narrative: 5 Essential Books Offering Varied Perspectives on Environmental Change

A book review by Jigar Shah, Head of Sustainability Research at Maybank Investment Banking Group and these are his personal views.

Seth Godin's "The Carbon Almanac: It’s Not Too Late" compiles insights from over 300 experts in climate change, and features extensive links to reports, podcasts, and websites. I like this book as it’s an excellent starting point for beginners or non-climate professionals, it covers terminologies, problems, and solutions including directing budgets.

"Ministry for the Future" by Kim Stanley Robinson is a gripping sci-fi novel depicting an emerging doomsday reality of climate change in the 21st century. Pained by consistent failure of authorities to cut emissions, a group affected by extreme climate events forms a Ministry. They take over to guide society through a transition and along the way, teach politicians and bureaucrats a lesson. The characters are fun to read about, and stretches our imagination on fantastical and futuristic solutions for cleaner transport, manufacturing, and agriculture.

"Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation, and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis" by Financial Times columnist Simon Mundy is a compelling travelogue. Each chapter, focused on specific geographies, vividly narrates stories of people and economies devastated by natural disasters, providing evidence that we are close to a climate cliff. Mundy explores rising sea levels and real estate destruction in Nigeria, deforestation linked to Brazil's beef industry, the Amazon's precarious state, Nepal's displaced communities due to lake formation, Mongolia's cattle under threat from cold waves, rainfall shortages impacting millet production in Western India, and the illegal cobalt mining in Congo involving child labour.

If you recall the heat waves we experienced in 2023, "The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet" by Jeff Goodell, addresses an extremely relevant issue affecting all lives. He travels across the world to reveal our vulnerability to rising heat, emphasising the unpredictability of heatwaves as cities become heat islands. The book presents irrefutable evidence of a grim future marked by melting ice glaciers in Greenland, the Arctic, and Antarctica, surrounded by boiling oceans. The consequences extend to the environmental impact of cheap air-conditioning, the rise of vector-borne diseases, and an increased risk of pandemics, disproportionately affecting the economically disadvantaged.

"Sustainability, Technology, and Finance: Rethinking How Markets Integrate ESG," edited by Herman Bril et al, is a must-read for those leading sustainability initiatives within their organisations. The book, featuring ESG practitioners including the founder of influential ESG data services provider Arabesque/ESG Book and UN Global Compact, delves into blending technologies to enhance ESG outcomes, contextualising goals, and setting new metrics to measure efforts. The contributors go further by explaining the interplay of ESG utilising natural language processing and sentiment analysis to indicate a company’s commitment to ESG. For those keen on future-proofing, the book highlights tech-based applications that could render some occupations insignificant and lead to broad social inequalities. Overall the book provides hope and recommendations on how markets and technology can catalyse change and advance sustainability goals.