Covering Climate Now

Here are 20 environmental books published in 2024 for readers of all ages and experience. They offer vision, knowledge, and a sense of wonder — necessary to help us build a better planet.

Visiting the Oceania region where Pope Francis will head next week, the United Nations secretary-general called for international action, and financing, to bolster Pacific island nations facing rising seas and other impacts of climate change.

A recent summit organized by the Connecting Climate Minds network brought together hundreds of scientists, doctors, community leaders and other experts from dozens of countries who have spent the past year studying how climate change is harming mental health in their regions.

Sustainable diets have been around for ages, but an emerging cookbook genre signals a new appetite for change.

Canadian climate science denier Jordan Peterson's new right-wing project launched last week with claims that carbon emissions have "declined" and that the climate crisis is a "secular religion."

An idle well fee program is masking vast cleanup costs while harming residents and the climate. A new California law just signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom aims to close loopholes that have allowed oil drillers to walk away from wells that are no longer profitable but remain harmful.

People of faith must advocate for ecological, economic and ecumenical solutions in order to save "people and planet" from death by the declining climate, said speakers at the "Resilience for Congregations" conference.

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva legally recognized nearly 800 square miles of Indigenous lands on April 28, reversing policies enacted by his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right leader who encouraged development in the Amazon. The move bars non-Indigenous from any economic activity in the area and prohibits mining and logging without permission.

Climate activism is most effective when it taps into the pain of grieving instead of repeating statistics that overwhelm people into numbness.

The Murphy Site, which taps the La Cienegas Oil Field, is located in Jefferson Park, a neighborhood composed mostly of Black and Latino residents. Those living near the site display "significantly higher prevalence of wheezing, eye and nose irritation and dizziness" as well as reduced lung capacity. The site is not owned by an energy company, though, but by the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

The new book, 'The Petroleum Papers: Inside The Far Right Conspiracy To Cover Up Climate Change,' traces the oil and gas industry's pursuit of profits in the face of scientific warnings.

Heat-related illness and death are a growing problem in U.S. agriculture, but the Occupational Safety and Health Administration still hasn't established national safety guidelines.

A new high-efficiency building on Dartmouth College's campus illustrates the Ivy League school's clean energy transition — in more ways than one — as the $160 million facility was paid for in part by fossil fuel industry gifts.

Some rivers and lakes wouldn't be swimmable today without this critical law. But it could use a refresh to help meet our current challenges.

A walk through a scorched rainforest leads to a cascade of questions. How can one bring children into such a world? How can one not? Beyond the choice to have children, what would it mean to live well through the losses foretold by this newly scarred landscape?

U.S. Democrats in Congress squabbling over how best to invest in the fight against climate change will forge a compromise in coming months that could be signed into law by President Joe Biden, Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin predicts.

If you're tired of the horrors unfolding hour after hour on social media and TV news, stop doomscrolling and point your eyes somewhere more encouraging: environmental books that offer vital lessons on saving the planet and the creatures that live here.

Through her work with the Mighty Acorns program, Ylanda Wilhite encourages kids to engage with nature in their city neighborhoods, with a particular focus on BIPOC and disinvested communities in Chicago's South and West Sides.

Climate scientist Michael Mann says there’s time to avoid the most catastrophic climate effects, but not if we stay on the current path.

Novel legal strategy argues that top schools including Princeton and Vanderbilt are legally obliged to put the public interest first.

From artificial snow at the Beijing Winter Games to dams being too low to row in: the sports world is having to come to terms with unusual and unpredictable conditions.

Storytelling about the climate crisis has generally focused on end-of-the-world stories that serve as a warning, but can positive stories that focus on solutions and activism inspire change?

Covering Climate Now: A new study hopes to inspire water managers — and the rest of us — to begin planning for how climate change will dramatically reduce snowpack.

Covering Climate Now: In the lead-up to COP26, the Swedish activist talked about Biden’s climate plan, the media’s responsibility and what gives her hope.

Covering Climate Now: The home of the environmental justice leader was among those that suffered damage from the Category 4 Hurricane Ida and its 100-plus mph winds.

Fossil fuel companies continue to donate large sums to the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies to block or weaken legislation.

Covering Climate Now: After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America's petroleum giants face a reckoning — an unprecedented wave of lawsuits — for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

Covering Climate Now: Climate change talks this year aimed at keeping global warming in check need to consign coal power to history, the British president of the upcoming United Nations' conference said in a recent interview.

With his recent oil-drilling decisions, President Joe Biden have given good news and bad news to environmentalists. So what's behind his seemingly contradictory positions on oil and gas activities in Alaska?

How the G7 leaders respond to the climate justice challenge this weekend will shape the chances of success at COP 26 in November, what United Nations Secretary General António Guterres calls "our last opportunity" to defuse the climate emergency.

Covering Climate Now: In downtown Jersey City, students at the Dr. Michael Conti Public School No.5 took a real-life problem — stormwater runoff and flooding — and solved it with environmental civil engineering.

Covering Climate Now: Amid the chaos of the pandemic, Greta Thunberg turned 18. Now, she speaks to Teen Vogue, reflecting on her gap year and what it will take to protect our uncertain future.

As the Line 3 pipeline cuts across the Fond du Lac reservation, treaty lands of other bands of Ojibwe and Mississippi River headwaters in northern Minnesota, the project has brought controversy and discord.

All life on Earth is sustained by vital biogeochemical systems, which are in delicate balance. Humans are destabilizing these Earth processes, endangering the stability of the "safe operating space for humanity."

Country music stars, conservationists and tens of thousands of Albertans came together to roll back plans for mountaintop-removal mining in the Rockies.

Last November, youth climate activists helped elect U.S. President Joe Biden. Now, many are demanding a say in U.S. federal climate policy.

Students in coastal Goa, India, are using social media platforms to fight back the government's attempt to turn their state into a coal handling and transportation hub.

Oilfield dangers aren't confined to the drilling pad — many Permian Basin homes have pipes carrying gas, oil and contaminated water running right through their yards.

Global goals and targets for climate change adaptation are unclear, says U.N. report, and countries lack sufficient policies, plans and financing.

Commentary: In the homeland of the Anishinaabe, Enbridge, the largest pipeline company in the world, is hell-bent on jamming through Line 3, their most massive project, under the cover of this COVID-19 winter as fast as they can — before we can stop them and before the world takes notice.

Covering Climate Now: 2020's fires threaten to completely change familiar forest ecosystems. Researchers are refining how to restore heavily burned areas; land managers are rethinking traditional restoration approaches.

Covering Climate Now: Climate change effects don't have the same impact on everyone, and this discrepancy is apparent even when these groups are not minorities, which is the case for women.

Covering Climate Now: United Nations Secretary General António Guterres said humanity's survival will be "impossible" without the United States rejoining the Paris Agreement and achieving "net zero" carbon emissions by 2050.

Covering Climate Now: The African continent is enduring some of the highest global sea level rise. A new report identifies the western coast as particularly vulnerable to coastal erosion and saltwater intrusion.

Covering Climate Now - In Sitka, where people have lived for thousands of years, I've seen glaciers shrink, summer droughts and deadly landslides — and our elected officials are doing nothing.

Covering Climate Now: Last fall, 16 children from across the world, including Greta Thunberg, filed a formal communication with the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Within the communication, the kids make the argument that their home nations — France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina and Turkey — haven’t done enough to adequately respond to climate change, and therefore haven’t protected their basic human rights.

Covering Climate Now: Howey Ou, 17, is the China's only teenage public climate striker. Every Friday, Howey publicly demands the Chinese government take action to avert a climate catastrophe.

Covering Climate Now: Forested sections of the Thar Desert known as orans are threatened by construction of new power lines, part of India's ambitious renewable energy goals.

The U.S. will officially exit the Paris accord one day after the 2020 U.S. election, and architects of that deal say the stakes could not be higher.

An investigation reveals why the CDC's efforts to prevent heat deaths have faltered.

Mark Lynas, an influential environmentalist in England, talks about how much has changed in the last 15 years, how the COVID 19 pandemic resembles climate change, and how he manages to live happily while carrying the knowledge of looming doom.

Covering Climate Now: A summer forecast to be hotter than usual in much of the country, combined with the coronavirus pandemic, strains the ability to pay rising utility bills.

Covering Climate Now: Reset.org, a German nonprofit organization focused on sustainable development, spoke with Sadrach Nirere about the effects of climate change on his community and how digital media impacts his activist journey.

Covering Climate Now: Climate change is a leading issue for Latinos, and their votes could help Democrats win states like Texas and Colorado and Arizona. But are politicians reaching them?

From New York to Los Angeles, Minneapolis to the Gulf Coast, people of color suffer disproportionately from pollution, callous government and climate change. 

From the Guardian, this story looks at the work of the two Getty Images Climate Visuals photography grant winners.

The same forest destruction that accelerates climate change can also encourage the emergence of diseases, indigenous leaders said, criticizing companies for replacing forests with soy, palm and cattle plantations.

Covering Climate Now: More than 17 million acres have burned in Australia. It's likely some forests won't recover in today's warmer climate, scientists say.

Commentary: The Secretary-General of the United Nations says young people are stirring many to action on climate change but nowhere near enough.

Covering Climate Now: "One day a week, cut out meat." Meatless Monday is a  growing trend to use dietary changes to address climate change.

Covering Climate Now: From allergies and infectious diseases to pregnant mothers, newborns and mental health, climate change is impacting medicine across the spectrum.

Covering Climate Now: The Guardian is providing live updates throughout the day from climate strikes around the world.

Covering Climate Now: Drought, deadly rust disease and plummeting prices have taken a toll on Guatemala's coffee industry, the largest rural employer in a country among the most vulnerable to climate change.

Why join the latest global climate strikes? Environmentalist and 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben makes his case.

Covering Climate Now: In 144 countries and some 4,800 protests, young and old will join forces in the Sept. 20-27 climate strikes, part of the Fridays for Future movement begun by Swedish teen Greta Thunberg.

Covering Climate Now: As world leaders converge on New York City for the United Nations Climate Action Summit on September 23, they enter what may be the most consequential week in climate politics since Donald Trump's surprise election as president of the United States in 2016.

Covering Climate Now: "What gives me the most hope right now is that we've finally got the vision for what we want instead, or at least the first rough draft of it. This is the first time this has happened in my lifetime."

NCR is joining a collaborative publishing project called Covering Climate Now, which reflects a shared belief among its media partners that we need to do a better job reporting on climate change.

Covering Climate Now: Amid a Democratic primary shaped by alarm over the climate crisis and an insurgent youth climate movement sweeping the world, new polling shows substantial if uneven support for tackling the issue.