Twenty-two years have passed since novelist Kim Stanley Robinson published the first volume of his “Science in the Capital” trilogy about an unleashed National Science Foundation meeting the challenge of a changing climate. Twenty years have passed since Al Gore lit a climate fire under the world with “An Inconvenient Truth.” And 19 years have passed since Annie Leonard wryly explained, in “The Story of Stuff,” how our hyper consumerism was trashing the planet, including the atmosphere.
Today, in 2026? Trump is gutting the NSF, gilding the White House (and Washington), and still blowing smoke on climate change by responding to the red clouds from Canada’s wildfires with punitive tariffs rather than adaptive aid or cooperation.
Juxtapositions of commemoration and backsliding like these have resulted in an outpouring of new titles offering new takes on climate change. To give a better sense of scale, this bookshelf holds 15 titles sorted into five takes, or retakes, from techno-optimism to philosophical pessimism.
Some titles could reasonably be placed in more than one group. One of the titles in the positive trio of pragmatic guides for better climate change communication nevertheless predicts that 130 degrees Fahrenheit will be the summer norm for southeast Texas by 2100. Even the upbeat takes sting.
