David Remnick

Henry Finder

A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change--including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and more Just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind's heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben's work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change--its past, present, and future--taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben's seminal essay "The End of Nature," the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.

Writing from the New Yorker on Climate Change

The Fragile Earth

A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book One of the Daily Beast’s 5 Essential Books to Read Before the Election A collection of the New Yorker’s groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change—including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and more Just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever been in recorded history, thanks to humankind’s heedless consumption of fossil fuels, New Yorker writer Bill McKibben published a deeply reported and considered piece on climate change and what it could mean for the planet. At the time, the piece was to some speculative to the point of alarmist; read now, McKibben’s work is heroically prescient. Since then, the New Yorker has devoted enormous attention to climate change, describing the causes of the crisis, the political and ecological conditions we now find ourselves in, and the scenarios and solutions we face. The Fragile Earth tells the story of climate change—its past, present, and future—taking readers from Greenland to the Great Plains, and into both laboratories and rain forests. It features some of the best writing on global warming from the last three decades, including Bill McKibben’s seminal essay “The End of Nature,” the first piece to popularize both the science and politics of climate change for a general audience, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning work of Elizabeth Kolbert, as well as Kathryn Schulz, Dexter Filkins, Jonathan Franzen, Ian Frazier, Eric Klinenberg, and others. The result, in its range, depth, and passion, promises to bring light, and sometimes heat, to the great emergency of our age.

Writing from The New Yorker on Climate Change

Marcy Pursell 

An amazing deep dive into climate change, from a series of New Yorker stories, ranging from penguins, wildfires, and desertification. This was fascinating to listen to, especially the earliest published stories, and to see how fast and far things have continued to progress and worsen. I don't see how some people would still doubt climate change's reality after listening to these stories. An excellent job by the New Yorker.

Andrew John Kinney

3.7 stars. In most ways, the essays presented here, which span over thirty years of New Yorker issues, are of historical interest rather than being sources of new and compelling information, at least for those who have been paying attention since 1988. I remember Dr. Hansen's testimony that year, and Elizabeth Kolbert makes reference to it as a sort of "where were you when" moment, like MLK assassination, or Challenger explosion. It's that way for me; I was sitting in the Texas Instruments technical library when I read, rather than watched Hansen's testimony. 

This book is too long, in my opinion. We know the glaciers are melting all over the world, so one essay on that subject is sufficient. Same for ocean acidification, extinction of land plants and animals due to climate zones shifting, same for desertification (though I found the essay on Africa's Great Green Wall fascinating). The message of this book, ultimately, is that there are no either / or choices; it's got to be all of the above, and as fast as we can do it if we want to survive. Sucking CO2 from the atmosphere does not mean we can keep driving fossil fuel powered cars. Maximizing solar and wind does not mean we don't also have to start building nuclear plants in lieu of gas or coal powered. We do not have time to try to fix economic inequality before we implement solutions - I know I think like an engineer, because I am one, but we don't have time for ratholes like that. We must reduce anything that produces greenhouse gases, including eating so much meat (looking at you, America), and we must do that starting right now.

One of the essays is about "earth shading", what Elizabeth Kolbert calls the White Sky, whereby aerosol particles are injected into the stratosphere, just as Mount Pinatubo's eruption did, in order to reduce the heating of the Earth. Make no mistake, this will need to be done, so we'd better fund the engineering studies to figure how to do it, while not freezing the Earth. We will absolutely need the thirty years of coolish weather that approach can buy us. As one scientist said in that essay, no one would willingly accede to chemotherapy, except that, by the time the doctor proposes it, the matter has become about life and death. That's where we are today with regard to global warming.

Update - 4/14/2023: 

Since I wrote this I have read more on the subject, and I no longer believe we need to build nuclear power plants, mainly because we do not have time to spend the decade+ getting them up and running. It has also become apparent that direct air capture of CO2 is incredibly expensive and a waste of resources that should go toward rapidly deploying proven technologies like solar, wind, and EV's. Mark Jacobson's No Miracles Needed lays out the case for rapid implementation of things we know will work, rather than spending any more time on fringe solutions. I still believe we will need to use sun-dimming technologies at some point to buy time to decarbonize.

The Fragile Earth Writing from the New Yorker on Climate Change

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