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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World by John Vaillant (Sceptre/Knopf)
This story of the powerful 2016 wildfire that swept through the Canadian city of Fort McMurray is based on a grim but compelling irony: a hub of the country’s oil industry was nearly incinerated by a climate-fuelled blaze.
Five Times Faster: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change by Simon Sharpe (Cambridge University Press)
To have a chance of keeping global warming to 1.5C, the global economy needs to be decarbonised about five times faster this decade than in the past 20 years. This readable insider’s account of government efforts to cut emissions shows why science, diplomacy and economics need to shift gears.
The Deluge by Stephen Markley (Simon & Schuster)
The quest for smart, readable fiction about the dilemma of climate change is often unrewarding; too much “cli-fi” is earnest, cliché-riven and dull. This sprawling novel is a striking exception: its depiction of the pressures surrounding American climate activists, politicians and scientists in the near future is powerfully persuasive.
The Earth Transformed: An Untold History by Peter Frankopan (Bloomsbury/Knopf)
This vast tome charts the volcanoes, droughts and other features of the natural world that helped shape human history. Its author predicts that nature will ultimately bring net emissions towards zero — though not necessarily in a good way for humanity.
Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from the Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis by Michael Mann (PublicAffairs/Scribe)
The US climate scientist Michael Mann dives into Earth’s geological record to reveal the speed and scale at which humans have driven global warming. It ends with an important message: if net carbon emissions drop to zero, global temperatures will quickly stabilise.
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