On a shelf next to my desk, I keep the books that shaped how I think about our planet—and how I cover it as a journalist focused on nature and the climate. When I sit down to write about the natural world, titles such as The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben; A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold; and The Solace of Open Spaces, by Gretel Ehrlich, accompany me. In the decades since they were published, I’ve returned to these touchstones again and again. Each one felt pivotal to my comprehension of the way humans affect our environment.
But lately, as I read news about deadly heat waves and disappearing glaciers, those titles are beginning to seem almost naive. They’re full of far-off warnings of what could come if we don’t curb emissions or cut back our rampaging use of resources. There is no if anymore. Our planet is record-breakingly hot because of a global failure to heed those admonitions. Fifty-five years after the first Earth Day was organized, long-term data about warming oceans and aridifying forests are paired, more and more, with impossible-to-ignore proof of civilization’s cascading effects: raging storms, endangered species, fire seasons that stretch all year long. We’re past prediction and into perception. Today, a new genre of writing—one that records the ongoing crisis—feels more useful than my old standbys. Below are seven visceral reported accounts of what’s happening in the places where the Earth is changing most rapidly; each will help readers better understand the new status quo.
Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson
This 63-year-old classic might seem to belong on the shelf with the other old-school books, but it’s worth returning to because Carson built the mold for reporting on an ongoing disaster. She made chemical pesticides, an otherwise dry subject, terrifying and compelling by outlining the ways that DDT, a highly toxic insecticide, was harming the natural world. By referencing the texture of paper-thin eggshells and the eerie silence of bird-free spring mornings, she pulled on all our senses in order to precisely pin down the damage. Then she untangled the chemistry of these dangerous compounds, connected...
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