Climate Action Week Reading List

Joining libraries and other GLAM organizations across Canada this Climate Action Week, the University of Toronto Scarborough Library presents a collection of resources that focus on climate change related challenges, and sustainability and climate justice efforts. The aim of this collection is to raise awareness, answer our communities’ growing needs, and articulate clearly that libraries are places to connect people and access resources on climate change.

A logo depicting a circle composed of various black horizontal lines with the words "Climate Action Week" to the right.

 

Some are available in print and online at U of T Scarborough Library and some are available through the Toronto Public Library. We encourage you to search our library to find more resources on topics of interest.  

Climate Change

 

Under a white sky: the nature of the future by Elizabeth Kolbert (2021) 

In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. She examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperilled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. 

 

  • Losing earth: a recent history by Nathaniel Rich (2021)

  • By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change--including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late.

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  • A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate by Seth Klien (2020) 

  • In A Good War, author and activist Seth Klein looks at the Second World War strategies and shows how they can be repurposed today for a rapid transition. He demonstrates that this change can create jobs and reduce inequality while tackling our climate obligations. 

Climate Justice and Environmental Racism  

  • What Climate Justice means and why we should care by Elizabeth Cripps (2022) 

  • Elizabeth Cripps approaches climate justice not just as an abstract idea but as something that should motivate us all. Using clear reasoning and poignant examples, starting from irrefutable science and uncontroversial moral rules, she explores our obligations to each other and to the non-human world, unravels the legacy of colonialism and entrenched racism, and makes the case for immediate action. 

A terrible thing to waste: environmental racism and its assult on the American mind by Harriet Washington (2019) 

In her book, Washington explores how exposure to toxic pollutants can negatively impact cognitive development. She also examines how environmental racism perpetuates systemic inequality in other areas of life. 

From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement by Luke Cole and Sheila Foster (2009) 

From the Ground Up critically examines one of the fastest growing social movements in the United States—the movement for environmental justice. The authors use social, economic and legal analysis to reveal the historical and contemporary causes for environmental racism. 

Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World edited by Alison Deming and Lauret Savoy.

This anthology features essays by writers from diverse cultural backgrounds who explore how their identities intersect with nature and the environment. The essays offer a range of perspectives, as well as insights into issues of environmental justice.

Environmental Justice: Concepts, Evidence and Politics by Gordon Walker. 

This collection of essays provides an overview of key concepts related to environmental justice, as well as case studies from around the world that illustrate different ways in which environmental injustice can occur.

Indigenous Knowledge & Climate Change 

As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice From Colonization to Standing Rock, by Dane Gilio-Whitaker (2019)

In this book, Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.

Medicine Wheel for the Planet: A Journey Towards Personal and Ecological Healing by Jennifer Grenz (2024)

In Medicine Wheel for the Planet, building on sacred stories, field observation and personal experience, Dr. Grenz invites readers to share in the teachings of the four directions of the medicine wheel: the North, which draws upon the knowledge and wisdom of elders; the East, where we let go of colonial narratives and see with fresh eyes; the South, where we apply new-old worldviews to envision a way forward; and the West, where a relational approach to land reconciliation is realized.

The End of This World: Climate justice in So-Called Canada by Angele Alook (2023)

Drawing on their work in Indigenous activism, the labour movement, youth climate campaigns, community-engaged scholarship, and independent journalism, the six authors challenge toothless proposals and false solutions to show that a just transition from fossil fuels cannot succeed without the dismantling of settler capitalism in Canada.

We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth (2022)

We Are the Middle of Forever places Indigenous voices at the center of conversations about today’s environmental crisis. The book draws on interviews with people from different North American Indigenous cultures and communities, generations, and geographic regions, who share their knowledge and experience, their questions, their observations, and their dreams of maintaining the best relationship possible to all of life. 

Fuelling Hope and Facing the Climate Emergency