Climate reading list

These are the climate readings that have been most influential as we’ve started Watershed. Please send us recommendations or feedback as you look through.

The problem statement

• Background on climate fundamentals
  • IPCC 1.5 report: Inspirational message that the current trajectory is disastrous but it's not too late to redirect to a good outcome.
  • Latest emissions gap report
  • Berkeley Earth: rigorous verification of core climate science.
  • Climate change after pandemic
• Visualizations
  • Our World in Data on where emissions come from by country & by sector
  • A best-of compilation from the wonderful work of Robert Rohde
  • Earth’s carbon cycle
  • A year of atmospheric CO2
• On feedbacks and tipping points
  • Nine ‘tipping points’ that could be triggered by climate change
  • Tipping elements in the Earth’s climate system

Human cost:

• The social cost of carbon
• WHO on climate change
• The economics of climate change
• World bank on climate change
• The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

Cost to the natural world:

• Chasing Coral
• Sixth Extinction

Solution paths

Clean energy

The big good news: Clean energy generation is now the least expensive in many geographies. Only one piece of the puzzle but a very, very important piece.

• Core data
• Commentary on how this happened and how to replicate the success
• Case study of how this happened in the UK
• Video lecture on state of US transition
• Demand-matched clean power: How to move to 100% clean electricity given the diurnal and seasonal variation of solar and wind

Where do emissions come from?

• Global greenhouse gas emissions data
• Climate data explorer

Scenario modeling

• Project Drawdown: Table of Solutions (also an excellent book)
• Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy
• Bill Gates: How to Avoid Climate Disaster
• Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now (also a book by John Doerr)
• Interactives
  • U.S. energy policy solutions
  • En-ROADS simulator

Interesting opinion pieces:

• Saul Griffith
• Brett Victor
• John Doerr and Hal Harvey on climate solutions

The role of corporations

• Bill McKibben: Money Is the Oxygen on Which the Fire of Global Warming Burns
• NYTimes on corporate climate programs
• How to tell if net zero goals are serious
• A quick explainer about net zero from Grist

Great ongoing subscriptions

• Twitter accounts
  • @hausfath
  • @Peters_Glen
  • @RARohde
• Podcasts
  • My Climate Journey
  • Outrage and Optimism
  • A Matter of Degrees
  • Watt it Takes
• Best climate-specific news site: CarbonBrief