Green fuel: Part 2

Six contemporary writers’ inspiring books on the environment...

GRETA THUNBERG No one is too small to make a difference

In 2018, aged 15, Thunberg started her school strikes for climate; now she has given speeches before the UN, the EU, the World Economic Forum and at numerous demonstrations and protests, gathered into this book.

JAY GRIFFITHS Wild

An odyssey through the wild-lands of the world, and a polemic for their protection, from a writer who was arrested at an Extinction Rebellion protest in 2019, saying in court: ‘We are nature and it is us, and the extinction of the living world is our suicide.’

ROBIN WALL KIMMERER Braiding sweetgrass

Professor of botany and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer braids ‘indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants’ to encourage ‘a more just and joyful relationship with the Earth’.

LEE SCHOFIELD Wild fell

Schofield is ecologist and site manager for RSPB Haweswater in the Lake District, and this details his work on its two hill farms and their upland holdings, as he tries to balance rewilding projects with cherished local farming traditions.

ELIZABETH KOLBERT Under a white sky

Following The Sixth

Extinction about the effect of humanity on other species’ survival, Kolbert here studies technological solutions to environmental crisis; the title a reference to reflecting sunlight from Earth to mitigate climate change.

GEORGE MONBIOT Regenesis

Renowned for political and environmental activism, Monbiot’s latest book takes a hard look at the ecological destruction caused by farming, and draws on recent advances to create a vision of a future that restores Earth’s living systems.