Climate, Environment, and Ecology: Verso Student Reading

Book strip #1

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  Carbon Democracy

  by Timothy Mitchell

  With the rise of coal power, the producers who oversaw its development acquired the ability to shut down energy systems, a threat they used to build the first mass democracies. Oil offered the Wes...
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  The Price is Wrong

  by Brett Christophers

  RECENT TECHNICAL ADVANCES mean it is typically cheaper to produce electricity from renewable sources than from fossil fuels. Yet, around the world, the transition to green energy is happening too s...
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  Chaos in the Heavens

  by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher

  Translated by Gregory Elliott

  Nothing could seem more contemporary than climate change. Yet, in Chaos in the Heavens, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz and Fabien Locher show that we have been thinking about and debating the consequences o...
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  Future of Denial

  by Tad DeLay

  The age of denial is over, we are told. Yet emissions continue to rise while gimmicks, graft, and green- washing distract the public from the climate violence suffered by the vulnerable. This timel...
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  The States of the Earth

  by Mohamed Amer Meziane

  Translated by Jonathan Adjemian

  While industrial states competed to colonize Asia and Africa in the nineteenth century, conversion to Christianity was replaced by a civilizing mission. This new secular impetus strode hand in hand...
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  Half-Earth Socialism

  by Drew Pendergrass and Troy Vettese

  ‘Building a society that operates within ecological constraints requires an unleashing of our political imaginations, and this book helps us do just that’—Astra Taylor, author of The Age of Insecur...
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  How to Blow Up a Pipeline

  by Andreas Malm

  The science on climate change has been clear for a very long time now. Yet despite decades of appeals, mass street protests, petition campaigns, and peaceful demonstrations, we are still facing a...
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  Happy Apocalypse

  by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

  Translated by David Broder

  Being environmentally conscious is not nearly as modern as we imagine. As a mode of thinking it goes back hundreds of years. Yet we typically imagine ourselves among the first to grasp the impact h...
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  The Future is Degrowth

  by Matthias Schmelzer, Aaron Vansintjan and Andrea Vetter

  Economic growth isn’t working, and it cannot be made to work. Offering a counter-history of how economic growth emerged in the context of colonialism, fossil-fueled industrialization, and capitalis...
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  Climate Change as Class War

  by Matthew T. Huber

  The climate crisis is not primarily a problem of ‘believing science’ or individual ‘carbon footprints’ – it is a class problem rooted in who owns, controls and profits from material production. As ...
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  After Geoengineering

  by Holly Jean Buck

  Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductiv...
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  Ending Fossil Fuels

  by Holly Jean Buck

  Around the world, countries and companies are setting net-zero carbon emissions targets. But “net-zero” is a term that conveniently obscures multiple futures. There could be a version of net-zero w...
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  The Great Adaptation

  by Romain Felli

  The Great Adaptation tells the story of how scientists, governments and corporations have tried to deal with the challenge that climate change poses to capitalism by promoting adaptation to the con...
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  White Skin, Black Fuel

  by The Zetkin Collective and Andreas Malm

  In recent years, the far right has done everything in its power to accelerate the heating: an American president who believes it is a hoax has removed limits on fossil fuel production. The Brazilia...
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  Fossil Capital

  by Andreas Malm

  The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess?In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began...
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  The Imperial Mode of Living

  by Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen

  With the concept of the Imperial Mode of Living, Brand and Wissen highlight the fact that capitalism implies uneven development as well as a constant and accelerating universalisation of a Western ...
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  Capitalism and the Sea

  by Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás

  Winner of the IPEG 2022 Book PrizeThe global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds a...
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  Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal

  by Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin

  Edited by C.J. Polychroniou

  The environmental crisis under way is unique in human history. It is a true existential crisis. Those alive today will decide the fate of humanity. Meanwhile, the leaders of the most powerful stat...
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  Capitalism in the Web of Life

  by Jason W. Moore

  Finance. Climate. Food. Class. How are the crises—and politics—of the twenty-first century connected? In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turb...
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  The Conservation Revolution

  by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher

  Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation...
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  Post-Growth Living

  by Kate Soper

  The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposa...
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  Feminism or Death

  by Francoise d'Eaubonne

  Translated by Ruth Hottell

  Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but abo...
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  The Case for the Green New Deal

  by Ann Pettifor

  In 2008 the first Green New Deal was devised by Pettifor and a group of English economists and thinkers, but was ignored within the tumults of the financial crash. A decade later, the ideas were re...
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  Planetary Mine

  by Martín Arboleda

  Planetary Mine rethinks the politics and territoriality of resource extraction, especially as the mining industry becomes reorganized in the form of logistical networks, and East Asian economies em...
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  Climate Leviathan

  by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright

  **Winner of the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize**Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. Th...
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  Extreme Cities

  by Ashley Dawson

  How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that ci...
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  Mobility Justice

  by Mimi Sheller

  Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day. We are in the midst of a global climate crisis and extreme challenges of urbanization. At the same time it is difficu...
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  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things

  by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel

  Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, gov...
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  Molecular Red

  by McKenzie Wark

  In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that...
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  The Shock of the Anthropocene

  by Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

  Translated by David Fernbach

  The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped int...
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  Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology

  by André Gorz

  Translated by Chris Turner

  In this major new book, Andre Gorz expands on the political implications of his prescient and influential Paths to Paradise and Critique of Economic Reason. Against the background of technological ...
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  Who Will Build the Ark?

  Edited by Benjamin Kunkel and Lola Seaton

  In Who Will Build the Ark?, leading radical thinkers debate left alternatives to runaway global heating, capitalist crisis and wider environmental breakdown, clarifying the stakes in today's key di...
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  Our History Is the Future

  by Nick Estes

  In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenou...

Book strip #11

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  Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency

  by Andreas Malm

  The economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been unprecedented. Governments have spoken of being at war and find themselves forced to seek new powers in order to maintain social ...

Book strip #12

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  A Planet to Win

  by Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni, Daniel Aldana Cohen and Thea Riofrancos

  All politics are climate politics in the twenty-first century - and this bold book argues for a Green New Deal that confronts both climate change and inequalityThe age of climate gradualism is over...

Book strip #13

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  The Conservation Revolution

  by Bram Büscher and Robert Fletcher

  Conservation needs a revolution. This is the only way it can contribute to the drastic transformations needed to come to a truly sustainable model of development. The good news is that conservation...

Book strip #14

• 

  Post-Growth Living

  by Kate Soper

  The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposa...

Book strip #15

• 

  Feminism or Death

  by Francoise d'Eaubonne

  Translated by Ruth Hottell

  Originally published in French in 1974, radical feminist Francoise d’Eaubonne surveyed women’s status around the globe and argued that the stakes of feminist struggle was not about equality but abo...

Book strip #16

• 

  The Case for the Green New Deal

  by Ann Pettifor

  In 2008 the first Green New Deal was devised by Pettifor and a group of English economists and thinkers, but was ignored within the tumults of the financial crash. A decade later, the ideas were re...

Book strip #17

• 

  Planetary Mine

  by Martín Arboleda

  Planetary Mine rethinks the politics and territoriality of resource extraction, especially as the mining industry becomes reorganized in the form of logistical networks, and East Asian economies em...

Book strip #18

• 

  After Geoengineering

  by Holly Jean Buck

  Climate engineering is a dystopian project. But as the human species hurtles ever faster towards its own extinction, geoengineering as a temporary fix, to buy time for carbon removal, is a seductiv...

Book strip #19

Book strip #20

• 

  Climate Leviathan

  by Geoff Mann and Joel Wainwright

  **Winner of the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize**Despite the science and the summits, leading capitalist states have not achieved anything close to an adequate level of carbon mitigation. Th...

Book strip #21

• 

  Extreme Cities

  by Ashley Dawson

  How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that ci...

Book strip #22

• 

  Mobility Justice

  by Mimi Sheller

  Mobility justice is one of the crucial political and ethical issues of our day. We are in the midst of a global climate crisis and extreme challenges of urbanization. At the same time it is difficu...

Book strip #23

• 

  A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things

  by Jason W. Moore and Raj Patel

  Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, gov...

Book strip #24

• 

  How Did We Get Into This Mess?

  by George Monbiot

  George Monbiot is one of the most vocal, and eloquent, critics of the current consensus. How Did We Get into this Mess?, based on his powerful journalism, assesses the state we are now in: the de...

Book strip #25

• 

  Fossil Capital

  by Andreas Malm

  The more we know about the catastrophic implications of climate change, the more fossil fuels we burn. How did we end up in this mess?In this masterful new history, Andreas Malm claims it all began...

Book strip #26

• 

  Capitalism in the Web of Life

  by Jason W. Moore

  Finance. Climate. Food. Class. How are the crises—and politics—of the twenty-first century connected? In Capitalism in the Web of Life, Jason W. Moore argues that the sources of today’s global turb...

Book strip #27

• 

  Molecular Red

  by McKenzie Wark

  In Molecular Red, McKenzie Wark creates philosophical tools for the Anthropocene, our new planetary epoch, in which human and natural forces are so entwined that the future of one determines that...

Book strip #28

• 

  The Shock of the Anthropocene

  by Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz

  Translated by David Fernbach

  The Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. What we are facing is not only an environmental crisis, but a geological revolution of human origin. In two centuries, our planet has tipped int...

Book strip #29

Book strip #30

• 

  Capitalism, Socialism, Ecology

  by André Gorz

  Translated by Chris Turner

  In this major new book, Andre Gorz expands on the political implications of his prescient and influential Paths to Paradise and Critique of Economic Reason. Against the background of technological ...