Yale Climate Connections’ bookshelf for February starts with a title that perfectly captures the mission of climate activism during Black History Month.
“People the Planet Needs Now” shares the stories of 25 scientists and activists working to protect and support their Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities in a changing climate.
The next two titles related to environmental justice shed light on the shoulders on which these younger activists stand: the new memoir by Catherine Coleman Flowers and the recently released classic by Robert Bullard and Beverly Wright.
The Bullard and Wright book acts as a bridge to the more academic titles that follow, focusing on the shift from “environmental justice” to “climate justice.”
Among this second set of three titles, legal scholar Cass Sunstein’s new book is likely to attract the most attention. Readers can get a preview of his perspective on climate justice from his interview with The New York Times’ climate columnist, David Wallace-Wells. “Not Just White, Not Just Green” and “Climate Justice and the University” complement Sunstein’s philosophical overview with deeper dives into environmental history and higher education.
The third category consists of critical social histories, including new titles on “land power,” the Caribbean, and an activist, anti-consumerist “church” in the Alphabet City neighborhood of New York City.
This month’s collection concludes with three recently published volumes of climate fiction: Library of America’s new collection of Afrofuturist stories and new novels from East Africa and Indigenous Australia. It is worth noting that the two novels made the long list for the first-ever Climate Fiction Prize. The shortlist for the prize will be announced next month, with the winning title being revealed in May.
As always, the descriptions of the titles are adapted from copy provided by their publishers. When two publication dates are listed, the second is for the paperback edition.
Editor’s note: In just the last seven monthly bookshelves, Yale Climate Connections has included six titles from Island Press: “Multisolving” by Elizabeth Sawin, “Atlas of a Threatened Planet” by Esther Gonstalla, “The Heat and the Fury” by Peter Schwartzstein, “Threat Multiplier” by Sherri Goodwin, “Inclusive Transportation” by Veronica Davis, and “Smaller Cities Within a Shrinking World” by Alan Mallach. From Feb. 24 through March 2, the e-book versions of these titles – and almost all other Island Press titles – can be purchased for $4.99 each on their website. (The discounted price will show up in the cart.)
People the Planet Needs Now: Voices for Justice, Science and a Future of Promise by Dudley Edmundson (Adventure Books 2025, 264 pages, $30.00)
Heroes among us are fighting for a better world – and many of them are Black, Indigenous, and Other People of Color (BIPOC). Acclaimed author and photographer Dudley Edmondson has interviewed 25 Black and Brown scientists, environmental justice activists, and social justice activists to inspire change on a global scale. Along with the full-color photographs, his book offers a rare opportunity to see and hear from BIPOC scientists and activists about problems with “traditional” science and the current methods of addressing everything from climate change to city design. Black and Brown people around the globe have an interdependent relationship with nature, and their perspectives can help us push for positive change. People the Planet Needs Now strives to inspire difference-makers to create a better world together.
Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope by Catherine Coleman Flowers (Spiegel & Grau 2025, 240 pages, $28.00)
Catherine Coleman Flowers has dedicated her life to fighting for vulnerable communities deprived of the right to a clean, safe, and sustainable environment. From climate change to human rights, from rural poverty to reproductive justice, Flowers maps the distance and direction toward justice, examining her own diverse ancestry as evidence of our interconnectedness. Flowers’s faith shines throughout the collection, guiding her work and inspiring her vision of our responsibility to one another and to our shared home. Drawn from a lifetime of organizing, activism, and change-making, Holy Ground equips us with clarity, lights a way forward, and rouses us to action – for ourselves and for each other, for our communities, and, ultimately, for our planet.
See also Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by poet and scholar Camille T. Dungy (Simon & Schuster 2023/2024, 364 pages, $19.99 paperback)
The Wrong Complexion for Protection: How the Government Response to Disaster Endangers African American Communities by Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright (New York University Press 2012/2023, 313 pages, $19.99 paperback)
When the images of desperate, hungry, thirsty, sick, mostly Black people circulated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it became apparent to the whole country that race did indeed matter when it came to government assistance. In The Wrong Complexion for Protection, Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright place the government response to natural and human-induced disasters in historical context over the past eight decades. They assess how the government responded to different emergencies and show that African Americans are disproportionately affected. Uncovering and eliminating disparate disaster response, they argue, can mean the difference between life and death for those most vulnerable in disastrous times.
Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History, edited by Mary E. Mendoza and Tracy Brynne Voyles (University of Nebraska Press 2025, 536 pages, $35.00 paperback)
Environmental history is about the changing relationships between humans and the environment, or nature. Not Just Green, Not Just White aims to redefine the field, arguing that neither humans nor the environment are monolithic actors. Both are diverse, and often the environment causes conflict between and among peoples, leaving unequal access and power in its wake. Just as important, these histories often reveal how, despite unequal power, those who carry less privilege still persist. Together, the essays in this volume reveal how, when practitioners in the field move away from “green” and “white” topics, they will be able to explain much more about our collective past than anyone ever imagined.
Climate Justice: What Rich Nations Owe the World by Cass Sunstein (The MIT Press 2025, 216 pages, $29.95)
If you’re injuring someone, you should stop – and pay for the damage you’ve caused. Why, this book asks, does this simple proposition, generally accepted, not apply to climate change? In Climate Justice, a bracing challenge to status quo thinking, renowned legal scholar Cass Sunstein clearly frames what’s at stake and lays out the moral imperative: When it comes to climate change, everyone must be counted equally, regardless of when or where they live – which means that wealthy nations, which have disproportionately benefited from greenhouse gas emissions, are obliged to help future generations and people in poor, particularly vulnerable, nations.
Climate Justice and the University: Shaping a Hopeful Future for All by Jennie C. Stephens
