Part 1: How Climate Works

1.1 To solve a problem, you must first understand the problem clearly / Greta Thunberg
1.2 The History of Carbon Dioxide on Earth / Peter Brannan
1.3 The Impact of Humans on Evolution / Beth Shapiro
1.4 Civilization and Extinction / Elizabeth Colbert
1.5 Climate Science Is Impeccably Accurate / Greta Thunberg
1.6 The Discovery of Climate Change / Michael Oppenheimer
1.7 Why Didn't They Act? / Naomi Oreskes
1.8 Tipping Points and Feedback Loops / Johan Rockström
1.9 The Biggest Story in the World / Greta Thunberg

Part 2: How the Earth is Changing

2.1 Weather on Steroids / Greta Thunberg
2.2 Column / Katharine Hayhoe
2.3 Methane and Other Gases / Zig Hausfather
2.4 Air pollution and aerosols / Bjorn H.
three sets
2.5 Clouds / Paulo Seppi
2.6 Arctic Warming and the Jet Stream / Jennifer Francis
2.7 Dangerous Weather / Friederike Otto
2.8 The Snowball Starts Rolling / Greta Thunberg
2.9 Drought and Flood / Kate Marvel
2.10 Ice sheets, ice shelves, and glaciers / Ricarda Winkelmann
2.11 Ocean Warming and Sea Level Rise / Stefan Rahmstorf
2.12 Ocean Acidification and Marine Ecosystems / Hans-Otto Pörtner
2.13 Microplastics / Karin Kvale
2.14 Freshwater / Peter H.
Glick
2.15 The crisis is much closer to our daily lives than we think / Greta Thunberg
2.16 Wildfires / Joel Gergis
2.17 Amazon / Carlos Nobre, Julia Ariera, Natalia Nascimento
2.18 Boreal and Temperate Forests / Beverly Row
2.19 Terrestrial Biodiversity / Andy Purvis, Adriana de Palma
2.20 Insects / Dave Gulson
2.21 Nature's Calendar / Keith W.
Larson
2.22 Soil / Jennifer L.
Song
2.23 Permafrost / Jörjan Gustafsson
2.24 What happens when temperatures rise by 1.5 degrees, 2 degrees, and 4 degrees? / Tamzin Edwards

Part 3: What Impact Does Climate Change Have?

3.1 The World is in a Fever / Greta Thunberg
3.2 Health and Climate / Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
3.3 Heat and Disease / Anna M.
Vicedo Cabrera
3.4 Air Pollution / Drew Shindell
3.5 Vector-Transmitted Infectious Diseases / Felipe J.
Colon Gonzalez
3.6 Antibiotic Resistance / John Brownstein, Derek McFadden, Sarah Magoff, Mauricio Santillana
3.7 Food and Nutrition / Samuel S.
Myers
3.8 We're Not All in the Same Boat / Greta Thunberg
How to survive at 3.9 degrees Celsius / Salimul Hook
3.10 Environmental Racism / Jacqueline Patterson
3.11 Climate Refugees / Abram Rustaton
3.12 Sea Level Rise and Small Islands / Michael Taylor
3.13 Sahel Rain / Hindu Umaru Ibrahim
3.14 Winter in Sapmi / Elin Anna Raba
3.15 Fight for the Forest / Sonia Gwajara
3.16 The Enormous Dilemma We Face / Greta Thunberg
3.17 Warming and Inequality / Solomon Xiang
3.18 Water Shortage / Oki Daikan
3.19 Climate Dispute / Marshall Burke
3.20 The Real Cost of Climate Change / Eugene Linden

Part 4: What Are We Doing?

4.1 To fix failure, you must first acknowledge it / Greta Thunberg
4.2 The New Negativity / Kevin Anderson
4.3 The Truth About Government Climate Goals / Alexandra Urisman Otto
4.4 We're going in the wrong direction / Greta Thunberg
4.5 The Persistent Dominance of Fossil Fuels / Bill McKibben
4.6 The Rise of Renewable Energy / Glen Peters
4.7 The Potential of the Forest / Karlheinz Erb, Simon Gingrich
4.8 The Reality of Geoengineering / Niklas Hellström, Jenny C.
Stevens, Isaac Stoddard
4.9 Carbon Removal Technologies / Rob Jackson
4.10 A fundamental shift in thinking is needed / Greta Thunberg
4.11 Human Fingerprints in the Ground / Alexander Pope
4.12 Food and Calorie Issues / Michael Clark
4.13 Designing a New Food System / Sonja Vermeulen
4.14 Industrial Sector Emissions / John Barrett and Alice Garvey
4.15 Technology as an Obstacle / Ketan Joshi
4.16 The Challenge of Transport / Alice Larkin
4.17 Is the Future Electric? / Jillian Annable, Christian Brand
4.18 Words and Actions Are Different / Greta Thunberg
The Harmful Effects of Consumerism / Annie Lowry
4.20 How to (Not) Buy Things / Mike Berners-Lee
4.21 A World Covered in Trash / Silpa Kaja
4.22 The Myth of Recycling / Nina Schrank
4.23 This is the final line / Greta Thunberg
4.24 Emissions and Growth / Nicholas Stern
4.25 Climate Justice / Sunita Narain
4.26 Degrowth / Jason Hickel
4.27 Awareness Gap / Amitabh Goshi

Part 5: What Should We Do Now?

5.1 The best escape route is to awaken ourselves / Greta Thunberg
5.2 Personal Action and Social Transformation / Stuart Capstick and Lorraine Whitmarsh
5.3 1.5 Degree Lifestyle / Kate Raworth
5.4 Overcoming Climate Indifference / Per Espen Stoknes
5.5 Changes in Eating Habits / Gidon Essence
5.6 Remember the Sea / Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
5.7 Back to Nature / George Monbiot, Rebecca Wrigley
5.8 Now we must do the impossible / Greta Thunberg
5.9 Practical Utopia / Margaret Atwood
5.10 People Power / Erica Chenoweth
5.11 Changing the Media Narrative / George Monbiot
5.12 Resisting the New Negativity / Michael E.
only
5.13 True Emergency Response / Seth Klein
Lessons from the May 14 Pandemic / David Wallace-Wells
5.15 Honesty, Solidarity, Authenticity, Climate Justice / Greta Thunberg
5.16 A Just Transition / Naomi Klein
5.17 The Meaning of Equity / Nikki Becker, Disha A.
Ravi, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, Laura Veronica Muñoz, Ina Maria Sikongo, Aisha Sidika, and Mitch Jonel Tan
5.18 Women and the Climate Crisis / Wanjira Maathai
5.19 Decarbonization Requires Redistribution / Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty
5.20 Climate Compensation / Olufemi O.
Taiyo
5.21 Let's Set Our Relationship with the Land Right / Robin Wall Kimmerer
5.22 Hope is something we have to create / Greta Thunberg

What's next?
A word of recommendation from the editor
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The Climate Book, first published in the UK in late 2022, attracted significant attention simply because it was planned by climate action icon Greta Thunberg.
It was selected as the book of the year by authoritative media outlets such as [The Times], [The Observer], and [Nature], and was published in the United States in February of the following year, where it quickly became a [New York Times] bestseller.
In particular, [The Times] selected this book as a must-read for our time, comparing it to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and Yuval Harari's Sapiens.

The background of the book's creation is also interesting.
Thunberg first conceived the idea for this book in 2021, when all outdoor activities were halted due to COVID-19.
The goal was clear and ambitious.
To create the most reliable, science-based guide to the global climate crisis.
It was to record scientific facts that clearly show the current state of humanity and to inform the world that we still have the opportunity to change the future.
And so the dream team was formed.
Leading experts in fields such as climatology, geophysics, oceanography, economics, health, history, and climate activism responded to Thunberg's call.
Scientists Drew Shindell and Michael Oppenheimer, who have been researching at the forefront of climate science; Bill McKibben and George Monbiot, who are famous for their outstanding writings on climate change; Margaret Atwood, a Booker Prize-winning author well-known in Korea; Robin Wall Kimmerer, a plant ecologist of Native American descent; Thomas Piketty, who rose to stardom with Capital in the Twenty-First Century; and world-renowned environmental activist Naomi Klein.
This combination would not have been possible without Thunberg.


Compendium of Climate Science

The Climate Book is a landmark publication that brings climate action to the forefront, but its breadth of subject matter surpasses that of existing climate-related books.
It encompasses the climate crisis stemming from our civilization, including capitalism, consumerism, colonialism, and climate justice, as well as the Earth's ecosystems, including the oceans, ice sheets, land, and atmosphere.
Using a variety of statistical data and cutting-edge research, the authors vividly convey the scale, speed, and impact of the current climate crisis.
The shocking graphs that appear throughout the book are particularly impressive.
For example, the 'Great Acceleration' graph (pp. 58-59) presented by Johan Rockström (Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research) shows at a glance the ripple effects of the Earth system and material civilization over the past 100 years since the full-scale use of fossil fuels.
Readers will see that virtually every indicator—greenhouse gas emissions, fertilizer consumption, water use, marine fisheries, population growth—is growing exponentially, far beyond what the planet can sustain.


This book consists of 84 chapters in 5 parts and is filled with interesting scientific knowledge.
Part 1, which explains how climate works in particular, covers the history of carbon dioxide, civilization and extinction, and anecdotes from the scientists who first recognized climate change (scientists warned the U.S. Senate 40 years ago that the "greenhouse effect" could not be ignored!).
The scientific explanation for the tipping point is particularly impressive: according to Rockström, “passing the tipping point is like pressing a kind of ‘go’ button.”
Because the Earth's biophysical systems are shifting to a completely new (irreversible) equilibrium (scientists consider the moment when this Pandora's box is opened to be a 1.5-degree rise).
Meanwhile, Part 2 comprehensively covers changes to the Earth caused by climate change, such as heat waves, wildfires, and floods.
In particular, the story of forest fires, which are increasing every year in Korea, is attracting attention.
According to Australian scientist Joel Gergis, global warming has “already made bushfire seasons more deadly and longer, and they are occurring in areas that have never seen fire before.” In 2019-2020, Australia saw megafires that burned 240,000 square kilometers, releasing more carbon dioxide in a single fire period than the entire country emits in a year.


The Real Cost of Climate Change

Part 3 addresses the issue of the 'real cost of climate change' charged to humanity in return for enjoying material civilization.
Scientific findings are revealing the precise threats climate change poses to human body, mind, and society, including heat, vector-borne infectious diseases, and food and nutritional issues.


Environmental epidemiologist Anna M.
According to Bichedo-Cabrera, “climate change is responsible for 37 percent of heat-related deaths between 1991 and 2018,” and beyond direct heatstroke, it can worsen acute illnesses like heart attacks and underlying conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Additionally, while a person born in 1960 will experience an average of four severe heat waves in their lifetime, a child born in 2020 will experience a whopping eighteen (the frequency of severe heat waves doubles for every 0.5 degree Celsius rise in global temperature).
The research of Marshall Burke (Department of Earth System Sciences, Stanford University) is also interesting.
Climate is correlated with violent crime, with higher temperatures leading to increased violent crime between individuals and greater group conflict.
Studies have also shown that more conflicts between civilians occur during El Niño events (see figure on page 244).


Meanwhile, there are also some surprising experimental results showing that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations lower the nutrients in crops.
Samuel S.
Myers (Harvard T.
According to a research team at the H. Chan School of Public Health, crops grown at 550 ppm of atmospheric carbon dioxide (the expected concentration in the mid-21st century) had significantly lower iron, zinc, and protein content, and some varieties of rice had significantly reduced levels of B vitamins, including folate and thiamine.
As the Earth's temperature rises in the future, humanity is likely to suffer from diseases caused by nutritional deficiencies.
It is a warning that the food crisis can cause problems not only in quantity but also in quality.


Climate change also portends significant socioeconomic costs.
According to journalist Eugene Linden, extreme temperatures could make parts of the Middle East, including Iran, Syria and Iraq, uninhabitable, worsening Europe's refugee crisis.
It is pointed out that this will significantly increase the geopolitical costs in climate disaster areas.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, a more serious crisis could arise.
According to major insurer Aon, the world suffered $1.8 trillion in damages from weather-related losses between 2000 and 2009, and the amount increased to $3 trillion between 2010 and 2019.
In 2021, Moody's Analytics estimated that reaching 2 degrees Celsius of warming would cost the global economy $69 trillion.
Linden warns that “our world will already be experiencing a climate-related global financial crisis long before we reach 2 degrees of warming.”

What should we do

Parts 4 and 5 address the futility of what we're doing to address the climate crisis and what we actually need to do.
A representative example is the effort to remove carbon from the atmosphere to prevent the climate crisis.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is recognized as a promising engineering method for removing carbon from industrial processes, led by Norway.
However, more than 100 of the 149 CCS projects worldwide have been abandoned or put on hold due to reasons such as construction costs and low profitability.
Meanwhile, the transition to renewable energy sources, such as solar energy, is too slow due to the social structure that is still based on fossil fuels and corporate lobbying.

So what should we do? Some of the authors in this book mention nature-based climate solutions.
By preserving the ecosystem, we strengthen and maintain nature's carbon absorption capacity.
Environmentalists George Monbiot and Rebecca Wrigley advocate "rewilding" (reviving ecosystems by relying on nature's resilience), while marine biologist Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson proposes farming seaweed and then sinking it in the deep sea (seaweed sequesters 200 million tonnes of carbon each year).
Of course, the best option is to minimize current carbon emissions.
As Stanford University geoscientist Rob Jackson puts it, “It costs less to keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere today than it does to remove them from the atmosphere tomorrow.” The cheap(?) greenhouse gases we emit today will have to be removed at great expense by future generations.

To prevent such moral irresponsibility, we must start by calculating carbon emissions correctly.
We don't have a large carbon budget, and even the calculation methods are flawed.
Journalist Alexandra Urisman Otto analyzed Sweden's "net zero emissions target by 2045" and found a significant discrepancy between the official figure of 50 million tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted each year and the actual figure of 150 million tonnes.
This is due to a loophole in the international climate accounting method (which excludes emissions from consumption, biomass combustion, international aviation and shipping), and experts say that if all countries rely on this calculation and act complacently, the carbon budget will soon run out, and the world will head straight for a catastrophic rise of 2.5 to 3 degrees Celsius.
These fictitious carbon budgets may be convenient for governments to fool citizens, but it is impossible to set any hopeful goals from them.

Towards a tipping point of hope

In early June 2023, massive wildfires in Canada turned New York's skies orange.
About a week later, in Sweden, two climate activists, a nurse and a nursing student, were arrested for putting their handprints on the protective window of the exhibition of Claude Monet's Garden at Giverny.


Climate change is now the hottest topic in the world, yet it's still consumed as gossip.
This is why Thunberg opens the book by defining our times in the first chapter as “the era in which the greenwashing machine is wielding its power.”


Greenwashing refers to corporate activities that improve the corporate image and promote sales by deceiving consumers into thinking that the company is eco-friendly when in fact it is not.
In Thunberg's eyes, our society, which fails to warn of the tipping point that will arrive in just 10 years, is itself a greenwashing machine.
And we hold accountable the politicians and media who waste time with empty promises, touting rosy engineering technologies, and whispering hopes (“Hope for whom? Hope for those who created this problem, or hope for those who suffer the consequences of this problem?”).

Thunberg's essays (18 in total), which appear interspersed with the authors' writings, are filled with anger and frustration at decades of repeated inaction and broken promises by political leaders.
But that anger leaps into change and action (Thunberg fills the back of the book with a list of things to do as individuals and as a society).


The world has known about climate change for a long time.
But half of all the carbon dioxide humans have emitted has occurred in the past 30 years.
Today, when the problem is so serious, those who will suffer the most from climate disaster are, paradoxically, those who are least responsible.
“Going vegetarian one day a week, buying carbon offsets when you fly to Thailand, or switching from a diesel SUV to an electric one” isn’t enough.
Maybe it's giving us the wrong signal that we're not in an emergency situation yet.
Everyone needs to be properly informed about the reality of the climate crisis and be able to tell the truth.


This book is a useful guide for those who want to delve deeper into the climate crisis and understand the big picture.
It's full of facts we're missing, problems we haven't thought about, and things we need to do.
Erica Chenoweth of Harvard University says in her chapter on “People Power” that “25 percent of dedicated people” change the world.
I look forward to the day when the spark of climate action ignited by Thunberg reaches 25 percent of the world's population, and I hope this book will be a source of hope for all those at the starting line of climate action.
Of course, that hope should not be the hope of a few, but of everyone.
Thunberg says.
“Hope is something we must create ourselves.
I am convinced that there is a societal tipping point where, when enough people decide to take action, things start to work out in our favor.” We are at a historic moment for humanity.