Giving Compass' Take:

• Amy Brady at Pacific Standard highlights two books that take different approaches to take action against climate change: one recounts America's failure to act on global warming in the 1980s, and the other book offers dire prophecies about climate—and artificial intelligence.

• There is a failure among political and industry leaders to see climate change as a problem in the present tense, so how can donors best help to drive climate action? 

• Read an article on U.S. 2019 climate policy. 


As climate change continues to warm the planet, acidify our oceans, and conjure extreme weather events, two new books attempt to excavate the origins of climate denialism and certain strains of conservative ideology that, together, have thwarted aggressive action on climate change. Written by two of the leading American voices on climate, the books take different approaches to recounting this history—one through near-cinematic storytelling, and the other through urgent, activist prose that draws parallels between global warming and the dangers to humanity posed by Silicon Valley’s more chilling technological advancements.

The first is Nathaniel Rich's Losing Earth: A Recent History, which argues that the United States came closer in the 1980s than in any decade before or since to taking aggressive action on climate change—but then didn't. "There can be no understanding of our current and future predicament," Rich writes in the introduction, "without an understanding of why we failed to solve this problem when we had the chance."

Read the full article on how corporations and conservatives need to take action on climate change by Amy Brady at Pacific Standard.