Preparing for the climate crisis involves understanding its complexities, learning practical skills for resilience, and gaining psychological tools to cope with the changes ahead. These books to help you prepare for climate change offer a wide range of perspectives and advice on how to understand, prepare for, and address the challenges posed by the climate crisis.

Understanding the Climate Crisis

1. The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

Offers a sobering overview of the potential impacts of climate change and the future scenarios we may face.

2. The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Explores how human activity is driving a mass extinction, contextualizing climate change within the broader environmental crisis.

3. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein

Discusses the relationship between capitalism and climate change, arguing for systemic change to address the crisis.

Practical Resilience and Adaptation

1. Surviving The Warming by Lorin R. Robinson

The book explores coming changes in housing, the economy, family finances, food, water, employment, energy, healthcare, safety and security and suggests ways in which families can prepare for them—starting now!

2. The Prepper’s Water Survival Guide by Daisy Luther

Focuses on ensuring access to safe water during emergencies, which is crucial in a climate-affected world.

3. The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times by Carol Deppe

Offers guidance on growing food and becoming more self-reliant, which is increasingly important as climate impacts agriculture.

Psychological Resilience and Coping

1. Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Provides a framework for dealing with the emotional toll of climate change while staying motivated to take action.

2. Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos by Jem Bendell

Introduces the concept of “deep adaptation,” which involves preparing for societal collapse as a result of climate change.

3. Facing the Climate Emergency: How to Transform Yourself with Climate Truth by Margaret Klein Salamon

Helps individuals confront the reality of the climate crisis and channel their emotions into effective action.

Community Building and Activism

1. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience by Rob Hopkins

Focuses on building resilient communities that can adapt to and thrive despite the changes brought by climate change.

2. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Combines indigenous knowledge with scientific understanding to offer insights into living sustainably and in harmony with nature.

3. The Climate Action Handbook: A Visual Guide to Saving Our Planet by Heidi Roop

An accessible and practical guide that highlights actions individuals and communities can take to combat climate change.

Philosophical and Ethical Perspectives

1. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh

Explores the cultural and literary challenges of addressing climate change, critiquing the failure of contemporary literature to grapple with it.

2. The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

A speculative look at the future from the perspective of a historian in 2393, examining the political and economic causes of climate collapse.

3. Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence by Timothy Morton

Delves into the philosophical underpinnings of the environmental crisis and the concept of “ecological thought.”

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