Saving Earth: Climate Change and the Fight for Our Future

by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Nathaniel Rich (Introduction), Tim Foley (Illustrator)

Overview

A timely and inspiring nonfiction guide for middle grade readers about the history of our fight against climate change, and how young people today are rising to action.

Inspired by Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth: A Recent History, the acclaimed book that grew out of an August 2018 issue of the New York Times Magazine solely dedicated to it, Saving Earth tells the human story of the climate change conversation from the recent past into the present day. It wrestles with the long shadow of our failures, what might be ahead for today’s generation, and crucial questions of how we understand the world we live in—and how we can work together to change the outlook for the better.

Written by acclaimed author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and enlivened with illustrations from Tim Foley, and filled with the voices of climate activists from the past and present, this book is both a call to action and a riveting dramatic history.

A Junior Library Guild Selection

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374313050
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	04/05/2022
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	1,096,051
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	10 - 14 Years

About the Author

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich is the author of Above and Beyond: NASA's Journey to Tomorrow (Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan). She is also the editor of the We Need Diverse Books anthology The Hero Next Door. She lives in New York City with her family.

Tim Foley has illustrated many books, including Ben Thompson and Erik Slader's Epic Fails history series. Tim lives and works in Grand Rapids with his wife, Terri.

Nathaniel Rich is the author of numerous novels, and his essays have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone, and The Daily Beast. He lives in New Orleans.

Table of Contents

Introduction Nathaniel Rich viii

Part I Where We Are

Chapter 1 Letting Old Habits Die, Hard 2

Chapter 2 What Is Climate Change, and Where Did It Come From? 14

Chapter 3 No Justice, No Peace 34

Part II Voices Crying Out in the Wilderness

Chapter 4 A History of Protest 45

Chapter 5 Sounding the Alarm 58

Chapter 6 On the Brink 67

Chapter 7 From Reaction to No Action 77

Chapter 8 A Hole in the Sky Changes Everything 85

Chapter 9 Running Out of Time 90

Chapter 10 Pushback 99

Chapter 11 Missed Opportunity 110

Part III Handling the Truth

Chapter 12 That Was Then, This Is Now (And Then) 118

Chapter 13 Time for Change 135

Chapter 14 The Climate Justice Movement 156

Chapter 15 Tomorrow People 169

Chapter 16 Give Light, and People Will Find a Way 185

Notes 201

Recommended Resources 219

Acknowledgments 223

Index 225

Editorial Reviews

2022-03-02
A caustic indictment of this country’s foot-dragging response to the threat of climate disaster, paired with a rising international chorus of younger voices raised in protest.

In the author’s view it’s no longer an impending threat: “Unfortunately, long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario.” In language as acerbic as the famously take-no-prisoners activist Greta Thunberg’s, Rhuday-Perkovich draws from Nathaniel Rich’s terrifying Losing Earth (2019) to point out evidence that scientists have been telling us what was in the atmospheric cards since the mid-1850s. She also traces the political failures—orchestrated in large part, she claims, by the petroleum industry’s lobbying organization, “ironically called the Global Climate Coalition”—that culminated in the disastrous policy reversals of the Trump administration. Readers will be jolted out of any sense of complacency through the inclusion of success stories like New York’s student-led Styrofoam Out of Schools initiative, quotes from Thunberg and dozens of other activists from numerous countries and cultures, descriptions of ways of coping with climate change anxiety, and too rarely made observations about how environmental issues are inextricably linked to issues of race, class, and gender. Foley, illustrator of the Epic Fails series, adds further sauce in caricature portraits ranging from President Donald Trump with fingers in his ears to climate heroes in spandex. Rich supplies an introduction.

Argues persuasively that it’s not going to be a pretty future—or much of a future at all—without drastic action soon. (endnotes, resources, index) (Nonfiction. 12-16)

Kirkus Reviews

A caustic indictment of this country’s foot-dragging response to the threat of climate disaster, paired with a rising international chorus of younger voices raised in protest . . . In language as acerbic as the famously take-no-prisoners activist Greta Thunberg’s, Rhuday-Perkovich draws from Nathaniel Rich’s terrifying Losing Earth (2019). . . Readers will be jolted out of any sense of complacency.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher