Resources for Understanding Environmental Justice

An Update

Posted on April 23, 2026 in DEIA Resource Lists

Three years ago, Toward Inclusive Excellence published a comprehensive resource list on the intersection of climate justice and racial justice, sourced from experts in the field. It was so extensive that we had to break it into two parts (see below). In honor of Earth Month this year, and given how environmental injustices have only worsened over the last few years, we reached out to our previous contributors for an updated list of resources on the topic.

Despite nearly total political ignorance, the aggressive promotion of fossil fuels by the Trump administration, and Republican control of the White House and Congress negatively impacting funding for climate science, the number and quality of books engaging climate-change-related issues have increased rapidly in recent years. Part of this continuing knowledge explosion is not difficult to explain, as evidence of a rapidly changing climate continues to accumulate.

The number, size, and ferocity of fires continue to increase worldwide, from Southern California to Siberia. Average temperatures continue to rise worldwide, as do atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.¹ The intensity of floods, spawned by hurricanes and typhoons, has also been increasing. In almost all cases, these catastrophes disproportionately impact marginalized communities.²

The growing number and variety of books in the climate-change field are bound to increase as problems worldwide become more severe. Readership should grow as well. Following is a short list of important, recently published books that will whet any curious reader’s interest in a subject that continues to attract a planetwide readership.

We thank our contributors for collaborating to compile this robust list of resources, which we hope will spark readers to learn more about climate change and perhaps even take action.

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Notes

1. Carbon dioxide concentrations are rising primarily because people have been burning fossil fuels for energy since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Fossil fuels such as coal and oil contain the carbon from millions of years of photosynthesis—the process by which plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We are returning that carbon to the atmosphere in just a few hundred years. Since the middle of the 20th century, annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have increased each decade, from close to 11 billion tons per year in the 1960s to an estimated 37.4 billion tons in 2024. As a consequence, the global carbon dioxide level reached 427 parts per million in 2024, marking an increase of 3.75 parts per million—the largest one-year increase on record. This is more than twice the CO₂ level at the beginning of the fossil fuel age, when the burning of coal began to seriously distort temperatures.
2. For more on this topic, readers should also peruse UN Women’s explainer, “How gender inequality and climate change are interconnected” (2025) and the article “Climate change inequalities: A systematic review of disparities in access to mitigation and adaptation measures” (2025) in the journal Environmental Science & Policy.

Read the Original Lists:

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Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice (2023) by Todd E. Vachon

This important book centers the labor movement in discussions of climate justice, pushing back against assumptions of an inherent tension between the two. Instead, Vachon argues that greater strides are achieved when labor unions center climate justice, pinpointing the Green New Deal as an example.

Climate Change: The Facts 2025 (2026) edited by John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy

This collection assembles scientists and researchers from around the world whose conclusions challenge prevailing narratives surrounding climate change and how they need to change.

Decolonial Environmentalisms: Climate Justice and Speculative Futures in Latinx Cultural Production (2025) by David J. Vázquez

Vázquez, a professor of critical race, gender, and culture studies at American University, here focuses on environmental justice as it pertains to Latinx communities, exploring how mainstream environmentalists often overlook the impact of climate change on this and other marginalized communities, intertwined as their leaders are with racial capitalism.

Toxic City: Redevelopment and Environmental Justice in San Francisco (2025) by Lindsey Dillon

Taking the historically Black neighborhood of Bayview-Hunters Point in San Francisco as a case study, sociologist Lindsey Dillon explores the phenomenon of green gentrification, whereby working-class residents who have long suffered the consequences of industrial pollution are pushed out of their neighborhoods just as they are becoming cleaner places to live.

Environmental Sociology Now (2026) edited by Jordan Fox et al.

Bringing together diverse scholars, this collection compiles thought-provoking essays on pursuing a more justice-oriented environmental sociology, critically reconsidering humanity’s relationship to nature.

The Existential Toolkit for Climate Justice Educators: How to Teach in a Burning World (2024) edited by Jennifer Atkinson and Sarah Jaquette Ray

An important resource for teachers, this guide will help educators foster resilience in their students in the face of worsening climate crises through teaching strategies, lesson plans, and activities.

The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy (2024) by Jeremy Brecher

Brecher, a cofounder and senior strategic advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability, delves deeply into the on-the-ground movement to make the Green New Deal a reality, underscoring the importance of linking environmental justice and the labor movement to achieve substantial, lasting, and meaningful social change.

Ground Truths: Community Engaged Research for Environmental Justice (2024) edited by Chad Raphael and Martha Matsuoka

*Open Access

This collection underscores the importance of community-engaged research in centering marginalized communities in the environmental movement. Contributors highlight how this grassroots approach builds trust by drawing on the lived experiences of people most impacted by climate injustice, with case studies spanning public health, urban planning, community economic development, and food justice.

Growing Papaya Trees: Nurturing Indigenous Roots During Climate Displacement (2025) by Jessica Hernandez

As Dr. Hernandez argues here, the climate crisis can only be addressed through a paradigmatic shift that embraces Indigenous modes of knowledge. This is particularly imperative as worsening climate catastrophes disproportionately impact communities in the Global South.

Handbook of Energy and Environment in the 21st Century: Technology and Policy Dynamics (2024) edited by Muhammad Asif, Guller Sahin, and Muhammad Khalid

Considering the impact of energy on the environment, this timely handbook explores the potential for transitioning to sustainable energy sources, implementing renewable energy, decarbonizing fossil fuels, and ensuring energy security, among other pertinent topics.

Handbook of Human and Planetary Health (2022) edited by Walter Leal Filho

This collection considers health on a global scale, at the level of planetary well-being. Case studies thus investigate infectious diseases, deteriorating food systems, climate-driven migration, zoonoses, and other issues of planetary crisis through global perspectives. The ultimate goal is to address population growth’s impact on sustainability and the environment.

Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization (2025) by Bill McKibben

Well-known environmentalist Bill McKibben’s newest book calls for harnessing the sun’s power to confront fossil fuels’ stranglehold on humankind’s scientific, economic, and political future. He links the climate’s survival to democracy, noting that both are melting down. McKibben was one of the first activists to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, and he has maintained his insistence that an educated, global movement can build a future based on renewable energy. He argues that solar and wind energy are now the cheapest and fastest-growing sources on the planet, but the fossil-fuel industry is trying to block them.

Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice and Finding Hope (2025) by Catherine Coleman Flowers

In this collection of essays, Flowers, a celebrated environmental justice activist and founder of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice (CREEJ), reflects on her work fighting for those most vulnerable (poor, rural, people of color) to highlight the most pressing social justice issues that intersect with environmental crisis, including reproductive justice, rural poverty, and gun violence.

Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress (2025) by Roy Scranton

Scranton, a renowned writer, challenges the assumption that if humanity continues on the same trajectory, it will inevitably lead to further progress. Given the severity of climate change, he shows, things are only worsening and surely cannot improve by advancing in the same direction without change.

Intersectional Feminist Criminology: A Critical Companion to Theory and Research (2025) by Venezia Michalsen

Although this text focuses broadly on the entire discipline of criminology, readers interested in climate justice will find the chapter on white-collar and environmental crimes useful for reconsidering environmental harms through an intersectional feminist lens.

The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It (2024) by Genevieve Guenther

Guenther’s book dissects the ways in which supporters of the status quo vis-à-vis fossil fuels manipulate language in their favor, even using scare tactics meant to convince people that a reduction of fossil-fuel sources will leave them shivering in the cold. Guenther is the founding director of End Climate Silence and an affiliate faculty member at The New School, where she sits on the board of the Tishman Environment and Design Center. Guenther is a climate communication expert and activist dedicated to ending climate silence. She has contributed significantly to the discourse on climate change, providing insights into how language shapes public perception and policy. Her work emphasizes the importance of effective communication in mobilizing action against climate change, making her a leading voice in the field.

Public and Environmental Health: Shaping Tomorrow for a Sustainable Future (2026) edited by Ranbir Chander Sobti and Aastha Sobti

Contributors to this collection consider how communities and individuals can improve health outcomes, despite environmental challenges, underscoring the ways in which public and environmental health are intertwined.

The Real Cost of Cheap Food, 3rd ed. (2025) by Michael Carolan

This investigative account, now in its third edition, examines the hidden costs of so-called cheap food (i.e., nutritionally deficient), how the dominant food regime profits from its production, and how it has changed humans’ basic understanding of what food even is. Chapters consider climate change, vertical agriculture, alternative proteins, and food justice.

Replumbing the City: Water Management as Climate Adaptation in Los Angeles (2025) by Sayd Randle

Most people are likely aware that water has always been a big issue in Los Angeles, a problem that has only been exacerbated in recent years by climate change, evidenced by annual wildfires. This book by Randle, a professor of urban studies, examines how stakeholders are working to restructure the city’s sprawling water management system and its implications for the urban environment.

Science in Rebellion: The Scientist Rebellion for Climate Justice (2025) by Fernando Racimo

This volume documents the emergence of the Scientist Rebellion, a growing movement of scientists who are fed up with government inaction on climate change, despite their years of “writing papers, advising governments, [and] briefing the press” on the climate crisis. Racimo, who is a member of the movement himself, reflects on the stakes of standing up for climate justice and implicates universities as being complicit in the crisis.

Shade: The Promise of a Forgotten Natural Resource (2025) by Sam Bloch

Often overlooked, shade plays a much more important role than many people imagine, especially amid worsening heat waves. Bloch, an environmental journalist, examines how American urban development deemphasized the need for shade in public spaces and considers how this impacts urban life and even public health.

Shelter from the Storm: How Climate Change Is Creating a New Era of Migration (2026) by Julian Hattem

One of the most significant consequences of climate change is forced displacement, which affects millions of people globally. Hattem, a journalist who has written about politics and migration for many years, here details the massive human displacement crisis caused by climate change, giving voice to countless climate migrants.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, 10th anniversary ed. (2024) by Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is very possibly the best writer on climate change, whose elegant writing style has been compared to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962). The Sixth Extinction is her seminal volume, arguing that nature has inflicted five general extinctions on the Earth, the sixth being the human-created climate crisis that we are now experiencing. Originally published in 2014, Kolbert’s Pulitzer Prize–winning volume was reissued in 2024 to mark its 10th anniversary.

Stewards of the Land: Race and Reclaiming Environmental Labor in the American West (2026) by Stevie Ruiz

Ruiz, a professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at California State University, Northridge, reclaims the multiracial history of the environmental movement in this poignant monograph. Writing from a decolonial perspective, he articulates how land theft and labor exploitation were far greater factors than pollution in spurring diverse, multiethnic communities to action against environmental injustices.

Sustainable Cities in American Democracy: From Postwar Urbanism to a Civic Green New Deal (2020) by Carmen Sirianni

This insightful volume from sociologist Carmen Sirianni links the environmental crisis to the ongoing crisis of democracy pervading much of the world. He examines a range of grassroots approaches to making cities more sustainable—from bicycle associations to urban farming—as examples of democratic resilience.

Transformations of Global Food Systems for Climate Change Resilience: Addressing Food Security, Nutrition, and Health (2024) edited by Preety Gadhoke, Barrett Brenton, and Solomon H. Katz

This collection presents diverse efforts at agricultural reform to strengthen food security and sovereignty among underserved and marginalized communities around the world, with case studies spanning, for example, Namibia, Indigenous communities in the American Midwest, and Guatemala.

Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future (2021) by Elizabeth Kolbert

Kolbert’s 2021 volume focuses on the various types of environmental crises created by the Anthropocene era and different technological solutions available to humanity to address them, while also being critical of full-blown techno-solutionism. The title refers to the most extreme climate change mitigation strategy, solar geoengineering, designed to reflect sunlight from the Earth. She explores how any single technological fix for one problem can lead to further problems while also acknowledging the important role those technologies might play.

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2020) by David Wallace-Wells

What would happen on Earth if present trends reach their “endgame?” David Wallace-Wells asks in The Uninhabitable Earth. He argues that “It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible—food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation.”

Utopian and Dystopian Explorations of Pandemics and Ecological Breakdown: Entangled Futurities (2025) edited by Heather Alberro et al.

This collection considers how cultural productions, social movements, and politics depict environmental catastrophe as a means of exploring humanity’s relationship to the non-human world and imagining possible futures. Prominent themes that emerge include posthumanism, multispecies futures, and political ecology, among others.

Visions of Environmental Justice: Comunidades Negras and the War on Drugs in Colombia (2025) by Alexander Huezo

*Open Access

This open-access monograph uses political theorist Achille Mbembe’s theory of necropolitics as a lens through which to analyze the environmental racism inherent to the US’s War on Drugs, focusing specifically on Colombia.

What If We Get It Right?: Visions of Climate Futures (2024) by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

While most volumes on climate change consider its disastrous consequences, Johnson charts reasons for hope, documenting possible solutions to the climate crisis at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice.

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TIE is grateful to the following Choice reviewers who graciously contributed specialized recommendations to the list above. We extend special thanks to Dr. Bruce E. Johansen, who also helped to draft the introduction.

Dr. Bruce E. Johansen

Frederick W. Kayser University Research Professor, Emeritus, Communication and Native American Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha

Helena Quintana

Reference Librarian (part-time), Spencer Library and Media Center, Imperial Valley College

Sue Wiegand

Scholarly Communications Librarian, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN 

Hilary Dorsch Wong

Instructional Services Librarian, Memorial Library, SUNY Cortland

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Interested in contributing to TIE? 

Email Fatima (fmohie-eldin@ala.org) at Choice with your topic idea.

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Header image is a detail of This is Harlem by Jacob Lawrence. Courtesy of Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. © 2021 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. For more information, click here.

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