Interview with Simon Mundy, author of Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis
Simon Mundy, author of Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis recommends a brilliant set of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Simon's book:
Review from Book Depository:
In this extraordinary journey through 26 countries, Simon Mundy meets the people on the front lines of the climate crisis, showing how the struggle to respond is already reshaping the modern world - shattering communities, shaking up global business, and propelling a groundbreaking wave of cutting-edge innovation.
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Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis
HOW is China's green energy push driving a hazardous mining rush in Congo?
WHY is a maverick scientist building a home for engineered mammoths in northeast Siberia?
CAN an Israeli fake meat startup make a fortune while helping to save the Amazon?
WILL Greenland's melting sea ice put its people at the centre of a global power struggle?
WHO are the entrepreneurs chasing breakthroughs in fusion power, electric cars, and technology to suck carbon from the atmosphere?
As the impacts of climate change cascade across the planet and the global economy, who is battling to survive the worst impacts - and who is chasing the most lucrative rewards?
Telling unforgettable human stories from six continents, this is an account of disaster, of promise, of frantic adaptation and relentless innovation, of hope, of survival, and of the forces that will define our future.
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Easons €16.99
Book Depository €21.09
Waterstones £20.00
Wordery $23.63
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell Review From Book Depository:
A searing account of George Orwell's observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell's later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.
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Orwell is most celebrated today for his novels, but for me it's his journalism that remains most powerfully resonant. The Road to Wigan Pier is a phenomenal piece of on-ground reporting, a searing but perfectly measured exposé of the appalling poverty that afflicted the working classes of 1930s England. It's written in Orwell's usual powerfully economical style, without a single needless syllable, and I strongly suspect that it helped pave the way for the welfare state reforms that followed World War Two. A book to turn to whenever I need to be reminded of how to write, and why to write.
The Road to Wigan Pier
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Easons €14.00
Book Depository €8.74
Waterstones £8.99
Wordery $10.19
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I'm honestly not just saying this because he named Race for Tomorrow in this slot!– but Michael E. Mann's The New Climate War is a fascinating and hugely informative expert account of the bitter political and ideological struggle over climate policy, which also offers an inspiring vision of how we can move beyond our current mess. Professor Mann knows what he's talking about: he's one of the most influential climate scientists in the world, and has been a target of vicious personal attacks by opponents of climate action. For anyone who's enjoyed Race for Tomorrow and is now looking to deepen and broaden their understanding of this subject, I strongly recommend picking it up.
Review from Book Depository:
Recycle. Fly less. Eat less meat. These are some of the ways that we've been told we can save the planet. But are individuals really to blame for the climate crisis?
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The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet
Seventy-one per cent of global emissions come from the same hundred companies, but fossil-fuel companies have taken no responsibility themselves. Instead, they have waged a thirty-year campaign to blame individuals for climate change. The result has been disastrous for our planet.
In The New Climate War, renowned scientist Michael E. Mann argues that all is not lost. He draws the battle lines between the people and the polluters - fossil-fuel companies, right-wing plutocrats, and petro-states - and outlines a plan for forcing our governments and corporations to wake up and make real change.
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Easons €23.79
Book Depository €15.72
Waterstones £16.99
Wordery $16.96
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
I was a huge bookworm as a kid, though I don't think there was one single favourite – I read all the usual children's classics, from Narnia to Just William. I think all that childhood reading was the single most important thing that enabled me to have a writing career as an adult. In my opinion the key thing is for children to get into reading something, and it doesn't really matter what.
Review from Book Depository:
Indigenous people and people of colour are disproportionately affected by climate change, yet often aren't heard in global conversations. In this book, British-Bangladeshi environmentalist and race activist 'Birdgirl' Mya-Rose Craig speaks to campaigners from around the world about what needs to be done.
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I do want to take this opportunity to mention a terrific new children's climate book that I came across recently: We Have a Dream, written by the young British activist Mya-Rose "Birdgirl" Craig and beautifully illustrated by the New York-based artist Sabrena Khadija. It's a collection of 30 personal stories of young climate activists from all over the world, and will be very valuable for any young person who is concerned about the climate crisis and seeking inspiration as to what they can do about it. Mya-Rose and I met recently to record an episode of BBC Radio 4's Start the Week; at 19, she's already made a real impact in this field, and is clearly a rising star to watch.
We Have a Dream: Meet 30 Young Indigenous People and People of Color Protecting the Planet
From wildlife conservation to clean water, air pollution to plastic waste, climate justice to climate strikes, the time has come to listen to a generation of young people of colour demanding urgent change for the world they will inherit.
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Easons €18.19
Book Depository €13.91
Waterstones £12.99
Wordery $13.44
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
All three! Paper if I'm reading a novel to unwind; Kindle for non-fiction (I find the highlight/note function invaluable); and audiobooks when I'm out and about.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
During my years working in Mumbai, the FT office was in the historic Fort district, very close to what quickly became my all-time favourite bookshop. Wayword and Wise had only recently opened when I moved to India but it already felt like a classic Mumbai landmark – wonderfully laid out and designed, an oasis of meditative calm just off one of the city's busiest streets. As this terrific article on the shop notes, it "manages to feel cozy and spacious at the same time". There's no better demonstration of why, however slickly efficient Amazon might be, there will always be a place for physical bookshops.
Many thanks to Simon for recommending a brilliant set of books! Please don't forget to check out Simon's book Race for Tomorrow: Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: HarperCollins Publishers (Race for Tomorrow), Penguin Books Ltd (The Road To Wigan Pier), Scribe Publications (The New Climate War), Magic Cat Publishing (We Have A Dream).
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