by Friederike Otto
Greystone Books
3/25/2025, hardcover
SKU: 9781778401626
From one of the world's most celebrated thinkers on climate change comes a groundbreaking investigation into the human costs of extreme weather.
Climate change concerns everyone, but it does not affect us all equally. In this gripping, provocative manifesto, climate scientist Friederike Otto makes the case that the world's most vulnerable populations are the most at risk of being impacted by climate change--though they did the least to cause it.
Comparing eight extreme weather events--including heat waves in North America, floods in Pakistan, droughts in Madagascar, and wildfires in Australia--Otto shows how global inequality is exacerbating the effects of climate change and exposes uncomfortable truths about the failures of political and social infrastructures around the world. In particular, Otto examines the Global North's extractionist view of the Global South, a view that ensures elites are protected while others bear the brunt of climate disasters.
An engrossing, deeply moving book, Climate Injustice shares the stories of real people, shining a light on the real damage extreme weather events inflict on real lives. Importantly, it shows how racism, colonialism, sexism, and climate change are interconnected, and how positive changes on one level can lead to positive effects on another. Authored by the co-founder of World Weather Attribution, a cutting-edge scientific method that pinpoints the role of climate change in extreme weather events, Climate Injustice offers a groundbreaking view on the fires, floods, heatwaves, and storms that are wreaking havoc at an alarming pace--as well as an essential change in perspective for how we might finally solve this crisis together.
Reviews:
"Friederike Otto is not just a great scientist, but a great scientist who sees beyond science. Climate Injustice is a passionate, fantastically readable argument that the climate crisis is not about saving the planet. It is about saving human dignity and rights. I can't recommend this book highly enough. It will change how you think about the most important story of our time." -- Jeff Goodell, author of The New York Times bestseller The Heat Will Kill You First
"We call it global warming, but as Friederike Otto's evocative and provocative volume makes clear, 'the globe' is not some undifferentiated mass. Climate change invariably comes first and worst for those that did the least to cause it--and only by understanding and dealing with this truth can we make the progress we must." -- Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature
"Friederike Otto is one of the most important scientists at work on climate change today. Her pioneering attribution studies don't just help us to understand climate disasters better, they give us a powerful tool for doing climate justice. As Climate Injustice explains, the climate crisis is not a scientific problem with technical solutions, but a justice problem that reflects and reinforces unequal power relationships. Combining a climatologist's insights with voices from the margins, Otto's writing glows with scientific curiosity, anger and compassion." -- Jeremy Williams, author of Climate Change Is Racist
About the Author:
Friederike Otto is a climate researcher, physicist, and doctor of philosophy. At the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, she researches extreme weather and its effects on society, and she has helped develop the new field of attribution science. She is one of a handful of scientists around the world who can calculate in real time how much climate change has impacted our weather. Her first book, Angry Weather, was published in 2020. In 2021, she was named one of TIME's 100 most influential people in the world. She lives in London.