Greta Thunberg is already a published author, having co-written the family memoir Scenes from the Heart and released the collection of speeches No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, along with being the subject of the biography Our House is on Fire. Now, she’s curating the handbook on climate change. The 19-year-old has compiled essays and advice from a host of luminaries for the forthcoming The Climate Book, to be published in the U.K. by Penguin Random House Oct. 27 and in early 2022 in the U.S. According to the Associated Press, dozens of academics, activists, and thought-leaders contributed including novelist Margaret Atwood, journalist Naomi Klein, Brazilian indigenous activist Sonia Guajajara, and World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“I have decided to use my platform to create a book based on the current best available science—a book that covers the climate, ecological and sustainability crises holistically,” Thunberg said in a statement. “Because the climate crisis is, of course, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. My hope is that this book might be some kind of go-to source for understanding these different, closely interconnected crises.” The Climate Book also includes lessons taken from Thunberg’s own experience as a climate activist as well as some of her most pressing concerns in the fight against the climate crisis, including corporate greenwashing.
Thunberg shared an Instagram video announcing the project and her hopes of what The Climate Book can inspire. “To me, hope is not something that is given to you, it is something you have to earn, to create. It cannot be gained passively, through standing by and waiting for someone else to do something. Hope is taking action,” Thunberg said in the video. “It is stepping outside your comfort zone. And if a bunch of weird school kids were able to get millions of people to start changing their lives, just imagine what we could all do together if we really tried.”
One of Thunberg’s first major actions that rocketed her to the spotlight as an activist was a climate strike at her school in 2018 that has since given way to annual school strikes for climate action and larger demonstrations. During last year’s global climate strike, more than 1,400 protests took place across the world in dozens of countries. Thunberg’s refreshing, galvanizing energy extends to her writing, which her editor praised as “one of our finest … new writers.” “In a series of sharp, insightful and impassioned chapters which knit the book’s different parts together, she shares her own experiences and responds to what she’s learned,” editor Chloe Currens told The Guardian. She added that The Climate Book “aims to change the climate conversation forever.”
Thunberg’s U.S. editor told Daily Kos that the experience working on “The Climate Book” has “both humbling and galvanizing.” “Greta has been urging us to listen to the scientists since her school strike began, and in ‘The Climate Book’ we get the hard truth from them about what it is we're facing, and the information we need to take bold, definitive action,” Christopher Richards said. “A better world is possible, and this is a book that gives me real hope because it lays the groundwork for how we can build it together.”