This is Green Start-Up's list of four books that can teach you more about being a responsible individual and how collective action can save the planet and can give us a greener future.

Nathaniel Rich's Losing Earth: A recent history

This book can be a good choice for those of you that want to take a close look at how our recent history, especially what came after the industrial revolution, changed the course of our planet's climate.

Published in 2019, this book also covers the scientific research that was done by experts over the course of many years, but that was ignored by policymakers until it was much harder to take action.

This book can be a good example of the saying "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it", as scientists to this day come with studies on a yearly basis, showing what has to be done and what hasn't been implemented yet to improve our climate situation.

Nathaniel Rich's book can, thus, be a great reminder of what can happen, if companies and officials continue to ignore the signals given by researchers.

Revolutionary Power: An Activist’s Guide to the Energy Transformation

This book, written by Shalanda Baker, is about a clean, sustainable energy system, as much as it is about the importance of this system to vulnerable communities.

The author's study case is Hurricane Maria and its effects on various communities that have been struck by it, energy-wise.

Her findings suggest that black and brown communities didn't get as much help as white communities during the nearly one year long power outages that happened in Puerto Rico during the aftermath of the climate extreme event.

She also argues that, due to this, minorities should fight to create a new energy system that is equitable to all people, regardless of race, gender, religion or other factors.

Shalanda's experience as an energy-justice advocate and a lawyer contributed to writing this book that can help people build a just and clean energy system.

Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140

More of a science fiction book, but also based on the ever-changing climate, New York 2140 depicts a grim future of one of the most famous metropolises in the world.

New yorkers living in this possible future have to navigate the city via canals, rather than taking the subway or a taxi and sky-scrapers are more like individual islands where people can find shelter from the rising waters.

You probably see where this book is coming from, as rising sea levels are endangering a good part of our cities and countries, among which are Venice and the Netherlands.

Although this book doesn't depict reality as we know it today, it could serve as a grim reminder of what we can expect from a not-so-distant future, should we not act to stop and reverse global warming.

The sixth extinction: An unnatural history

This book, written by Elizabeth Kolbert, mentions the five mass extinction events that took place over the past 500.000 years or so, which have dramatically reduced the variety of species living in our ecosystems.

This book wants to act more as a premonition of what a sixth such event could mean for our planet, as scientists currently monitor the situation of Earth's ecosystems.

While previous extinction events weren't necessarily related to us, human beings, the sixth possible such phenomenon could be more our fault rather than anything else, which is why we should question the way we live and use our resources.

By conserving and protecting ecosystems and vulnerable species and by using natural resources in a more responsible way, we can prevent the sixth mass extinction event from happening.

These are just a few of the multiple books out there that cover the subject of climate change and how climate-related events alter the course of our lives, but other species that populate the planet.