During the first week of January, the EFN team took part in our first ever reading week! We immersed ourselves in books, articles, podcasts, films and documentaries to learn more about climate, environmental and philanthropy ideas and issues. Our hope was to learn more and feel inspired, so we can do our work more effectively throughout 2025. After the reading week, we had a “book club” chat about what inspired us and what we learnt. Below are our top recommendations from that conversation – enjoy!
P.S. For those interested in running their own reading week, we couldn’t recommend it more. Not only did we learn a lot, the reading week was beneficial for our wellbeing and a communal act of self care – we hope to run it again next January. These eight recommendations below are only part of what folks read over the week. Other titles we couldn’t fit below included Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, academic articles on biodiversity credits, many podcast episodes from the likes of Climate Curious and The Climate Question and more.
#1 Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie
Hannah Ritchie is Deputy Editor of Our World in Data and Senior Researcher at the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. Not the End of the World aims to use long-term data to show a more positive outlook on human society and our journey to a sustainable future. Debunking common myths around the environment and using lots of interesting data points, she covers how we can move forward on key environmental issues like air pollution, food systems, climate change, biodiversity and more.
The majority of the team read this one and her “urgent optimism” approach resonated – meaning being more positive than prevailing narratives about our future, whilst not being complacent and working with urgency. We also enjoyed how she offered solutions-based thinking and the way she used graphs and charts (from Our World in Data) to help explain complex issues – especially effective for a general public audience. The team debated whether her data was sometimes framed quite specifically around the arguments she was saying – perhaps making certain issues like disasters sound more positive than we normally consider. Despite this, it was an uplifting read for the new year.
Available at major bookshops and via second hand retailers.
#2 The End We Start From (film) featuring Jodie Comer and directed by Mahalia Belo
The End We Start From follows a lead, unnamed Woman played by Jodie Comer, as she escapes a suddenly flooded London and gives birth to her son, Zeb. The flooding and heavy rain spreads to other low-lying areas of the UK, causing mass panic and displacement. The film follows how the Woman, Zeb, and her partner, R as they manage this disaster.
A few members of the team watched this film and we actually had mixed feelings about this one. Everyone agreed Jodie Comer was amazing and the premise of surviving a flooded London/England was compelling. However we were a bit disappointed with how the flood disaster was not explicitly linked to climate change (it is implied) and how the ending (no spoilers) felt a bit counterintuitive about how you rebuild after a disaster. That said, the film does have 89% on the film review site, Rotten Tomatoes!
Watch via Amazon & Netflix.
#3 The Long Time Academy – podcast by Headspace and The Long Time Project and produced by Scenery Studios.
Featuring Ella Saltmarshe who we work with in our Inter-Narratives project, many of our team listened to The Long Time Academy podcast:
“Life is short. Time is long. Right now so many of us are burnt out and overwhelmed… The Long Time Academy is an immersive and entertaining new podcast that steps into this space with one clear message: changing the way we choose to engage with time can be life-changing”
The team members who listened have found the switching perspective to consider long-term thinking to be really transformative. When you ask questions like, what will be the impact of our actions in seven generations?, or when you take part in a death meditation (bonus episode 2), you immediately start thinking in an entirely different way. The team agreed that this podcast may resonate with our members – especially if you want to consider how to be a good ancestor.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts..
#4 Venomous Lumpsucker by Ned Beauman
Sunday Times Science Fiction Novel of the Year and Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award (2023), Venomous Lumpsucker is a darkly funny book about a near-future dystopia where a mining executive, Mike, and biologist, Karin, travel around a environmentally degraded Europe to investigate if the most intelligent fish on the planet, the Venomous Lumpsucker, is extinct or not. And naturally it becomes much more complicated and thrilling! The book centres on a whole new industry that has built up around ‘extinction credits’ that are aimed at reducing species loss, but are actually being used as a tradeable asset to make money.
Without giving away any spoilers, the team who have read this book found it funny, dark and compelling. If you like fiction, we think you will enjoy thinking about mass extinction, environmental loss and global financial systems from this entirely new, but familiar perspective.
#5 Wealth Unpublished by Jake Hayman
What do you do when you’re wealthy and want to redistribute your wealth? According to Jake Hayman, ‘Progressive Wealth Holders’ face an uphill battle. In Wealth Unpublished, Jake explores how society is influenced by a wealth industry and broader systems that value the growth of wealth above all else. Based on his extensive experience working in the philanthropy sector alongside research, case studies and interviews, Jake shows the struggles progressive wealth holders face when trying to turn their backs on financial excess in pursuit of a fairer society.
The book also explores the role of the private wealth industry in fostering the systems that allow the extreme accumulation of wealth and power, and the damage this causes to people and planet. Jake considers the role of philanthropy alongside the redistribution of wealth: “if philanthropy’s central organising idea is that those with extreme wealth should ‘give back’, progressive wealth’s central organising idea is that extreme accumulation of wealth signals a fundamental flaw in society that needs redressing.” We found Jake’s analysis of the wealth advice industry, wealth holders and philanthropists important and urgent, and the case studies and interviews compelling and moving.
If you’d like to read Wealth Unpublished, please get in touch with Jane for a print copy. There are limited copies available and Jake has kindly given a set of copies to us to share with EFN members
#6 Rebellion: Beyond the Emergency (film) directed by Maia Kenworthy & Elena Sánchez Bellot
Explore the story of Extinction Rebellion (XR) in this thoughtful documentary. Covering how XR rose from a small twitter following to the protests in April 2019 and after, the documentary follows key characters from the movement, including the co-founders Gail Bradbook and Roger Hallam, Roger’s daughter Savannah and activists like lawyer Farhana Yamin.
The majority of the team watched the film and found it very insightful in showing how you build a movement, what direct action looks like when it is/isn’t effective, how you keep organising a movement once it gets larger and larger and overall the strong impact this movement had. We also found the documentary explaining the views of XR’s youth movement and their centering of climate justice really compelling. Similarly the crackdown by government and police when the new anti-protest laws were introduced was briefly but effectively shown. Overall, if you are a funder interested in movement building, activism, justice, youth work and campaigning, you will find this documentary a great watch.
Available to watch via Amazon.
#7 A World Without Racism: Building Antiracist Futures, edited by Joshua Virasami
One member of our team highly recommended A World Without Racism, which has inspired the rest of the team to add this to the top of their reading lists. The collection shares some powerful reflections on what antiracist work may look like in the climate sector and beyond. The collection centres around the key questions: “What is antiracist activism? And how do we organise for power around antiracist principles?” and draws on 10 contributors, such as Sisters Uncut, Tipping Point and Healing Justice London.
We discussed that anti-racist work will always be challenging and controversial, as we live in a world that is systematically racist. It made us consider how to propel our JEDI work going forward, how we challenge ourselves and our members, who we might collaborate with and how we explicitly link antiracist work to climate and environmental issues. Also, if you are interested in climate reparations, Chapter 9 from Tipping Point, “Breaking the Cycle: Repairing Harms Through Climate Reparations”, is worth exploring.
Available at major bookshops and via second hand retailers.
#8 Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts
Another member of our team read Every Living Thing and their summary of the story of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon really captured our imagination.
Carl and Georges-Louis were 18th century researchers who could not have been more different – Carl a Swedish, poorer Doctor and Georges-Louise, an aristocratic polymath. The book showed how these knowledge systems in the West were created to suit the agenda of these men and the legacy of their long-term rivalry. Weaving their work with colonialism, the erasure of indigenous knowledge, the sharing of racist pseudoscience and much more, the book shows consequences of Linnaeus and Buffon’s work then and in centuries to come.
Available at major bookshops and via second hand retailers.