
The Weight of Nature
How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains
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Narrated by:
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Clayton Page Aldern
About this listen
A New York Times Editors' Choice
A Next Big Idea Club and Sierra Magazine Must-Read Book
A Behavioral Scientist’s Notable Book of 2024
A Financial Times Best Summer Book
A Bookshop Most Notable Science Book of 2024
A deeply reported, eye-opening book about climate change, our brains, and the weight of nature on us all.
The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather, and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.
Aldern calls it the weight of nature.
Hotter temperatures make it harder to think clearly and problem-solve. They increase the chance of impulsive violence. Immigration judges are more likely to reject asylum applications on hotter days. Umpires, to miss calls. Air pollution, heatwaves, and hurricanes can warp and wear on memory, language, and sensory systems; wildfires seed PTSD. And climate-fueled ecosystem changes extend the reach of brain-disease carriers like mosquitos, brain-eating amoebas, and the bats that brought us the mental fog of long COVID.
How we feel about climate change matters deeply; but this is a book about much more than climate anxiety. As Aldern richly details, it is about the profound, direct action of global warming on our brains and behavior—and the most startling portrait yet of unforeseen environmental influences on our minds. From farms in the San Joaquin Valley and public schools across the United States to communities in Norway’s Arctic, the Micronesian islands, and the French Alps, this book is an unprecedented portrait of a global crisis we thought we understood.
©2024 Clayton Page Aldern (P)2024 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"This is your brain on climate change.... As Aldern demonstrates throughout this distressing yet urgently necessary book, climate change is affecting the very duration of our lives. This is a unique—and uniquely disturbing—addition to the literature. A lyrical and scientifically rigorous account of the emotional and physical toll climate change is taking on the human brain."—Kirkus, *starred review*
"Aldern is the rare writer who dares to ask how climate change has already changed us."—New York Times Book Review
“The Weight of Nature is science-based journalism at its zenith. Neuroscientist and environmental journalist Clayton Page Aldern has authored a powerful and portentous book about the impact climate change is having on our brains and behavior. This book is a must-read for those concerned about the implications of climate change on our personal and public health. . . . And it is filled with hope. While climate change has an adverse impact on us, we are beings with the capacity for empathy, feeling, embodiment, and awe. By seeing the magic that is around us, we can be motivated to respond to the climate crisis.”—New York Journal of Books
Uniquely deep story and theme.
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Well done !
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Very interesting book with a new perspective
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Topics presented include effects of warming on cognition and scholastic performance, increases in CO2 and water temperature increasing algal blooms and neurotoxin production and frequency of amoebic menginoencephalitis. Continued increases in global temperature are expanding habitat for mosquitoes and ticks that can transmit encephalitic diseases and malaria. Dramatic environmental alterations associated with hurricanes, drought, increased forest fires, and loss of flora and fauna can contribute to PTSD, depression and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Dramatic changes in the environment such as loss of long, snowy winters can alter perception of the world and the corresponding subtle and regional language used to communicate with others about their environment and lives.
The author suggests methods to ameliorate and counter these potential adverse effects of global change on the brains and minds of humanity.
Adverse Outcomes of Climate Effects on Brain/Mind
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