Book Review: Climate Justice, by Mary Robinson (2018)

Climate Justice, by Mary Robinson, 2018.

Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland.

Mary Robinson’s distinguished career has taken her from the Presidency of Ireland to working for the United Nations on human rights and climate change. In 2018, Robinson published a book titled Climate Justice: Hope, Resilience, and the Fight for a Sustainable Future. Climate Justice is one of the books chosen for Read Brave Saint Paul 2020, a citywide reading program that focuses on a theme and picks two books to read and discuss, one fiction, one non-fiction. The theme for 2020 is “Our Climate Crisis,” the novel is The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, and Climate Justice is the non-fiction book. 

At around 150 pages, Climate Justice is a quick read. Each chapter focuses on someone who is living with the day-to-day realities of climate change. For me, I found it a compelling look at the lives of these people. I believe that climate change is happening, but I’ll admit that I’m still fairly ignorant about the issue. Climate change is something I’ve known about for a long time—I remember reading the paperback 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth in the early 1990’s. I remember reading it in school, so yay for Windom Elementary School for being on the cutting edge of that curve. And I remember feeling good that I had never left the water running while I was brushing my teeth. I don’t remember any concrete actions that my school took because we read that book, but at least it was a topic being discussed. 

Climate Justice focuses mainly on women around the world, and it convincingly makes the argument that it’s women who are bearing the brunt of the effects of climate change. Bloomsbury, the publisher of Climate Justice, changed the subtitle of the book for the paperback edition to “A Man-Made Problem with a Feminist Solution.” Because Climate Justice tells you the first-person experiences of these women, you feel the immediacy of the issue. 

Climate Justice is a book that I would recommend to anyone seeking to broaden their understanding of climate change, and how imperative it is that we work together as a global community to address this issue.