Earth Day: Audiobook Picks

Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors (2024)

Sample "The Long In-Between," from the 2024 collection

By: Grist
Narrated by: Ron Butler
Length: 27 minutes

Grist's Imagine 2200 climate fiction contest celebrates stories featuring vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. Climate fiction can invite us to look beyond the current moment to envision the world that could be, and empower us to work toward it. The stories in this 2024 collection -- Imagine's third -- are not afraid to... Read more

Guardians of the Valley

John Muir and the Friendship that Saved Yosemite

By: Dean King
Narrated by: Samantha Desz
Length: 14 hours 7 minutes

* “We see through this book the immense power of language…to change the minds of lawmakers and tourists alike.” —The New York Times Book Review * “A poignant portrait of an era when mere words could change the world.” —San Francisco Chronicle *

The dramatic and uplifting story of legendary outdoorsman and conservationist John Muir’s journey to... Read more

Twelve Trees

The Deep Roots of Our Future

By: Daniel Lewis
Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

A compelling global exploration of nature and survival as seen via a dozen species of trees, offering “extensive insight into the ways in which humans and trees are interconnected” (BookPage), revealing the challenges facing our planet and how scientists are working urgently to save our forests and our future.

The world today is undergoing the... Read more

Not the End of the World

How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

By: Hannah Ritchie
Narrated by: Hannah Ritchie
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

This "truly essential" audiobook will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems (Margaret Atwood)—and explains how we can solve them. It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will... Read more

A Book of Bees

And How to Keep Them

By: Sue Hubbell
Narrated by: Lauren DePorre
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees’ lives, Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and harvesting their honey, a process that is as personally... Read more

Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth

How to Live with Care and Purpose in an Endangered World

By: Kate Schapira
Narrated by: Helen Laser
Length: 5 hours 53 minutes

Climate anxiety is real—and this practical, accessible guide helps address it on personal, relational, and structural levels, from the founder of the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth. Summer after summer is the hottest on record. People’s homes are flooding, burning, blowing away. We live with the loss, pain, and grief of what’s happened, and... Read more

Ten Birds That Changed the World

By: Stephen Moss
Narrated by: Stephen Moss
Length: 9 hours 56 minutes

The natural history of humankind, told through our long relationship with birds  

For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and... Read more

An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Ed Yong
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong
 
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative... Read more

What We Sow

On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds

By: Jennifer Jewell
Narrated by: Jennifer Jewell
Length: 13 hours 23 minutes

An insightful, personal, and timely exploration into the wonderful world of seeds. 

In What We Sow, Jennifer Jewell brings readers on an insightful, year-long journey exploring the outsize impact one of nature's smallest manifestations—the simple seed. She examines our skewed notions where "organic" seeds are grown and sourced, reveals how giant... Read more

Our Fragile Moment

How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

By: Michael E. Mann
Narrated by: Tim Campbell
Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course.
 
For the vast majority of its 4.54 billion years, Earth has proven it can manage just fine without... Read more

Wasteland

The Secret World of Waste and the Urgent Search for a Cleaner Future

By: Oliver Franklin-Wallis
Narrated by: Chris Harper
Length: 11 hours 2 minutes

An award-winning investigative journalist takes a deep dive into the global waste crisis, exposing the hidden world that enables our modern economy—and finds out the dirty truth behind a simple question: what really happens to what we throw away?

In Wasteland, journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis takes us on a shocking journey inside the waste... Read more

Eco-Anxiety (and What to Do About It)

Practical Tips to Allay Your Fears and Live a More Environmentally Friendly Life

By: Harriet Dyer
Narrated by: Sasha Higgins
Length: 1 hour 44 minutes

Be kind to the planet, but most of all, be kind to yourself



When you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders, grab this book for a dose of calm and courage. Packed with reassuring tips and advice, from mindfulness exercises to practical steps you can take to make a difference, this guide will ease your eco-anxiety and help you to live a... Read more

A Quiet Retreat

By: Kiersten Modglin
Narrated by: Carly Robins
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

It all begins with a simple invitation. For five authors, it’s meant to be the start of a restful week, filled with free food, drinks, and like-minded company. But shortly after their arrival, things take an unsettling turn. Broken property, missing items, and strange noises are just some of the odd occurrences that have each member questioning... Read more

Year of No Garbage

By: Eve O. Schaub
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

In this book, Eve O. Schaub, humorist and stunt memoirist extraordinaire, tackles her most difficult challenge to date: garbage. Convincing her husband and two daughters to go along with her, Schaub attempts the seemingly impossible: living in the modern world without creating any trash at all—for an entire year and, as it turns out, during a... Read more

Soil

The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

By: Camille T Dungy
Narrated by: Camille T Dungy
Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

“Part nature writing, part exploration of the African diaspora and Black identity, part memoir, Dungy puts herself in conversation with all the white nature writers who've come before - Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson - and exposes how a monoculture in both cultivars and cultural backgrounds threatens us and... Read more

It's Not Just You

By: Tori Tsui
Narrated by: Tori Tsui
Length: 7 hours 27 minutes

‘The world is in desperate need of this book’ - Greta Thunberg

'It's Not Just You is a galvanising breath of fresh air' - Mikaela Loach

'Tori Tsui is changing the conversation around mental health and the climate crisis' - Vogue

‘A must-read for anyone who would love to understand the intersections of mental health and the climate crisis’ -... Read more

On Borrowed Time

North America's Next Big Quake

By: Gregor Craigie
Narrated by: Gregor Craigie
Length: 7 hours 48 minutes

Finalist, Balsillie Prize for Public Policy and Victoria Butler Book Prize

A Globe and Mail Top 100 Book

The Big One and what we can do to get ready for it.

Mention the word earthquake and most people think of California. But while the Golden State shakes on a regular basis, Washington State, Oregon, and British Columbia are located in a zone that... Read more

Slow Burn

The Hidden Costs of a Warming World

By: Robert Jisung Park
Narrated by: Davis Brooks
Length: 11 hours 12 minutes

This audiobook narrated by Davis Brooks reveals how the subtle but significant consequences of a hotter planet have already begun—from lower test scores to higher crime rates—and how we might tackle them today

It’s hard not to feel anxious about the problem of climate change, especially if we think of it as an impending planetary catastrophe. In... Read more

Wayfarer

Love, loss and life on Britain’s ancient paths

By: Phoebe Smith
Narrated by: Phoebe Smith
Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

A Financial Times best summer travel book of 2024 'A powerfully delicate book of love, loss and discovery, along paths of emotional understanding and physical wonder.' Raynor Winn, author of The Salt Path On an assignment to walk the most famous pilgrimage in the world – the Camino de Santiago, in northern Spain –... Read more

Earth

Over 4 Billion Years in the Making

By: Chris Packham & Andrew Cohen
Narrated by: Rupert Evans
Length: 5 hours 16 minutes

‘Combines the natural history of programmes such as David Attenborough’s Planet Earth with the planetary focus of Brian Cox’s Universe’ Guardian A beautiful, full colour book to accompany the 5 part BBC TV series telling the most important story of all, the deep history of our own planet. ... Read more