The Weight of Nature

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

A troubling and humane account of how climate breakdown is rewriting our bodies' biology

The climate crisis is wreaking havoc across the globe, raising sea levels, disrupting ancient weather patterns and decimating biodiversity worldwide. But new research shows that the warming climate is not just affecting the planet's physical systems - it is affecting us all individually too.

In The Weight of Nature, the neuroscientist and journalist Clayton Page Aldern examines, for the first time, the seismic consequences of climate change on the human mind, brain and body. The now-familiar concept of climate anxiety, he shows us, is just the tip of the iceberg: a revolution is taking place in the deepest recesses of our neurochemistry. The rapidly changing environment is directly intervening in our brain health, behaviour, cognition and decision-making in real time, affecting everything from aggravated assault and online hate speech to productivity and the global dementia epidemic. Travelling the world to meet the scientists, economists and psychologists unravelling the tangled connections between us and our environment, and reporting the stories of those who are already feeling these shifts most keenly, Aldern explores how a weary world is wearing on us. It soon becomes apparent that, as climate change forces the seas and ice and heat index to their extremes, the extremities reach back.

Lucid, challenging and at times deeply moving, The Weight of Nature is a revelation, bringing to light the myriad ways in which the natural world tugs and prods at the decisions you make; how it twists and folds your memories and mental states; how this nebulous everywhere we call the environment is changing our very humanity from the inside out.

©2024 Clayton Aldern (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Elegant, convincingly argued ... a calm voice in a world of chaos ... impossible to ignore
New Statesman
A neuroscientist shows the myriad ways that our warming climate is making us cranky, dopey and sick... Aldern has managed to do something that most books about climate change fail to: cast the problem in a new light, revealing it to be more insidious than it first appeared
The Times
In The Weight of Nature, Clayton Page Aldern comes closer than anyone in a long time to articulating why so many of us feel queasy about climate change: it is altering the landscape but also us... Beautifully written, this heatwave reading will give you the chills
Financial Times
Arresting revelations ... this is not another book about climate anxiety
Financial Times
Aldern is an excellent storyteller, drawing on interviews and personal experience, with an elegant prose style... and his background in neuroscience puts him on a strong footing to explore the mechanistic impacts of climate change on brain function and chemistry
TLS
Aldern is the rare writer who dares to ask how climate change has already changed us
The New York Times, Book Review
This important watershed book has powerful immediacy as it explains in a clear, warm voice precisely how climate change is making tiny incremental changes in our brains and bodies. Many believe that human brains and bodies can resist or adapt to a warming world. But we learn here that there are limits. Penetrating, intensely personal, and impossible to put down, this is a book you need to read
Annie Proulx, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
It's hard, at this late date, to write something profound and new about the overarching crisis of our times. But Clayton Aldern has succeeded - this book is a triumph, rigorous in its reporting but also in its thinking and feeling. I learned an awful lot
Bill McKibben
What a book! Profound, revelatory, exquisitely written - The Weight of Nature is an unnerving insight into the effects climate change is having on us, as human beings, right now. This is vital, urgent reading, a lifeline to lead us out of the labyrinth.
Isabella Tree
Clayton Page Aldern's writing is so engaging, his research so novel, and his inquiry into our brains and bodies so timely and revealing that this is a rare climate change book you'll actually savor
Alan Weisman, author of THE WORLD WITHOUT US and COUNTDOWN

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