The Weight of Nature

November 1, 2023

What is a changing climate doing to our brains? Aldern, who holds degrees in neuroscience and public policy from Oxford, details the alarming effects--IQ measurements decrease, sleeplessness rises, biological carries of brain disease spread farther. He's known for his compulsively viewable visual data models, but early buzz is that Aldern's writing is compelling too. Prepub Alert.

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February 26, 2024
This novel inquiry from Aldern (coauthor of Homelessness Is a Housing Problem), a Grist data reporter and former neuroscientist, examines how global warming will affect human cognition and behavior. Heat influences decision-making, Aldern argues, noting research that found the likelihood that a judge will grant migrants asylum decreases as the temperature rises. Another study showed that heat stymies the effectiveness of the brain’s serotonin system, making people more impulsive and aggressive. Other evidence is more circumstantial. For instance, Aldern points out theories suggesting the act of forgetting evolved “to update our beliefs so we can best navigate the world as it changes.” In light of this, he predicts that as the environment transforms, people’s brains will recognize that their current climate doesn’t accord with the weather as featured incidentally in countless memories, leading the brain to suppress them to establish more accurate, up-to-date expectations. The most devastating portions of the book profile individuals coping with the cognitive consequences of climate change, such as Michael Reed, who has had PTSD since his wife and two children died in a Tennessee wildfire in 2016. Though the more speculative arguments remain open to debate, research on the deleterious psychological effects of severe heat offers a unique perspective on how humans will be changed by a warming world. Readers will be troubled. Agent: Larry Weissman, Larry Weissman Literary.

March 1, 2024
The climate crisis and the chaos it has created are changing us in countless ways, some obvious, others subtle. Aldern, a journalist with training in neuroscience, considers the adverse effects of extreme weather and worsening pollution on our emotions, decision-making ability, behavior, and cognition. Global warming particularly burdens the brain. Rising outdoor temperatures ratchet up irritability and impulsivity, aggression and acts of violence, lack of focus and forgetfulness. Climate change increases the incidence of some illnesses (including the ravages of ""brain-eating"" amoeba). As the planet warms, the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes (vectors for Zika virus and malaria) and ticks (Lyme disease) expands. PTSD in the aftermath of hurricanes, wildfires, and severe flooding is not uncommon. Parts of the discussion are self-evident (""Our brains don't work as well when it's hot out""). Banalities sometimes pop up (""Earth is hurting, and empathy means hurting with it""). Aldern doesn't fully address human hardiness or specific measures to mitigate damage to brain health by violent weather and battered environments, but he does satisfactorily convey the significance of neurological and psychological problems associated with climate change.

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March 15, 2024
This is your brain on climate change. In his second book, neuroscientist and environmental journalist Aldern examines the palpable effects of climate change on our brain chemistry, including not just increased anxiety, stress, and depression, but also detrimental changes in decision-making abilities and judgment. Paraphrasing a climate advocate in California's Central Valley, the author writes, "planetary empathy is rooted in pain: the aches and grimaces of a world grieving not just the loss of species and an unspoiled troposphere, but also the loss of the way time once passed and the seasons once progressed. It is the sorrow of glacial ice bearing water for the last time; seas unable to hold their vapors close; the erasure of whole fluvial languages once carved into riverbeds." As a result of all this loss, notes Aldern, "the shadows of stress loom," generating in our bodies a torrent of hormonal responses that prompt "relentless cortisol storms" and altering the landscape of our brains--e.g., via the gradual shrinking of the hippocampus. Furthermore, neurotoxins--which can lead to a vast array of serious health concerns, including Alzheimer's and ALS--are being released in increasing amounts due to the drastic changes in the climate, which include expanding bacterial and algal outgrowths, melting permafrost, and accelerating swarms of virus-bearing mosquitos. The chronic stress we feel as we lose seasons, coastlines, farmlands, and mountaintops is literally changing our brains' "structure and function, leading to memory problems, mood disorders, and heightened anxiety," all of which have ripple effects on those around us. 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.

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