The Weight of Nature

How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains

By: Clayton Page Aldern

Narrated by: Clayton Page Aldern

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 Audio

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.

I listen to the prologue of The Weight of Nature and immediately downloaded the audiobook. I was intrigued by the juxtaposition of nature and brain changing. In retrospect it's obvious. This short book touches on a selection of categories that could be included in this broad raging topic of brains and nature. The reader, voices, subtle and thoughtful. It's a tour through places most people have not considered I think. Good job.

Well done !

His research was beautifully & meticulously done. The writing & telling of his story was a pleasure to read or listen to.

Very interesting book with a new perspective

I've read quite a few books and articles about climate change and its impacts, but this book was a really fresh and different approach I had not seen anywhere else. The author is very creative in how he presents the ideas and his style is entertaining and draws you in, which is not easy with a topic like this. His narration is also easy to listen to, and i will likely listen to it again some time soon since there is quite a bit to absorb in here.

Adverse Outcomes of Climate Effects on Brain/Mind

This book presents an exceptionally imaginative and creative synthesis of ideas about how climate change and environmental alterations can affect our brains and minds. The author has interwoven concepts from fields as diverse as neuroscience, psychology, toxicology, environmental epidemiology, linguistic anthropology and geology to project possible outcomes of global warming, environmental pollution and other environmental changes on how well mankind perceives, thinks, feels, and communicates. If the current rate of climate change proceeds unabated, the next generation may see magnitudes of global changes in a lifetime that typically might otherwise occur over thousands of years.

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.