The Weight of Nature

A riveting, revelatory account of how the climate emergency is changing us from the inside out

It is now inarguable that climate change threatens the future of life on Earth. But in The Weight of Nature, award-winning journalist and neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern shows that the warming climate is not just affecting our planet – it is affecting our brains and bodies too.

Drawing on seven years of ground-breaking research, Aldern documents a burgeoning public health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Eco-anxiety, he shows us, is just the tip of the iceberg. The rapidly changing environment is directly intervening in our brain health, behaviour, decision-making and cognition in real time, affecting everything from spikes in aggravated assault to lower levels of productivity and concentration, to the global dementia epidemic. Travelling the world to meet the scientists and doctors unravelling the tangled connections between us and our environment, and reporting the stories of those who are already feeling these shifts most keenly, Aldern shows how climate change isn’t just around us, but within us.

Lucid, urgent 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.

Review

Elegant, convincingly argued … a calm voice in a world of chaos … impossible to ignore -- Philippa Nuttall ― 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 -- Ben Cooke ― 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 -- Anjana Ahuja ― 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 -- George Marshall ― 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

About the Author

Clayton Page Aldern is a neuroscientist turned environmental journalist whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, the Guardian, the Economist and Grist, where he is a senior data reporter. A Rhodes Scholar, he holds a master's in neuroscience and a master's in public policy from the University of Oxford. He is also a research affiliate at the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington.