As western water leaders prepare to gather in Las Vegas, tribal leaders say they want a say in a final agreement.
* Arizona climate leaders and Republic climate reporter Joan Meiners shared book recommendations to provide hope and perspective for 2026.
* Picks from climate leaders included “The Ministry for the Future” and “Braiding Sweetgrass.”
* Meiner’s list featured books on Southwest water issues, sustainable agriculture, and Grand Canyon adventures.
This is part of a monthly series highlighting Arizona’s climate leaders and answering readers’ climate-related questions. The stories, which appear in print and online the first Sunday of the month, aim to help to connect and inspire Arizonans who care about protecting a livable climate and may be struggling to find hope in that effort lately. You can nominate an Arizona climate leader for a story or ask a question by filling out the form at https://forms.gle/QCCxBPSHGy1bUJQ99.
For climate and environment readers, the past year has brought a tsunami of distressing news to absorb. (You can read my summary of Arizona’s biggest climate wins and losses of 2025 in our year-end story published last week.)
So, for the first 2026 installment of our monthly climate series profiling Arizona climate leaders who inspire hope or answering reader’s climate questions, I wanted to share some books that the local leaders I profiled in 2025 (and also me) get through the year with a steady stream of wonderous and grounding pages. As we head into what is likely to be another year of whirlwind climate news, these books may offer some valuable respite or reminders.
The top book pick from each Arizona climate leader profiled in 2025
* Roz Switzer and Emily Matyas, who were profiled in March as the leaders of the Sonoran Broadband chapter of the “Great Old Broads for Wilderness” organization that gathers eco-friendly hikers for action, had a hard time choosing which was their favorite read of the year.
* Local climate changemaker and women’s group leader Rhonda Bannard, profiled in May, says her copy of “What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures” by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson (2024) has underlines and Post-it notes all the way through. “I loved this book for so many reasons: how it was put together, the wide range of interviews and experts included, the quotes and mind-bending questions, and the various lists of ten problems alongside ten possibilities,” Bannard said. “It absolutely excited me about the potential to implement the solutions we have within our grasp.”
* The oldest book chosen as a 2025 favorite was selected by the youngest Arizona climate leader, profiled in July. Tucson native and youth activism organizer Ojas Sanghi, who spent his summer researching how artificial intelligence can support clean energy solutions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, selected “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn (1992) as the book that most inspired him in the past year. “It is more of an old-guard environmentalist/conservationist point of view, but it analyzes and exposes a lot of cultural influences in the ways humans view and discuss the environment,” he said. “It made me realize where a lot of my thinking was coming from, and has reshaped the way I view my work and the environment.” One of the characters is a talking gorilla, he added.
* The oldest leader profiled as part of The Arizona Republic’s series in 2025 unfortunately passed away from cancer just two months after her story published in September. But Hazel Chandler’s daughter, Jen Chandler, responded to a question about what Hazel’s favorite book of the year might have been with a quick “that’s an easy one!” Hazel would have recommended “All We Can Save: Truth, Courage and Solutions for Climate Crisis,” co-edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson (2020). She might have described it, Jen said, as “an eco-anthology by a powerful force of female leaders from the frontlines of the climate movement who come together in a honest, hopeful and illuminating manifesto, reminding us we are the catalysts for change and that change is possible when we unite through collective action.” This book was on Hazel’s bedside table at hospice.
* The last profile of the year, published in November, was of Prescott-based naturalist and environmental educator Thomas Fleischner. The biodiversity researcher chose “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013) as his favorite re-consulted book of 2025. This classic frequents the list of favorites among climate and environment readers. Fleischner said it was among his “old standbys that have nurtured my love of the world, of old ways of connecting, and finding our human place.”
My favorite climate-related book reads from the past year
As a consumer and writer of depressing climate news, my own book list from 2025 included some essential lighter reads.
* In January, I read and covered the release of “American Oasis: Finding the Future in the Cities of the Southwest” by Kyle Paoletta (2025). While not exactly light, this book faces the history of desert development at odds with water limitations head-on and offers well-researched insights for the future.
* In March, I read and wrote about “The Blue Plate: A Food Lover’s Guide to Climate Chaos” by Mark Easter (2024), which explores how agriculture could be restructured to reduce its climate footprint and includes many descriptions of delicious and sustainable meals.
* I also enjoyed, and wrote about, “The Golden Toad: An Ecological Mystery and the Search for a Lost Species” by Kyle Ritland and Trevor Ritland (2025), which reads like a mystery novel about a science-based search for the first terrestrial species thought to have gone extinct from climate change, with a hopeful spin.
* “A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon” by Kevin Fedarko (2024) kept me going in my (more cautious) pursuit of adventure on the Arizona Trail this fall. Amid a lot of content about the author trying to not die, it weaves in interesting nature context and historical tales about Grand Canyon exploration.
* I also listened to the audiobook of “Damnation Spring” by Ash Davidson (2021) while riding my bike on the Arizona Trail. Set in the Pacific Northwest, this novel by a Flagstaff-based author spotlights the human complexity around topics like herbicide use and water quality that have resurfaced as fights environmentalists may have to take up again as the Trump administration attacks protections like the Clean Water Act.
* My Arizona Trail journey would, of course, not have been complete without lugging a (Kindle) copy of “Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona” by Tom Zoellner (2024) with me on my bike. I purposefully did not do a close read of this former Arizona Republic reporter’s Arizona Trail journey ahead of my own so that my writing would not be overly influenced by it. But I loved learning about Arizona history in the areas I’d just passed through on trail through Zoellner’s descriptions.
* I ended the year with newly-released “The Twilight Forest: An Elegy for Ponderosa in a Changing West” by Gary Ferguson (2025). It manages to mourn the ponderosa forests being lost to wildfire and climate change in a way that inspires attempts to not the species.
Finally, I wouldn’t be in this business if I was determined to bury my head in happier stories. So I also dove into some tougher reads this year that offered value as reminders of all that is at stake for our wild lands, species and democratically-protected public lands — plus the historical lessons that might help us not lose it all.
* In 2025, I read two essay collections by renowned desert writers that made strong cases for protecting the natural beauty we still have: “Erosion: Essays of Undoing,” by Terry Tempest Williams (2016) and “Seasons: Desert Sketches” by Ellen Meloy (assembled in 2019 after her death).
* Like Great Old Broad Roz Switzer, I also finally read “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson (2020) this year. It’s fairly dark, and I found the narrative underwhelming. But the book features fascinating ideas about climate governance, carbon credits and what kind of world we might end up in if we ignore those things.
* I also revisited two classics this year that are distinctly dystopian and pre-date widespread climate awareness, but are informative and grounding amid large shifts in the functioning of American democracy — which researchers say is a key to climate action. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House in February asking for continued aid in the war against Russia and was met with unexpected hostility, I was in the middle of re-reading “1984” by George Orwell (1949), in which workers tasked with erasing history are gaslit by propaganda loudspeakers that “they have always been at war with (the side they were previously supporting).” In December, I re-read “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury (1953), which follows “firemen” tasked with burning books in a society whose the government has convinced its citizens that a diversity in voices and ideas makes them unhappy.
“Books show the pores in the face of life,” Bradbury wrote. Indeed. Here’s to examining our pores for the good of our environments via reading and informed discourse in 2026.
Joan Meiners is the climate news and storytelling reporter at The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com. Her award-winning work has also appeared in Discover Magazine, National Geographic, ProPublica and the Washington Post Magazine. Before becoming a journalist, she completed a doctorate in ecology with a focus on native bees. Follow Joan on Twitter at @beecycles, on Bluesky @joanmeiners.bsky.social or email her at [email protected].
