👋 Hi, everybody! This week, in lieu of a main story, we’re extending an invitation: Please join us for the next gathering of the Looking Forward book club! We’ll be meeting virtually on Wednesday, January 14. More exciting deets below — or you can jump straight to the RSVP here. 

We’ve also got our typical news roundup for you all, with stories about hurricane season, EV sales, and sharks.

This post originally appeared in Grist’s weekly solutions newsletter, Looking Forward. Not on our list yet? Subscribe here to get it in your inbox every Friday.

Join us for a book club gathering in January!

A graphic shows the book cover of Under the Sky We Make and text describing the book club

In case you haven’t already heard, Looking Forward comes with a climate solutions book club. It’s one of my absolute favorite things ever. We meet roughly once per quarter (although admittedly I have been remiss in keeping to that schedule), alternating between fiction and nonfiction, and the gatherings are always warm, thought-provoking, and lively. In the past we’ve enjoyed Q&As with Kim Stanley Robinson, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Becky Chambers, and other incredible authors. And the time has come to prepare for our next gathering! 

I know for certain a handful of readers are going to be excited about our next pick — a hearty thanks to the many of you who have recommended it over the years. 

We’ll be reading Under the Sky We Make, by climate and sustainability scientist Kimberly Nicholas.  

I’m so excited to dig into this book with you all — and with Kimberly! She’ll be joining us for the discussion, so please bring your questions for the author. (If you already have some in mind, feel free to reply to this email with thoughts or themes you’d like to see us cover in the Q&A.)

We’ll meet on Zoom on Wednesday, January 14, at 7 p.m. ET (4 p.m. PT). RSVP for the gathering here. 

And, as is customary, we’ll be offering up five free copies of the book, drawn at random. RSVP by next Friday, and click “Yes! I want a chance to win the book!” to be entered in the giveaway. We’ll contact the five winners by December 15. (And shoutout to the publisher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, for providing the books!) 

Questions? Concerns? Excitement? Glee? Feel free to reply here with any and all thoughts about the book club — or, if you’d like, you can join our community space on bookclubs.com, which has a record of everything we’ve read, our current book and meeting date, and a club messages board to keep the discussion going before and after the Zoom gathering.  

I hope you can join us! Until then, friends. 

More from Grist

🌀 A storm coming in

Hurricane season has ended — and, astonishingly, the U.S. didn’t get hit with a single major storm this year, for the first time in a decade. But that doesn’t mean it was good news. It was only the second year in history to produce three or more Category 5 storms, including Hurricane Melissa, which did major damage in the Caribbean. Read more

🚙 Nothing lasts forEVer

After federal tax credits for electric vehicles expired, new EV sales fell in October. But experts say the decline might be more of a blip than a permanent dip — used EV sales have been up, and other promising trends are continuing apace, like the buildout of charging infrastructure and the planned release of more affordable models. Read more

✊ Keeping up the fight

Indigenous advocacy was more visible at this year’s U.N. climate conference than ever before. Some of the key outcomes participants were fighting for, like commitments to end deforestation and a plan to phase out fossil fuels, did not come to fruition — but some others did, like formal recognition of the need to protect Indigenous land rights in the green energy transition. And Indigenous leaders will be continuing their advocacy at other global forums in the next year. Read more

🌎 And one more thing

Grist is hosting a live virtual conversation on Thursday, December 11, unpacking the key outcomes from COP30 in Belém, Brazil. Hear firsthand insights from Big Wind Carpenter (Grist 50 Fixer, Wyoming Outdoor Council), Manish Bapna (NRDC), and Danielle Nierenberg (Food Tank), with Grist reporter Zoya Teirstein moderating. Join us as we break down the negotiations on climate mitigation, adaptation, and global climate finance. Register here.

In other news

And finally, looking forward to …

… a real winter. While swaths of the Midwest and East Coast are experiencing major snow storms this week, temperate Seattle (where I live) is having a relatively warm season. Yet, as I constantly remind myself, this will probably be one of the coldest winters for the rest of my life. It’s got me feeling nostalgic for the winters of my youth — and hopeful that they’ll still make a comeback. 

❄️❄️❄️

You stare out the window, wide-eyed. You’ve seen snow before in movies — even in photos of this very yard, from when your dad was a little kid. But never, despite all the hopeful forecasts for the past several years and the headlines about the restabilization of the climate, did you believe you would actually see it falling from the sky. 

“Dad!” you call out, forgetting that your elderly father hates to be woken before 9 a.m. You’re afraid if you don’t get him right now, he might miss it. “Dad, you’re not going to believe it! It’s actually snowing!” 

— a drabble by Claire Elise Thompson

❄️❄️❄️

A drabble is a 100-word piece of fiction — in this case, offering a tiny glimpse of what a clean, green, just future might look like. Want to try writing your own (and see it featured in a future newsletter)? We would love to hear from you! Please send us your visions for our climate future, in drabble form, at lookingforward@grist.org

👋 See you next week!