Friederike Otto, 42, is a climate scientist at Imperial College London, where she is best known for pioneering the new field of attribution science, in which researchers calculate in real time how much climate change impacts extreme weather events like heat waves and wildfires.

Fortunately, Otto does not write like a scientist. Her new book Climate Injustice: Why We Need to Fight Global Inequity to Combat Climate Change burns with outrage over the callousness of the wealthy — that is to say, most of us who live in the Global North — toward...