Environmental Change

Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: Tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources - most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens - one species among millions - become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate?

The big media have spoken on the question of global warming, and the debate is officially over. "Be afraid, be very afraid", warns Time magazine. But have Al Gore and his environmentalist allies really proven their case? Not even close, says Christopher C. Horner.

"The climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it is happening very quickly - and has become a true planetary emergency....[I]nconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not responded to, their significance doesn't diminish; it grows." -Al Gore

Professor of environmental engineering Daniel Cohan argues that escaping the gravest perils of climate change will first require American diplomacy, technological innovation, and policy to catalyze decarbonization globally. Combining his own expertise along with insights from more than a hundred interviews with diplomats, scholars, and clean-technology pioneers, Cohan identifies flaws in previous efforts to combat climate change.

A World on the Brink of Collapse The Earth as we know it is unraveling. Unrelenting heat waves scorch the land. Cities crumble beneath rising oceans. Storms of unfathomable fury reshape coastlines overnight. Humanity stands at the precipice of annihilation, trapped in the aftermath of its own reckless consumption. In the heart of this unraveling world, Lila—a brilliant scientist and unyielding survivor—refuses to accept the inevitability of extinction. One Woman’s Fight for the Future Driven by an unshakable vision of renewal, Lila embarks on a perilous quest to restore balance to a ...

Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming: this is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning. Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world—the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. As investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki reveals in this explosive book, the decades-long conspiracy to keep the oil sands flowing into the US would turn out to be one of the biggest reasons for the world's failure to stop the climate crisis.

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem. The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next.

This timely new book, edited by celebrated scholar Daniel C. Esty, offers fresh thinking and forward-looking solutions from environmental thought leaders across the political spectrum. The book’s 40 essays cover such subjects as ecology, environmental justice, Big Data, public health, and climate change, all with an emphasis on sustainability. This book focuses on moving toward sustainability through actionable, bipartisan approaches based on rigorous analytical research.

A Call to Action for a Planet in Crisis In an era where wildfires rage with unprecedented intensity, landscapes are stripped of life, and ecosystems teeter on the brink of collapse, Preventing Wildfires, Healing Landscapes, and Restoring Ecosystems: Reviving Earth's Balance offers a transformative vision for our planet's future. This is not just a book; it is a rallying cry for individuals, communities, and leaders to embrace their collective power to heal the Earth and secure a thriving future for generations to come. Harnessing Nature's Wisdom Drawing upon the latest scientific insights, ...

The food system sustains life itself, but its hidden costs are overwhelming our planet. Agriculture and food production account for roughly a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, driven by sprawling, resource-intensive processes that prioritize convenience and profit over sustainability. From methane-spewing livestock to the fossil fuels powering transportation and refrigeration, the journey of food to our plates leaves an outsized carbon footprint. Imported avocados, out-of-season strawberries, and individually wrapped snacks are not just indulgences—they're emblematic of a global...

In The Big Fix, energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis offer a new, hopeful way to engage with one of the greatest problems of our age. Writing in a lively, accessible style, the pair illuminate how the really big decisions that affect our climate get made—whether by the most obscure public utilities commissions or in the lofty halls of state capitols—and reveal how each of us can influence these decisions to deliver change.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a radical rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the Earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion. He argues that only a worldwide mobilization can save us from disaster and presents a brilliant and comprehensive plan for action that encompasses not only the Earth's ecology, but also population trends, appropriate technology, and environmental education.

In Driving the Future Oge portrays a future where clean, intelligent vehicles with lighter frames and alternative power trains will produce zero emissions and run at 100+ mpg. With electronic architectures more like that of airplanes, cars will be smarter and safer, will park themselves, and will network with other vehicles on the road to drive themselves.

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, shares what he has learnt in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address climate problems. He explains how the world can work to build the tools it needs to get to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions - investing in research, inventing new technologies and deploying them quickly at a large scale. Gates is optimistic that the world can prevent the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

From former New York Times Science writer Tatiana Schlossberg comes Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don't Know You Have, a fascinating and unexpectedly entertaining look at the way climate change and environmental pollution are intimately involved in our everyday life - in everything we use, buy, eat, wear, and how we get around - and have consequences that extend far beyond our lives.

Man-made climate change may have began in the last 200 years, but humankind has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty: once-mighty civilizations felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: history. The study of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the past 10 years, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how civilizations and nature interacted.

This book examines the policies, beliefs and ideas that are shaping the response to the climate crisis. What it uncovers is both shocking and bizarre. Each chapter provides a wealth of information that brings a new perspective on the political response to global warming. It exposes a pyramid of fallacies, with each dependent on the others. The danger with fallacies is that they remain unchallenged. This book shines a light on theories and policies that appear to offer solutions to the climate crisis, yet, in reality, perpetuate the problems.

In the futuristic city of Greyville, where smog fills the air and nature seems to have disappeared, three friends—Maddie, Joey, and Charlie—set out to make a difference. After discovering a tiny plant growing through a crack in the concrete, they form the Green City Kids, a movement to bring back trees, flowers, and gardens to their gray, lifeless world. With determination and teamwork, they inspire their entire city to go green, proving that even the smallest actions can lead to big, beautiful changes. Green City Kids is a heartwarming story about hope, nature, and the power of community.

As a journalist on the climate security beat, Peter Schwartzstein has been chased by kidnappers, badly beaten, detained by police, and told, in no uncertain terms, that he was no longer welcome in certain countries. Yet these personal brushes with violence are simply a hint of the conflict simmering in our warming world. Schwartzstein has visited ravaged Iraqi towns where ISIS used drought as a recruiting tool and weapon of terror. And he has heard the fear in the voices of women from around the world who say their husbands' tempers flare when the temperature ticks up.

Never have so many undertaken such a widespread, hurried attempt to remake the world. Predictably, our hubris has led to unintended—and sometimes disastrous—consequences. Over the Seawall tells us the stories behind these unintended consequences and the fixes that can do more harm than good. From seawalls in coastal Japan, to the reengineered waters in the Ganges River Delta, to the artificial ribbon of water supporting both farms and urban centers in parched Arizona, Stephen Robert Miller traces the histories of engineering marvels that were once deemed too smart and too big to fail.