Environmental Change

Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, easy-to-understand chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before.

In Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen - the nation's leading scientist on climate issues - speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although Hansen was Al Gore's science adviser for the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, his recent data shows that our situation is even more dire today.

Can we afford to stand by as our planet collapses? In the past 50 years, humanity has wiped out 70% of the world’s wild animals. Our oceans are being emptied, wildlife habitats destroyed, and ecosystems pushed to the brink, all to satisfy an insatiable hunger for meat and animal products. In The Ego System: The Awakening, award-winning journalist René Zografos reveals the devastating consequences of the meat industry on the environment, animal welfare, and our health. With eye-opening insights into factory farming, wildlife crimes, and political inaction, this book challenges us to ...

The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. Over the course of four years, Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money.

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...

Introducing an extraordinary read that promises to captivate your mind and unlocks the mystical world of the Purple Martins - The Flight Plan of Purple Martins. This comprehensive ebook reveals the secret behind the enigma of Martin Migration that has long perplexed researchers and bird enthusiasts. Starting with the Introduction, the book dives straight into the life and times of Martins and their historical significance. It then encompasses the essence of Martins' migration patterns and the critical role of climate and weather in their movement in Chapter 3 and 5. One of the highlights of...

"The Nuclear Option: Reducing Emissions, Securing Energy" is a comprehensive exploration of the potential and challenges of nuclear energy in the fight against climate change. This book delves into every aspect of nuclear energy, providing readers with an in-depth understanding of its workings, benefits, and implications. Starting with an introduction to the growing threat of climate change, the book sets the stage for why nuclear energy is a crucial option in tackling emissions. It offers a historical overview, tracing the discovery and development of nuclear energy from its early days to ...

Climate change manifests in many ways across America, but few as dramatic as the attacks on our western pine forests. In Trees in Trouble, Daniel Mathews tells the urgent story of this loss, accompanying burn crews and forest ecologists as they study the myriad risk factors and refine techniques for saving this important, limited resource.

From Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former head of the Sierra Club Carl Pope comes a manifesto on how the benefits of taking action on climate change are concrete, immediate, and immense. They explore climate change solutions that will make the world healthier and more prosperous, aiming to begin a new type of conversation on the issue that will spur bolder action by cities, businesses, and citizens—and even, someday, by Washington.

As global warming accelerates, droughts last longer, floods rise higher, and super-storms become more frequent. With increasing numbers of people on the move as a result, the business of containing them - border fortification - is booming. In Storming the Wall, Todd Miller travels around the world to connect the dots between climate-ravaged communities, the corporations cashing in on border militarization, and emerging movements for environmental justice and sustainability.

Dr. Ian Prattis looks at the state of our world through expert eyes and shares his views on climate change, over-development and short-term thinking that have placed our fragile planet in considerable danger - then he prescribes the actions needed to save our embattled world. Our World is Burning examines our fragile future and offers an alternative way of living based on Mindful Engagement. In sixteen essays Ian Prattis offers examples of how to respond to the most serious social, economic, environmental and personal challenges of the Twenty-First century. He advocates mindfulness practice...

We are facing a climate catastrophe. A plethora of studies describe the damage we’ve already done. Many people understand that we are facing a climate emergency, but may be fuzzy on technical, policy, and social justice aspects. In Is Science Enough?, Aviva Chomsky breaks down the concepts, terminology, and debates for activists, students, and anyone concerned about climate change. She argues that science is not enough to change course: we need put social, racial, and economic justice front and center and overhaul the global growth economy.

Because of the diseases it spreads, we have learned to distance ourselves from our waste, but the long line of engineering marvels we’ve created to do so - from Roman sewage systems and medieval latrines to the immense, computerized treatment plants we use today - has also done considerable damage to the Earth’s ecology. Now scientists tell us: We’ve been wasting our waste.

The burning of fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide (CO2), and these CO2 emissions are a major driver of climate change. Carbon capture offers a path to climate change mitigation that has received relatively little attention. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Howard Herzog offers a concise guide to carbon capture, covering basic information as well as the larger context of climate technology and policy.

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

From the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference there was a concerted international effort to stop climate change. Yet greenhouse gas emissions increased, atmospheric concentrations grew, and global warming became an observable fact of life. In this book, philosopher Dale Jamieson explains what climate change is, why we have failed to stop it, and why it still matters what we do.

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.

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.

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself.

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.