Large site logo

To Open The Sky

The Front Pages of Christopher P. Winter
Work in progress

Books about Climate Change Mitigation Measures

Note: Links to these categories are accessible at the next level up.

Economic
Impacts
Energy
Generation
Legality
& Ethics
Mitigation
Measures
Panic
Mode
Political
Responsibility
Regional
Aspects
Scientific
Basis
Societal
Acceptance
Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise:
Green and Gray Strategies
Stefan Al
Edgar Westerhof (Foreword)
Island Press (November 20, 2018)
No Review
"Stefan Al is an architect, urban designer, and infrastructure expert at global design firm Kohn Pedersen Fox in New York. He has published several books, including Factory Towns of South China: An Illustrated Guidebook and The Strip: Las Vegas and the Architecture of the American Dream. As a practicing architect and urban designer, he has worked on renowned projects such as the Canton Tower in Guangzhou."

"In 2012, Hurricane Sandy floods devastated coastal areas in New York and New Jersey. In 2017, Harvey flooded Houston. Today in Miami, even on sunny days, king tides bring fish swimming through the streets in low-lying areas. These types of events are typically called natural disasters. But overwhelming scientific consensus says they are actually the result of human-induced climate change and irresponsible construction inside floodplains.

"As cities build more flood-management infrastructure to adapt to the effects of a changing climate, they must go beyond short-term flood protection and consider the long-term effects on the community, its environment, economy, and relationship with the water.

"Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise, by infrastructure expert Stefan Al, introduces design responses to sea-level rise, drawing from examples around the globe. Going against standard engineering solutions, Al argues for approaches that are integrated with the public realm, nature-based, and sensitive to local conditions and the community. He features design responses to building resilience that creates new civic assets for cities. For the first time, the possible infrastructure solutions are brought together in a clear and easy-to-read format.

"The first part of the book looks at the challenges for cities that have historically faced sea-level rise and flooding issues, and their response in resiliency through urban design. He presents diverse case studies from New Orleans to Ho Chi Minh to Rotterdam, and draws best practices and urban design typologies for the second part of the book.

"Part two is a graphic catalogue of best-practices or resilience strategies. These strategies are organized into four categories: hard protect, soft protect, store, and retreat. The benefits and challenges of each strategy are outlined and highlighted by a case study showing where that strategy has been applied.

"Any professional or policymaker in coastal areas seeking to protect their communities from the effects of climate change should start with this book. With the right solutions, Al shows, sea-level rise can become an opportunity to improve our urban areas and landscapes, rather than a threat to our communities."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1610919074 ?
Dodging Extinction:
Power, Food, Money, and the Future of Life on Earth
Anthony D. Barnosky
Berkeley: University of California Press (October, 2014)
No Review

"Paleobiologist Anthony D. Barnosky weaves together evidence from the deep past and the present to alert us to the looming Sixth Mass Extinction and to offer a practical, hopeful plan for avoiding it. Writing from the front lines of extinction research, Barnosky tells the overarching story of geologic and evolutionary history and how it informs the way humans inhabit, exploit, and impact Earth today. He presents compelling evidence that unless we rethink how we generate the power we use to run our global ecosystem, where we get our food, and how we make our money, we will trigger what would be the sixth great extinction on Earth, with dire consequences.

"Optimistic that we can change this ominous forecast if we act now, Barnosky provides clear-cut strategies to guide the planet away from global catastrophe. In many instances the necessary technology and know-how already exist and are being applied to crucial issues around human-caused climate change, feeding the world's growing population, and exploiting natural resources. Deeply informed yet accessibly written, Dodging Extinction is nothing short of a guidebook for saving the planet."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (17 ratings)
ISBN 978-0520274372 ?
Burn:
Using Fire to Cool the Earth
Albert Bates & Kathleen Draper
Chelsea Green Publishing (February 26, 2019)
No Review

"In order to rescue ourselves from climate catastrophe, we need to radically alter how humans live on Earth. We have to go from spending carbon to banking it. We have to put back the trees, wetlands, and corals. We have to regrow the soil and turn back the desert. We have to save whales, wombats, and wolves. We have to reverse the flow of greenhouse gases and send them in exactly the opposite direction: down, not up. We have to flip the carbon cycle and run it backwards. For such a revolutionary transformation we'll need civilization 2.0.

"A secret unlocked by the ancients of the Amazon for its ability to transform impoverished tropical soils into terra preta—fertile black earths—points the way. The indigenous custom of converting organic materials into long lasting carbon has enjoyed a reawakening in recent decades as the quest for more sustainable farming methods has grown. Yet the benefits of this carbonized material, now called biochar, extend far beyond the soil. Pyrolyzing carbon has the power to restore a natural balance by unmining the coal and undrilling the oil and gas. Employed to its full potential, it can run the carbon cycle in reverse and remake Earth as a garden planet."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-1603587839 ?
Dark Side of the Ocean:
The Destruction of Our Seas, Why It Matters, and What We Can Do About It
Albert Bates
GroundSwell Books (August 10, 2020)
No Review

"Ocean biodiversity is being decimated on par with the fastest rates of rain forest destruction. More than 80 percent of pollutants in the oceans come from sewage and other land-based runoff (some of it radioactive). The rest is created by waste dumped by commercial and recreational vessels. In many areas and for many fish stocks, there are no conservation or management measures existing or even planned.

"Climate author Albert Bates explains how ocean life maintains adequate oxygen levels, prevents erosion from storms, and sustains a vital food source that factory-fishing operations cannot match—and why that should matter to all of us, whether we live near the ocean or not. Bates presents innovative companies and organizations working to change the human impact on marine reserves, improve ocean permaculture, and put the brakes on the ocean heat waves that destroy sea life and imperil human habitation at the ocean's edge.

"Along with eye-opening revelations of serious environmental concerns, The Dark Side of the Ocean conveys a deep appreciation for the fragile nature of the ocean's majesty and compels us to act now to preserve it. We can make a difference."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (11 ratings)
ISBN 978-1570673948 ?
Solving the Climate Crisis:
Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth
John J. Berger
Senator Russ Feingold (Introduction)
Seven Stories Press (October 24, 2023)
No Review
"John J. Berger, PhD is an environmental science and policy specialist, prize-winning author, and journalist. A graduate of Stanford and the University of California, he has written and edited 11 books, including three previous books on climate change, and written over 100 articles on climate change and transitioning to clean energy. His journalism has appeared in Scientific American, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe and others. He has been a consultant to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, corporations, utilities, and the U.S. Congress, as well as a newspaperman, editor, and a professor at the University of Maryland. John co-founded the Nuclear Information and Resource Service to assist citizen safe-energy groups and founded Restoring the Earth, to bring environmental restoration to national attention. He lives in El Cerrito, CA."

"Groundbreaking solutions to the climate crisis from scientists, engineers, civic leaders, entrepreneurs and activists, offering hope to all readers concerned about our planet's future.

Offers practical actions that reflect technological and economic advances with an Introduction by former United States senator Russ Feingold.

"Solving the Climate Crisis is a hopeful and critical resource that makes a convincing and detailed case that there is a path forward to save our environment. Illustrating the power of committed individuals and the necessity for collaborative government and private-sector climate action, the book focuses on three essential areas:

  • The technological dimension: move to 100% clean renewable energy as fast as we possibly can through innovations like clean-steel, 'green' cement, and carbon-reuse companies;
  • The ecological dimension: enhance and protect natural ecosystems, forests, and agricultural lands to safely store greenhouse gases and restore soils, transforming how we grow, process, and consume food;
  • The social dimension: update and create new laws, policies and economic measures to recenter human values and reduce environmental and social injustice.

"Based on more than 6 years of research, Berger traveled the nation and abroad to interview governors, mayors, ranchers, scientists, engineers, business leaders, energy experts, and financiers as well as carbon farmers, solar and wind innovators, forest protectors, non-profit leaders, and activists.

"With real world examples, an explanation of cutting-edge technologies in solar and wind, and political organizing tactics, Solving the Climate Crisis provides a practical road map for how we effectively combat climate change. Replacing the fossil-fuel system with a newly invigorated, modernized, clean-energy economy will produce tens of millions of new jobs and save trillions of dollars. Protecting the climate is thus potentially the greatest economic opportunity of our time."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-1644213223 SJ eBook
How We Know What We Know about Our Changing Climate:
Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming
Lynne Cherry & Gary Braasch
David Sobel (Foreword)
Age range: 10 - 13 years | Grade Level: 5 - 8 | Lexile Measure: 1170L
Dawn Publications (CA) (March, 2010)
No Review

"This highly-acclaimed climate change education title, winner of twelve book awards, is now available in paperback! When the weather changes daily, how do we really know that Earth's climate is changing? Here is the science behind the headlines — evidence from flowers, butterflies, birds, frogs, trees, glaciers and much more, gathered by scientists from all over the world, sometimes with assistance from young citizen-scientists. And here is what young people, and their families and teachers, can do to learn about climate change and take action. Climate change is a critical and timely topic of deep concern, here told in an age-appropriate manner, with clarity and hope. Kids can make a difference! This book combines the talents of two uniquely qualified authors: Lynne Cherry, the leading children's environmental writer/illustrator and author of The Great Kapok Tree, and Gary Braasch, award-winning photojournalist and author of Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.9 (13 ratings)
ISBN 978-1584691303 ?
Climate Intervention:
Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration
by Committee on Geoengineering Climate
National Academies Press (July 17, 2015)
No Review

"The signals are everywhere that our planet is experiencing significant climate change. It is clear that we need to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from our atmosphere if we want to avoid greatly increased risk of damage from climate change. Aggressively pursuing a program of emissions abatement or mitigation will show results over a timescale of many decades. How do we actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to make a bigger difference more quickly?

"As one of a two-book report, this volume of Climate Intervention discusses CDR, the carbon dioxide removal of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere and sequestration of it in perpetuity. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration introduces possible CDR approaches and then discusses them in depth. Land management practices, such as low-till agriculture, reforestation and afforestation, ocean iron fertilization, and land-and-ocean-based accelerated weathering, could amplify the rates of processes that are already occurring as part of the natural carbon cycle. Other CDR approaches, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, direct air capture and sequestration, and traditional carbon capture and sequestration, seek to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and dispose of it by pumping it underground at high pressure. This book looks at the pros and cons of these options and estimates possible rates of removal and total amounts that might be removed via these methods.

"With whatever portfolio of technologies the transition is achieved, eliminating the carbon dioxide emissions from the global energy and transportation systems will pose an enormous technical, economic, and social challenge that will likely take decades of concerted effort to achieve. Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration will help to better understand the potential cost and performance of CDR strategies to inform debate and decision making as we work to stabilize and reduce atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0309305297 SJ eBook
Water Talks:
Empowering Communities to Know, Restore, and Preserve their Waters
Betsy Damon
Jane Goodall DBE (Foreword)
Portal Books (April 1, 2022)
No Review
"Betsy Damon earned a BA at Skidmore College in 1963 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1966. She has become an internationally recognized artist whose public work and living systems, such as the Living Water Garden, have received widespread acclaim. She directs Keepers of the Waters, a nonprofit focused on ecological planning, advocacy, and education. Damon was a semi-finalist for the Buckminster Fuller Award and a finalist for the Stockholm Water Prize. She has lectured widely in the U.S., Europe and China and has been a visiting artist at countless colleges and universities. Beginning in 1975, Damon's works have been featured in numerous exhibitions, including 'A Memory of Clean Water' (1986-1991); 'Feminist, and...' (2012); 'Keepers of the Waters: Chengdu & Lhasa' (2018); and 'Art & Ecology' (2021). She also founded and directed No Limits for Women Artists (1980-2000). Visit BetsyDamon.com. Jane Goodall, Dr. of Bioethics, is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees and best known for her sixty-year study of social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees, which began in 1960 in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Her numerous books include My Life with the Chimpanzees (1998) and Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999)."

" 'At the time of writing, I have lived on Planet Earth for eighty-three years. I have seen so much change, and that includes advances in living standards for millions of people on the one hand, and the increasing destruction of the environment on the other. Somehow, we must find a middle path. This is why Betsy wrote this book. All people need to be empowered to know their waters and to take charge of lifesaving decisions.' – Dr. Jane Goodall

"The artist, activist, and teacher Betsy Damon has focused on virtually every aspect of water during the past four decades, from the essence of water drops to whole water systems and their connections to life on earth. Over the years, she has borne witness to the decline in water quality around the world as a result of human activities.

"In this comprehensive, exciting, and accessible book, Damon writes about our interdependence with water in every aspect of life, discussing many of the technical, social, and ethical issues we face and our individual and communal responsibility for addressing the immanent crises we are facing. As she states, 'Ignoring water's essential role as the connective tissue of all life on Earth is widespread. Unfortunately, the response to each environmental problem tends to be piecemeal—addressing one threat rather than responding with complex solutions that will address the underlying problems.'

"The author insists that genuine, lasting solutions require a fundamental understanding and empirical knowledge of water and its role for all life on Earth. She begins with an overview of water as a fundamental human right and how that right has been curtailed through wanton pollution and the commercialization of water supplies. Through personal stories and projects, scientific and technological studies, and encouraging solutions, she takes the reader through many ways in which we can better appreciate and approach existing problems so that 'clean water, air, and soil would be available for all life without a price tag.'

"As Jane Goodall points out in her foreword, this book 'contains inspiring moments and successes of people and communities that have organized around saving a water place. It also provides rays of hope.'"

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (5 ratings)
ISBN 978-1938685385 ?
Comprehending the Climate Crisis:
Everything You Need to Know about Global Warming and How to Stop It
Bradley J. Dibble MD
iUniverse (October, 2011)
No Review

"Global warming and climate are complex environmental issues with varying opinions as well as facts available from numerous sources. In Comprehending the Climate Crisis, author Dr. Bradley J. Dibble provides a broad yet comprehensive overview of the climate issues facing the world today."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1462045204 ?
Speed & Scale:
An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now
John Doerr
Ryan Panchadsaram (Contributor)
Portfolio (November 9, 2021)
No Review

"In 2006, John Doerr was moved by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and a challenge from his teenage daughter: "Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it." Since then, Doerr has searched for solutions to this existential problem—as an investor, an advocate, and a philanthropist.

"Fifteen years later, despite breakthroughs in batteries, electric vehicles, plant-based proteins, and solar and wind power, global warming continues to get worse. Its impact is all around us: droughts, floods, wildfires, the melting of the polar ice caps. Our world is squarely in a climate crisis and on the brink of a climate disaster. Yet despite our state of emergency, climate change has yet to be tackled with the urgency and ambition it demands. More than ever, we need a clear course of action.

"What if the goal-setting techniques that powered the rise of today's most innovative organizations were brought to bear on humanity's greatest challenge? Fueled by a powerful tool called Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), Speed & Scale offers an unprecedented global plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions before it's too late. Used by Google, Bono's ONE foundation, and thousands of startups the world over, OKRs have scaled ideas into achievements that changed the world. With clear-eyed realism and an engineer's precision, Doerr identifies the measurable OKRs we need to reduce emissions across the board and to arrive by 2050 at net zero—the point where we are no longer adding to the heat-trapping carbon in the atmosphere.

"By turns pragmatic and inspiring, Speed & Scale intersperses Doerr's wide-ranging analysis with firsthand accounts from Jeff Bezos, Christiana Figueres, Al Gore, Mary Barra, Bill Gates, and other intrepid policy leaders, entrepreneurs, scientists, and activists. A launchpad for those who are ready to act now, this book is geared to leaders in every walk of life. With a definitive action plan, the latest science, and a rising climate movement on our side, we can still reach net zero before it is too late. But as Doerr reminds us, there is no more time to waste."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (594 ratings)
ISBN 978-0593420478 ?
Climate Restoration:
The Only Future That Will Sustain the Human Race
Peter Fiekowsky & Carole Douglis
Rivertowns Books (April 21, 2022)
No Review
Peter Fiekowsky is an MIT-educated physicist and engineer, a serial entrepreneur, a philanthropist, and a social innovator. He has worked at NASA and the Fairchild/ Schlumberger Artificial Intelligence Lab in Palo Alto; taught at MIT; and developed his own machine vision company, Automated Visual Inspection LLC (AVI). He holds 27 patents and is on the board of Solar Capex, a fintech company dedicated to tripling the rate of investment in solar projects. A decade ago, when it became clear that global warming would endanger humanity's future, Fiekowsky began working on climate restoration. Organizations Fiekowsky has built to help achieve this goal include:
  • The Foundation for Climate Restoration (FCR), which works with scientists, innovators, policymakers, citizens, faith leaders, activists, and students to create the understanding and policy needed to further climate restoration. The Foundation has been instrumental in the adoption of climate restoration as a goal by both the Vatican and the United Nations.
  • Methane Action (MA), a nonprofit organization dedicated to solutions that will reduce atmospheric methane concentrations to pre-industrial levels.
  • Methane Oxidation Corporation (MOC), which is enabling companies to neutralize their carbon footprint through the active reduction of atmospheric methane.
  • The Stable Planet Alliance, which is working to frame the next set of UN Development Goals under the umbrella of achieving a healthy, sustainable population by 2100.

Fiekowsky has also been an investor in and advisor to many companies working in the climate restoration field. He lives with his wife Sharon in Los Altos, near his grown son and daughter in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Carole Douglis is an award-winning journalist who has specialized in writing about climate, biodiversity, and sustainability since the 1990s. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, Harper's, Psychology Today, and in National Geographic Society (NGS) books. She holds a B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard University and an M.A. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy." – Amazon biography

"The Paris Accords, widely accepted as the key to solving today's climate crisis, set a goal of zero net carbon emissions by 2050. But that's not good enough. The only way to guarantee a livable future is climate restoration, which can reduce greenhouse gases to historic levels. Scientist and entrepreneur Peter Fiekowsky explains the technology and maps a practical path that will let humankind survive and thrive.

"As Fiekowsky explains in Climate Restoration, this will require removing a trillion tons of excess CO2 from the atmosphere. The good news is that this task, while enormous and technically challenging, is eminently feasible. Scientists and engineers have developed four major technologies for greenhouse gas removal and storage: Ocean iron fertilization; synthetic limestone manufacture; seaweed permaculture; and methane oxidation.

"Fiekowsky shows that these technologies are safe and practical—and, even more remarkable, that they require little if any government funding, since they can be financed largely through existing markets. For these reasons, they have enormous promise as vehicles for achieving climate restoration.

"With the global climate crisis continuing to spiral out of control, the time for tough conversations about what it will really take to create a healthy future for humanity is here. Climate Restoration will inspire those conversations and, ultimately, the actions we must take to ensure a livable planet for generations to come."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (100 ratings) Goodreads: 4.7 (38)
ISBN 978-1953943101 ?
The Last Winter:
The Scientists, Adventurers, Journeymen, and Mavericks Trying to Save the World
Porter Fox
Little, Brown and Company (November 2, 2021)
No Review

"As the planet warms, winter is shrinking. In the last fifty years, the Northern Hemisphere lost a million square miles of spring snowpack and in the US alone, snow cover has been reduced by 15-30%. On average, winter has shrunk by a month in most northern latitudes.

"In this deeply researched, beautifully written, and adventure-filled book, journalist Porter Fox travels along the edge of the Northern Hemisphere's snow line to track the scope of this drastic change, and how it will literally change everything—from rapid sea level rise, to fresh water scarcity for two billion people, to massive greenhouse gas emissions from thawing permafrost, and a half dozen climate tipping points that could very well spell the end of our world.

"This original research is animated by four harrowing and illuminating journeys—each grounded by interviews with idiosyncratic, charismatic experts in their respective fields and Fox's own narrative of growing up on a remote island in Northern Maine.

"Timely, atmospheric, and expertly investigated, The Last Winter will showcase a shocking and unexpected casualty of climate change—that may well set off its own unstoppable warming cycle."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-0316460927 ?
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster:
The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Bill Gates
New York: Alfred A. Knopf (February 16, 2021)
No Review
"Bill Gates is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy. Bill founded Microsoft in 1975 with Paul Allen and led the company to become the worldwide leader in business and personal software and services. In 2008, Bill transitioned to focus full-time on his foundation's work to expand opportunity to the world's most disadvantaged people. As cochair, he leads the foundation's development of strategies and sets the overall direction of the organization. Through his private office, Gates Ventures, he pursues his work on innovation in clean energy, Alzheimer's disease and other healthcare issues, interdisciplinary education, and technology. At Breakthrough Energy, he's putting his experience as an innovator and problem-solver to work to address climate change by supporting the next generation of entrepreneurs, big thinkers, and clean technologies. Bill uses his experience partnering with global leaders across sectors to help drive the policy, market, and technological changes required for a clean-energy transition. In 2010, Bill, Melinda French Gates, and Warren Buffett founded the Giving Pledge, an effort to encourage the wealthiest families and individuals to publicly commit more than half of their wealth to philanthropic causes and charitable organizations during their lifetime or in their will."

"Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet's slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal.

"He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations. Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions—suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise.

"As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (10,140 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385546133 ?
A Green New Deal:
From Geopolitics to Biosphere Politics
Enric Ruiz Geli & Jeremy Rifkin
Actar; English edition (March, 2011)
No Review

"A Green New Deal is the transit from a mineral architecture to vegetal architecture. The number one cause of Global warming is Architecture — the buildings. Buildings are responsible for 40% of the CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere. The architects must take this responsibility and move from geopolitics towards biosphere politics. A Green New Deal is a real test of how this can be achieved. The context for the intervention is an existing historic building in Barcelona, the Centre of Arts Santa Monica; a building to explore the Third Industrial Revolution as the potential of a transformation towards an empathic architecture. Nature should let us show the path. Cloud 9 equipped the trees in front of Arts Santa Monica with sensors that capture data on temperature, humidity and light energy to inform the building. The intervention is an installation on the facade that produces energy from the environment, like the sun and wind. It is an additional skin which allows control of natural light and regulates solar radiation."

Rating by Amazon customers: ? (0 ratings)
ISBN 978-8492861583 ?
Threat Multiplier:
Climate, Military Leadership, and the Fight for Global Security
Sherri Goodman
Island Press (August 27, 2024)
No Review
"Sherri Goodman has been a leader in environmental, energy, and climate security since she served as the first Deputy Undersecretary of Defense (Environmental Security). Today, she is Secretary General of the International Military Council on Climate & Security and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center. She is credited with educating a generation of US military and government officials about the nexus between climate change and national security, using her famous coinage, 'threat multiplier,' to fundamentally reshape this field."

"Threat Multiplier takes us onto the battlefield and inside the Pentagon to show how the US military is confronting the biggest security risk in global history: climate change. More than thirty years ago, when Sherri Goodman became the Pentagon's first Chief Environmental Officer, no one would have imagined this role for our armed forces.

"Indeed, for much of the twentieth century, the Department of Defense (DOD) was better known for containing the Soviet nuclear threat than protecting the environment. And yet, today, the military has moved from an environmental laggard to a clean energy and climate leader, recognizing that a warming world exacerbates every threat—from hurricanes and forest fires, to competition for increasingly scarce food and water, to terrorism and power plays by Russia and China. The Pentagon now considers climate in war games, disaster relief planning, international diplomacy, and even the design of its own bases.

"What was the key to this dramatic change in military thinking? What keeps today's generals and admirals up at night? How can we safeguard our national defense and our planet? No one is better poised to answer these questions than Sherri Goodman, who was at the vanguard of environmental leadership among our armed forces and civilian representatives. In Threat Multiplier, she tells the inside story of the military's fight for global security, a tale that is as hopeful as it is harrowing."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1642833263 ?
Silent Earth:
Averting the Insect Apocalypse
Dave Goulson
Harper (September 28, 2021)
No Review

"Drawing on thirty years of research, Goulson has written an accessible, fascinating, and important book that examines the evidence of an alarming drop in insect numbers around the world. 'If we lose the insects, then everything is going to collapse,' he warned in a recent interview in the New York Times—beginning with humans' food supply. The main cause of this decrease in insect populations is the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides. Hence, Silent Earth's nod to Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring which, when published in 1962, led to the global banning of DDT. This was a huge victory for science and ecological health at the time.

"Yet before long, new pesticides just as lethal as DDT were introduced, and today, humanity finds itself on the brink of a new crisis. What will happen when the bugs are all gone? Goulson explores the intrinsic connection between climate change, nature, wildlife, and the shrinking biodiversity and analyzes the harmful impact for the earth and its inhabitants.

"Meanwhile we have all read stories about hive collapse syndrome affecting honeybee colonies and the tragic decline of monarch butterflies in North America, and more. But it is not too late to arrest this decline, and Silent Earth should be the clarion call. Smart, eye-opening, and essential, Silent Earth is a forceful call to action to save our world, and ultimately, ourselves." – publisher

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (356 ratings)
ISBN 978-0063088207 ?
The Big Fix:
Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet
Hal Harvey & Justin Gillis
Simon & Schuster (September 20, 2022)
No Review
"Hal Harvey is the chief executive of Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan climate policy firm that advises leaders around the world on how to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Stanford University. Justin Gillis is an award-winning journalist with four decades of experience explaining complex issues in simple language for major daily newspapers, including The New York Times, where he was the lead reporter on climate science; The Washington Post; and the Miami Herald. He was recently a fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment."

"An engaging, accessible citizen's guide to the seven urgent changes that will really make a difference for our climate—and how we can hold our governments accountable for putting these plans into action.

"Dozens of kids in Montgomery County, Maryland, agitated until their school board committed to electric school buses. Mothers in Colorado turned up in front of an obscure state panel to fight for clean air. If you think the only thing you can do to combat climate change is to install a smart thermostat or cook plant-based burgers, you're thinking too small.

"That's where The Big Fix comes in, offering everyday citizens a guide to the seven essential changes our communities must enact to bring our greenhouse gas emissions down to zero—and sharing stories of people who are making those changes reality.

"Energy policy advisor Hal Harvey and longtime New York Times reporter Justin Gillis hone in on the seven areas where ambitious but eminently practical changes will have the greatest effect: electricity production, transportation, buildings, industry, urbanization, use of land, and investment in promising new green technologies. In a lively, jargon-free style, the pair illuminate how our political economy really works, revealing who decides everything from what kind of power plants to build to how efficient cars must be before they're allowed on the road to how much insulation a new house requires—and how we can insert ourselves into all these decisions to ensure that the most climate-conscious choices are being made.

"At once pragmatic and inspiring, The Big Fix is an indispensable action plan for citizens looking to drive our country's greenhouse gas emissions down to zero—and save our climate."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (36 ratings)
ISBN 978-1982123987 ?
Drawdown:
The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Paul Hawken (Editor)
Tom Steyer (Foreword)
Penguin Books (April 18, 2017)
No Review

"The 100 most substantive solutions to reverse global warming, based on meticulous research by leading scientists and policymakers around the world" – publisher

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (1,576 ratings)
ISBN 978-0143130444 SJ-VSMB 363.7387 Drawdown
Regeneration:
Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
Paul Hawken
Penguin Books (September 21, 2021)
No Review

"Regeneration offers a visionary new approach to climate change, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, equity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation. It is the first book to describe and define the burgeoning regeneration movement spreading rapidly throughout the world.

"Regeneration describes how an inclusive movement can engage the majority of humanity to save the world from the threat of global warming, with climate solutions that directly serve our children, the poor, and the excluded. This means we must address current human needs, not future existential threats, real as they are, with initiatives that include but go well beyond solar, electric vehicles, and tree planting to include such solutions as the fifteen-minute city, bioregions, azolla fern, food localization, fire ecology, decommodification, forests as farms, and the number one solution for the world: electrifying everything.

"Paul Hawken and the nonprofit Regeneration Organization are launching a series of initiatives to accompany the book, including a streaming video series, curriculum, podcasts, teaching videos, and climate action software. Regeneration is the inspiring and necessary guide to inform the rapidly spreading climate movement."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (361 ratings)
ISBN 978-0143136972 ?
Carbon Capture
Howard J. Herzog
The MIT Press (September 11, 2018)
No Review

"Herzog, a pioneer in carbon capture research, begins by discussing the fundamentals of climate change and how carbon capture can be one of the solutions. He explains capture and storage technologies, including chemical scrubbing and the injection of CO2 deep underground. He reports on current efforts to deploy CCS at factories and power plants and attempts to capture CO2 from the air itself. Finally, he explores the policies and politics in play around CCS and argues for elevating carbon capture in the policy agenda." – publisher

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-0262535755 ?
Building a Resilient Tomorrow:
How to Prepare for the Coming Climate Disruption
Alice C. Hill & Leonardo Martinez-Diaz
Oxford University Press; Illustrated Edition (November 1, 2019)
No Review

"Climate change impacts—more heat, drought, extreme rainfall, and stronger storms—have already harmed communities around the globe. Even if the world could cut its carbon emissions to zero tomorrow, further significant global climate change is now inevitable. Although we cannot tell with certainty how much average global temperatures will rise, we do know that the warming we have experienced to date has caused significant losses, and that the failure to prepare for the consequences of further warming may prove to be staggering.

"Building a Resilient Tomorrow does not dwell on overhyped descriptions of apocalyptic climate scenarios, nor does it travel down well-trodden paths surrounding the politics of reducing carbon emissions. Instead, it starts with two central facts: climate impacts will continue to occur, and we can make changes now to mitigate their effects. While squarely confronting the scale of the risks we face, this pragmatic guide focuses on solutions—some gradual and some more revolutionary—currently being deployed around the globe. Each chapter presents a thematic lesson for decision-makers and engaged citizens to consider, outlining replicable successes and identifying provocative recommendations to strengthen climate resilience. Between animated discussions of ideas as wide-ranging as managed retreat from coastal hot-zones to biological approaches for resurgent climate-related disease threats, Alice Hill and Leonardo Martinez-Diaz draw on their personal experiences as senior officials in the Obama Administration to tell behind-the-scenes stories of what it really takes to advance progress on these issues. The narrative is dotted with tales of on-the-ground citizenry, from small-town mayors and bankers to generals and engineers, who are chipping away at financial disincentives and bureaucratic hurdles to prepare for life on a warmer planet. For readers exhausted by today's paralyzing debates on yearly 'fluke' storms or the existence of climate change, Building a Resilient Tomorrow offers better ways to manage the risks in a warming planet, even as we work to limit global temperature rise."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-0190909345 ?
Eco-Hustle!
Solutions for a Sustainable World
Bruce E. Johansen
Westport, CT: Praeger, July 2008
No Review

Eh?

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1-4408-3251-2 ?
The Global Warming Combat Manual:
Global Warming, Greenwashing, and Sustainability
Bruce E. Johansen
Westport, CT: Praeger, April 2015
No Review

Eh?

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 review)
ISBN 978-0313352867 SJ8 QC981.8.J6377 2015
The Seasons Alter:
How to Save Our Planet in Six Acts
Philip Kitcher & Evelyn Fox Keller
Liveright (18 April 2017)
No Review

Eh?

Rating by Amazon customers: 2.9 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1631492839 ?
All Hell Breaking Loose:
The Pentagon's Perspective on Climate Change
Michael T. Klare
Metropolitan Books (November 12, 2019)
No Review

"The Pentagon, unsentimental and politically conservative, might not seem likely to be worried about climate change—still linked, for many people, with polar bears and coral reefs. Yet of all the major institutions in American society, none take climate change as seriously as the U.S. military. Both as participants in climate-triggered conflicts abroad, and as first responders to hurricanes and other disasters on American soil, the armed services are already confronting the impacts of global warming. The military now regards climate change as one of the top threats to American national security—and is busy developing strategies to cope with it.

"Drawing on previously obscure reports and government documents, renowned security expert Michael Klare shows that the U.S. military sees the climate threat as imperiling the country on several fronts at once. Droughts and food shortages are stoking conflicts in ethnically divided nations, with "climate refugees" producing worldwide havoc. Pandemics and other humanitarian disasters will increasingly require extensive military involvement. The melting Arctic is creating new seaways to defend. And rising seas threaten American cities and military bases themselves.

"While others still debate the causes of global warming, the Pentagon is intensely focused on its effects. Its response makes it clear that where it counts, the immense impact of climate change is not in doubt."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 review)
ISBN 978-1627792486 ?
Vision 2050:
Roadmap for a Sustainable Earth
Hiroshi Komiyama & Steven Kraines
Springer (August, 2008)
No Review

"A prominent Japanese academic and leader in global sustainability, Komiyama draws upon realistic assumptions and solid scientific concepts to create a vision that makes the living standards enjoyed by developed countries today possible for all people by 2050. Vision 2050 is built upon three fundamental principles — increased energy efficiency, recycling, and development of renewable energy sources — and the book argues for the technological potential of all three. Specifically, Komiyama envisions a three-fold increase in overall energy efficiency and a doubling of renewable energy resources by 2050."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-4431094302 ?
Cold Cash, Cool Climate:
Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs
Jonathan Koomey Ph.D.
Analytics Press (February, 2012)
No Review

"Written for entrepreneurs and investors, this book describes how to profit from tackling climate change, one of this century's greatest challenges. Industry expert Dr. Jonathan Koomey acts as your company's scientific advisor, summarizing the business implications of the climate problem for both new and existing ventures. Koomey helps you effectively allocate scarce time and resources to the most promising opportunities, drawing upon his more than 25 years of experience in analyzing and implementing climate solutions."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.7 (12 ratings)
ISBN 978-0970601933 ?
A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation:
Uniting Design, Economics, and Policy
Carolyn Kousky, Billy Fleming & Alan M. Berger (Editors)
Island Press (May 20, 2021)
No Review
"Carolyn Kousky is Executive Director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Billy Fleming is the Wilks Family Director for The Ian L. McHarg Center at PennDesign.
Alan M. Berger is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology."

"Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. The design and policy decisions that have shaped coastal areas are in desperate need of updates to help communities better adapt to a changing climate. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities.

"In this book, coastal adaptation experts discuss the interrelated challenges facing communities experiencing sea level rise and increasing storm impacts. These issues extend far beyond land use planning into housing policy, financing for public infrastructure, insurance, fostering healthier coastal ecosystems, and more. Deftly addressing far-reaching problems from cleaning up contaminated, abandoned sites, to changes in drinking water composition, chapters give a clear-eyed view of how we might yet chart a course for thriving coastal communities. They offer a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, while preserving the economic value of these locations, their natural environments, and their community and cultural values. Lessons are drawn from coastal communities around the United States to present equitable solutions. The book provides tools for evaluating necessary tradeoffs to think more comprehensively about the future of our coastal communities.

"Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but planning for it is critical to the survival of many communities. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.8 (15 ratings)
ISBN 978-1642831399 ?
Feasible Planet:
A Guide To More Sustainable Living
Ken Kroes
1779671 Alberta Inc. (November, 2017)
No Review

"Are you concerned about the state of our planet and hope that governments and corporations will find a sustainable way for us to live? If you do not think about it too hard, that may work, but will it? Left on their own, with drivers of popularity and profits, I am not too convinced that it will.

"The missing part of this equation is you and me. Individuals who believe that corporations and governments can do better. Individuals who believe that through action, we can buy a bit more time to develop and implement solutions to our critical issues.

"Did I hear a groan out there when you read the word 'actions'? Do not worry! Most of the actions that I am referring to will not only help save the planet, but will benefit you right away through saving money, time, better health, and having a happier life in general.

"Sustainability goes beyond controlling our consumption and pollution. There are key social, political, and economic areas that need to be addressed as well, and there are several steps that individuals can take to help in these areas. For those of you who feel we could do more, this book is for you and is loaded with actionable activities, the reasons for doing them, and explores why we are not doing them already.

"Every journey starts with a first step. Hopefully this book will lead to those first sustainable steps and that will change the world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (19 ratings)
ISBN 978-0995847040 ?
EARTH: THE SEQUEL
The Race To Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming
Fred Krupp & Miriam Horn
New York: W. W. Norton &Co., 2008
My Review

Fred Krupp heads the Environmental Defense Fund, and his approach is to work with industry rather than fight it. Here he shows us some solutions to climate change being developed by industry.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (63 ratings)
ISBN 978-0-393-06690-6 ?
Resilient Agriculture:
Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate
Laura Lengnick
New Society Publishers (June, 2015)
No Review

"The climate change challenge is real and it is here now. To enjoy the sustained production of food, fiber, and fuel well into the twenty-first century, we must begin now to make changes that will enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of North American agriculture. The rich knowledge base presented in Resilient Agriculture is poised to serve as the cornerstone of an evolving, climate-ready food system."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.8 (10 ratings)
ISBN 978-0865717749 ?
The Climate-Resilient Organization:
Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change and Weather Extremes
Martina K. Linnenluecke & Andrew Griffiths
Edward Elgar Pub (August 31, 2016)
No Review

Eh?

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (1 review)
ISBN 978-1786433398 ?
The Fate of Food:
What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World
Amanda Little
Harmony (June 4, 2019)
No Review

"The race to reinvent the global food system is on, and the challenge is twofold: We must solve the existing problems of industrial agriculture while also preparing for the pressures ahead. Through her interviews and adventures with farmers, scientists, activists, and engineers, Little tells the fascinating story of human innovation and explores new and old approaches to food production while charting the growth of a movement that could redefine sustainable food on a grand scale. She meets small permaculture farmers and 'Big Food' executives, botanists studying ancient superfoods and Kenyan farmers growing the country's first GMO corn. She travels to places that might seem irrelevant to the future of food yet surprisingly play a critical role—a California sewage plant, a U.S. Army research lab, even the inside of a monsoon cloud above Mumbai. Little asks tough questions: Can GMOs actually be good for the environment—and for us? Are we facing the end of animal meat? What will it take to eliminate harmful chemicals from farming? How can a clean, climate-resilient food supply become accessible to all?"

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (31 ratings)
ISBN 978-0804189033 ?
The Upcycle:
Beyond Sustainability—Designing for Abundance
William McDonough & Michael Braungart
Bill Clinton (Foreword)
North Point Press (April, 2013)
No Review

"The Upcycle is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, one of the most consequential ecological manifestoes of our time. Now, drawing on the green living lessons gained from 10 years of putting the Cradle to Cradle concept into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people, William McDonough and Michael Braungart envision the next step in the solution to our ecological crisis: We don't just use or reuse and recycle resources with greater effectiveness, we actually improve the natural world as we live, create, and build.

"For McDonough and Braungart, the questions of resource scarcity and sustainability are questions of design. They are practical-minded visionaries: They envision beneficial designs of products, buildings, and business practices—and they show us these ideas being put to use around the world as everyday objects like chairs, cars, and factories are being reimagined not just to sustain life on the planet but to grow it. It is an eye-opening, inspiring tour of our green future as it unfolds in front of us.

"The Upcycle is as ambitious as such classics as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring—but its mission is very different. McDonough and Braungart want to turn on its head our very understanding of the human role on earth [sic]: Instead of protecting the planet from human impact, why not redesign our activity to improve the environment? We can have a beneficial, sustainable footprint. Abundance for all. The goal is within our reach."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (89 ratings)
ISBN 978-0865477483 ?
Scrubbing the Sky:
Inside the Race to Cool the Planet
Paul McKendrick
Figure 1 Publishing (March 7, 2023)
No Review
"Paul McKendrick is the author of The Bushman's Lair. Prior to writing books, he worked in the energy sector as a partner in a firm dedicated to developing and financing renewable energy projects, in addition to stints in the electric utility sector, the oil and gas sector, and investment banking. He lives in Canmore, Alberta, Canada."

"An in-depth look at the people and the science behind our attempts to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere with direct air capture.

"Drawing on interviews with stakeholders at the intersection of climate science, energy technology, and public policy, Paul McKendrick's investigation traces more than 20 years of technological development with direct air capture, from Biosphere 2; to multi-million dollar promises from Richard Branson, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk; to the opening of Orca, the world's largest commercial direct air capture facility, in Iceland in 2021.

"The question of what will be necessary for direct air capture to reach a meaningful scale, and how much it will cost, has fueled intense scientific and political debate, and spurred a value chain that spans finance, industry, technology, policy, and academia.

"McKendrick's clear and riveting prose presents the full story of this fascinating pursuit for the first time, inviting readers to learn more about this critical climate intervention option."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1773272085 ?
Controlling Climate Change
Bert Metz
Cambridge University Press (January, 2010)
No Review

"An unbiased and comprehensive overview, based on the findings of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). Using no jargon, it looks at tackling and adapting to man-made climate change, and works through the often confusing potential solutions. Bert Metz is the former co-chair of the IPCC, at the center of international climate change negotiations. His insider expertise provides a cutting edge assessment of issues at the top of the political agenda. He leads the reader succinctly through ambitious mitigation scenarios, in combination with adapting our future societies to different climate conditions and the potential costs of these measures. Illustrations and extensive boxed examples motivate students to engage with this essential global debate, and questions for each chapter are available online for course instructors. Minimal technical language also makes this book valuable to anyone with an interest in action to combat climate change."

Rating by Amazon customers: 1.0 (1 rating)
ISBN 978-0521764032 ?
Solved:
How the World's Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis
David Miller
Bill McKibben (Foreword)
Aevo UTP (October 1, 2020)
No Review

"Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small but significant changes that can drastically reduce our carbon footprint. We cannot wait for national governments to agree on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and manage the average temperature rise to within 1.5 degrees. In Solved, David Miller argues that cities are taking action on climate change because they can — and because they must. Miller makes a clear-eyed and compelling case that, if replicated at pace and scale, the actions of leading global cities point the way to creating a more sustainable planet.

"Solved: How the World's Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis demonstrates that the initiatives cities have taken to control the climate crisis can make a real difference in reducing global emissions if implemented worldwide. By chronicling the stories of how cities have taken action to meet and exceed emissions targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, Miller empowers readers to fix the climate crisis. As much a 'how to' guide for policymakers as a work for concerned citizens, Solved aims to inspire hope through its clear and factual analysis of what can be done — now, today — to mitigate our harmful emissions and pave the way to a 1.5-degree world."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (9 ratings)
ISBN 978-1487506827 ?
HEAT
How To Stop the Planet from Burning
George Monbiot
Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007
My Review

In a tour de force of extensive research, Guardian reporter Monbiot shows the conventional wisdom — that reducing CO2 is prohibitively expensive — to be wrong in every case except that of air travel.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (49 ratings)
ISBN 978-0896087798 ?
Regenesis:
Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet
George Monbiot
Penguin Books (August 2, 2022)
No Review

"Farming is the world's greatest cause of environmental destruction — and the one we are least prepared to talk about. We criticise urban sprawl, but farming sprawls across thirty times as much land. We have ploughed, fenced and grazed great tracts of the planet, felling forests, killing wildlife, and poisoning rivers and oceans to feed ourselves. Yet millions still go hungry.

"Now the food system itself is beginning to falter. But, as George Monbiot shows us in this brilliant, bracingly original new book, we can resolve the biggest of our dilemmas and feed the world without devouring the planet.

"Regenesis is a breathtaking vision of a new future for food and for humanity. Drawing on astonishing advances in soil ecology, Monbiot reveals how our changing understanding of the world beneath our feet could allow us to grow more food with less farming. He meets the people who are unlocking these methods, from the fruit and vegetable grower revolutionising our understanding of fertility; through breeders of perennial grains, liberating the land from ploughs and poisons; to the scientists pioneering new ways to grow protein and fat. Together, they show how the tiniest life forms could help us make peace with the planet, restore its living systems, and replace the age of extinction with an age of regenesis."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (342 ratings)
ISBN 978-0143135968 ?
Race for Tomorrow:
Survival, Innovation and Profit on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis
Simon Mundy
William Collins (January 18, 2022)
No Review

"In this extraordinary journey through twenty-six countries, Simon Mundy meets the people on the front lines of the climate crisis, showing how the struggle to respond is already reshaping the modern world — shattering communities, shaking up global business, and propelling a groundbreaking wave of cutting-edge innovation.

  • "HOW is China's green energy push driving a hazardous mining rush in Congo?
  • "WHY is a maverick scientist building a home for engineered mammoths in northeast Siberia?
  • "CAN an Israeli fake meat startup make a fortune while helping to save the Amazon?
  • "WILL Greenland's melting sea ice put its people at the centre of a global power struggle?
  • "WHO are the entrepreneurs chasing breakthroughs in fusion power, electric cars, and technology to suck carbon from the atmosphere?

"As the impacts of climate change cascade across the planet and the global economy, who is battling to survive the worst impacts — and who is chasing the most lucrative rewards?"

"Telling unforgettable human stories from six continents, this is an account of disaster, of promise, of frantic adaptation and relentless innovation, of hope, of survival, and of the forces that will define our future."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (18 ratings)
ISBN 978-0008394295 ?
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember:
How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction
Annalee Newitz
Doubleday (May, 2013)
No Review

"Newitz's remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.7 (101 ratings)
ISBN 978-0385535915 ?
Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems:
Principles and Practices
Peter Newman & Isabella Jennings
Island Press (January, 2008)
No Review
"Peter Newman is professor of city policy and director of the Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. He recently completed a Fulbright scholarship, which he spent at the University of Virginia studying sustainability initiatives in the U.S. He is the author of Sustainability and Cities (Island Press, 1999).
Isabella Jennings is a graduate student in the School of Environmental Science at Murdoch University. Her past and current research is related to the cities as sustainable ecosystems idea."

"Modern city dwellers are largely detached from the environmental effects of their daily lives. The sources of the water they drink, the food they eat, and the energy they consume are all but invisible, often coming from other continents, and their waste ends up in places beyond their city boundaries.

"Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems shows how cities and their residents can begin to reintegrate into their bioregional environment, and how cities themselves can be planned with nature's organizing principles in mind. Taking cues from living systems for sustainability strategies, Newman and Jennings reassess urban design by exploring flows of energy, materials, and information, along with the interactions between human and non-human parts of the system.

"Drawing on examples from all corners of the world, the authors explore natural patterns and processes that cities can emulate in order to move toward sustainability. Some cities have adopted simple strategies such as harvesting rainwater, greening roofs, and producing renewable energy. Others have created biodiversity parks for endangered species, community gardens that support a connection to their foodshed, and pedestrian-friendly spaces that encourage walking and cycling.

"A powerful model for urban redevelopment, Cities as Sustainable Ecosystems describes aspects of urban ecosystems from the visioning process to achieving economic security to fostering a sense of place."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (19 ratings)
ISBN 978-1597261876 ?
Beloved Beasts:
Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
Michelle Nijhuis
W. W. Norton & Company (March 9, 2021)
No Review

"At once thoughtful and thought-provoking," Beloved Beasts tells the story of the modern conservation movement through the lives and ideas of the people who built it, making "a crucial addition to the literature of our troubled time" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction).

"In the late nineteenth century, humans came at long last to a devastating realization: their rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving scores of animal species to extinction. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the history of the movement to protect and conserve other forms of life. From early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today's global effort to defend life on a larger scale, Nijhuis's "spirited and engaging" account documents "the changes of heart that changed history" (Dan Cryer, Boston Globe).

"As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change wreak havoc on our world, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species including our own."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (91 ratings)
ISBN 978-1324001683 ?
Structures of Coastal Resilience
Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Guy Nordenson & Julia Chapman
Island Press; 2nd ed. (June 21, 2018)
No Review
"Catherine Seavitt Nordenson is an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at CUNY's City College of New York and principal of Catherine Seavitt Studio. Her research focuses on design adaptation to sea level rise in urban coastal environments and explores novel landscape restoration practices given the dynamics of climate change.
Guy Nordenson is a professor at Princeton University and structural engineer in New York. He currently serves as a member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change and the board of the Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy.
Julia Chapman is an architect in New York and a designer at Ennead Architects. She has worked on coastal resilience design projects beginning in 2009 and was the project manager for Structures of Coastal Resilience."

"Structures of Coastal Resilience presents new strategies for creative and collaborative approaches to coastal planning for climate change. In the face of sea level rise and an increased risk of flooding from storm surge, we must become less dependent on traditional approaches to flood control that have relied on levees, sea walls, and other forms of hard infrastructure. But what are alternative approaches for designers and planners facing the significant challenge of strengthening their communities to adapt to uncertain climate futures?

"Authors Catherine Seavitt Nordenson, Guy Nordenson, and Julia Chapman have been at the forefront of research on new approaches to effective coastal resilience planning for over a decade. In Structures of Coastal Resilience, they reimagine how coastal planning might better serve communities grappling with a future of uncertain environmental change. They encourage more creative design techniques at the beginning of the planning process, and offer examples of innovative work incorporating flexible natural systems into traditional infrastructure. They also draw lessons for coastal planning from approaches more commonly applied to fire and seismic engineering. This is essential, they argue, because storms, sea level rise, and other conditions of coastal change will incorporate higher degrees of uncertainty—which have traditionally been part of planning for wildfires and earthquakes, but not floods or storms.

"This book is for anyone grappling with the immense questions of how to prepare communities to flourish despite unprecedented climate impacts. It offers insights into new approaches to design, engineering, and planning, envisioning adaptive and resilient futures for coastal areas."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.6 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-1610918572 ?
Green Metropolis:
Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability
David Owen
New York: Riverhead Books, September 2009
No Review

"Most Americans think of crowded cities as ecological nightmares, as wastelands of concrete and garbage and diesel fumes and traffic jams. Yet residents of compact urban centers, Owen shows, individually consume less oil, electricity, and water than other Americans. They live in smaller spaces, discard less trash, and, most important of all, spend far less time in automobiles. Residents of Manhattan—the most densely populated place in North America —rank first in public-transit use and last in percapita greenhouse-gas production, and they consume gasoline at a rate that the country as a whole hasn't matched since the mid-1920s, when the most widely owned car in the United States was the Ford Model T. They are also among the only people in the United States for whom walking is still an important means of daily transportation.

"These achievements are not accidents. Spreading people thinly across the countryside may make them feel green, but it doesn't reduce the damage they do to the environment. In fact, it increases the damage, while also making the problems they cause harder to see and to address. Owen contends that the environmental problem we face, at the current stage of our assault on the world's nonrenewable resources, is not how to make teeming cities more like the pristine countryside. The problem is how to make other settled places more like Manhattan, whose residents presently come closer than any other Americans to meeting environmental goals that all of us, eventually, will have to come to terms with."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (64 ratings)
ISBN 978-1-59448-882-5 ?
A New Coast:
Strategies for Responding to Devastating Storms and Rising Seas
Jeffrey Peterson
Island Press; Illustrated edition (November, 2019)
No Review
"Jeffrey Peterson has 40 years of experience in environmental policy development and program management, particularly focused on water issues. Most recently he was Senior Advisor in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Office of Water responsible for climate change policy. In that capacity he co-chaired the EPA Sea Level Rise Workgroup and was a member of the Federal Interagency Sea Level Rise Workgroup. He also worked for almost four years at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) during the first Obama term. At CEQ, he co-chaired the Interagency Water Resources and Climate Change Workgroup and authored the first national plan addressing water resources management and climate change. Returning to EPA in 2012, he chaired the National Water Program Climate Change Workgroup and served for five years as the Federal co-chair of the Climate Change and Water Workgroup of the Federal Advisory Committee on Water Information (ACWI). Before joining the EPA in 1995, he worked for the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works."

"More severe storms and rising seas will inexorably push the American coastline inland with profound impact on communities, infrastructure, and natural systems. In A New Coast, Jeffrey Peterson draws a comprehensive picture of how storms and rising seas will change the coast. Peterson offers a clear-eyed assessment of how governments can work with the private sector and citizens to be better prepared for the coming coastal inundation.

"Drawing on four decades of experience at the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Senate, Peterson presents the science behind predictions for coastal impacts. He explains how current policies fall short of what is needed to effectively prepare for these changes and how the Trump Administration has significantly weakened these efforts. While describing how and why the current policies exist, he builds a strong case for a bold, new approach, tackling difficult topics including: how to revise flood insurance and disaster assistance programs; when to step back from the coast rather than build protection structures; how to steer new development away from at-risk areas; and how to finance the transition to a new coast. Key challenges, including how to protect critical infrastructure, ecosystems, and disadvantaged populations, are examined. Ultimately, Peterson offers hope in the form of a framework of new national policies and programs to support local and state governments. He calls for engagement from the private sector and local and national leaders in a 'campaign for a new coast.'

"A New Coast is a compelling assessment of the dramatic changes that are coming to America's coast. Peterson offers insights and strategies for policymakers, planners, and business leaders preparing for the intensifying impacts of climate change along the coast."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1642830125 ?
Perilous Bounty:
The Looming Collapse of American Farming and How We Can Prevent It
Tom Philpott
New York: Bloomsbury Publishing; Illustrated edition (August 11, 2020)
No Review

"More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of 'quiet emergency,' from dangerous drought in California—which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat—to catastrophic topsoil loss in the 'breadbasket' heartland of the United States. Whether or not we take heed, these urgent crises of industrial agriculture will define our future.

"In Perilous Bounty, veteran journalist and former farmer Tom Philpott explores and exposes the small handful of seed and pesticide corporations, investment funds, and magnates who benefit from the trends that imperil us, with on-the-ground dispatches featuring the scientists documenting the damage and the farmers and activists who are valiantly and inventively pushing back.

"Resource scarcity looms on the horizon, but rather than pointing us toward an inevitable doomsday, Philpott shows how the entire wayward ship of American agriculture could be routed away from its path to disaster. He profiles the farmers and communities in the nation's two key growing regions developing resilient, soil-building, water-smart farming practices, and readying for the climate shocks that are already upon us; and he explains how we can help move these methods from the margins to the mainstream."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (76 ratings)
ISBN 978-1635573138 ?
Sea Level Rise:
A Slow Tsunami on America's Shores
Orrin H. Pilkey & Keith C. Pilkey
Duke University Press Books; Illustrated edition (September 20, 2019)
No Review
"Orrin H. Pilkey is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He is a marine and coastal geologist, specializing in the study of barrier islands and the impact of humans on our shorelines. At the start of his career, he was a specialist in the deep sea sedimentology of abyssal plains. When his parents lost their house in Waveland, Mississippi, during Hurricane Camille (1969), he was inspired to come into shallower waters and study coastal geology.

He is the author or co-editor of 40 books, including recent ones on the problems with mathematical models (Useless Arithmetic, Columbia), the Corps of Engineers (The Corps and the Shore, Island), a handbook for beach observation (How to Read a North Carolina Beach, UNC), barrier islands (A Celebration of the World's Barrier Islands, Columbia) and most recently, sea level rise (The Rising Sea, Island). He is also the co-editor with Bill Neal of the Living with the Shore state-specific coastal hazard series (Duke Press). In addition, he has written 250 technical publications. He has received a number of awards including the Shepherd Award for excellence in Marine Geology, the Priestley Award, and Public Service awards from several geologic societies."

"The consequences of twenty-first-century sea level rise on the United States and its nearly 90,000 miles of shoreline will be immense: Miami and New Orleans will disappear; many nuclear and other power plants, hundreds of wastewater plants and toxic waste sites, and oil production facilities will be at risk; port infrastructures will need to be raised; and over ten million Americans fleeing rising seas will become climate refugees. In Sea Level Rise, Orrin H. Pilkey and Keith C. Pilkey argue that the only feasible response along much of the U.S. shoreline is an immediate and managed retreat. Among many topics, they examine sea level rise's effects on coastal ecosystems, health, and native Alaskan coastal communities. They also provide guidelines for those living on the coasts or planning on moving to or away from them, as well as the steps local governments should take to prepare for this unstoppable, impending catastrophe."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (20 ratings)
ISBN 978-1478005063 ?
The Pyrocene:
How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next
Stephen J. Pyne
University of California Press (September 7, 2021)
No Review
"Stephen J. Pyne is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University and author of many books on the history and management of fire, including Fire: A Brief History and Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America."

"A provocative rethinking of how humans and fire have evolved together over time—and our responsibility to reorient this relationship before it's too late.

"The Pyrocene tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet.

"Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene.

"Around fires, across millennia, we have told stories that explained the world and negotiated our place within it. The Pyrocene continues that tradition, describing how we have remade the Earth and how we might recover our responsibilities as keepers of the planetary flame."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.4 (38 ratings) Goodreads: 3.9 (62)
ISBN 978-0520383586 ?
Zero-Carbon Industry:
Transformative Technologies and Policies to Achieve Sustainable Prosperity
Jeffrey Rissman
Columbia University Press (February 27, 2024)
No Review
"Jeffrey Rissman is the senior director of the industry program at Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan energy and climate policy think tank. His work focuses on technologies and policies to achieve net zero industrial greenhouse gas emissions. He is the coauthor of Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy (2018) and the creator of the open-source Energy Policy Simulator."

"The power sector and transportation tend to dominate conversations about climate change, but there's an under-the-radar source of climate pollution that must be addressed: industry. Globally, industrial activity is responsible for one-third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Though industry is a major emitter, it is essential for producing the tools we need to fight climate change—like wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles—and for meeting our everyday needs. How can industry eliminate its climate pollution while supplying transformational technologies?

"This book delivers a first-of-its-kind roadmap for the zero-carbon industrial transition, spotlighting the breakthrough innovations transforming the manufacturing sector and the policies that can accelerate this global shift. Jeffrey Rissman illustrates the scope of the challenge, diving into the workings of heavy polluters like steel, chemicals, plastics, cement, and concrete. He examines ways to affordably decarbonize manufacturing, such as electrifying industrial processes, using hydrogen, deploying carbon capture and storage, and growing material efficiency with lightweighting and 3D printing. But technologies are only part of the picture. Enacting the right policies—including financial incentives, research and development support, well-designed carbon pricing, efficiency and emissions standards, and green public procurement—can spur investment and hasten emissions reductions. Rissman provides a framework to ensure that the transition to clean industry enhances equity, health, and prosperity for communities worldwide.

"Engaging and comprehensive, Zero-Carbon Industry is the definitive guide to decarbonizing the vast—yet often overlooked—global industrial sector."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231204200 ?
Cities For A Small Planet
Richard Rogers
Basic Books (July, 1998)
No Review

"In Cities for a Small Planet, Sir Richard Rogers, one of the world's leading architects and the designer of the Pompidou Center in Paris, demonstrates how future cities could provide the springboard for restoring humanity's harmony with its environment."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (8 ratings)
ISBN 978-0813335537 ?
The Age of Sustainable Development
Jeffrey D. Sachs
Ki-moon Ban (Foreword)
Columbia University Press (March, 2015)
No Review

"Sachs offers readers, students, activists, environmentalists, and policy makers the tools, metrics, and practical pathways they need to achieve Sustainable Development Goals. Far more than a rhetorical exercise, this book is designed to inform, inspire, and spur action. Based on Sachs's twelve years as director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, his thirteen years advising the United Nations secretary-general on the Millennium Development Goals, and his recent presentation of these ideas in a popular online course, The Age of Sustainable Development is a landmark publication and clarion call for all who care about our planet and global justice." – publisher

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.5 (93 ratings)
ISBN 978-0231173148 ?
Surviving Global Warming:
Why Eliminating Greenhouse Gases Isn't Enough
Roger A. Sedjo
Prometheus Books (March 19, 2019)
No Review

"This provocative and important overview of the challenges of and possible approaches to climate change by an expert and shared recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize is essential reading for policy makers, climate scientists, and lay persons alike."

Rating by Amazon customers: 3.7 (18 ratings)
ISBN 978-1633885288 ?
A Perfect Threat
Craig R. Smith
Amjenn Publishing LLC (April 20, 2021)
No Review
"Dr. Craig R. Smith is a physician, author, and entrepreneur whose career has spanned academic medicine, the bio-pharmaceutical industry, and environmental biotechnology. Dr. Smith began his career serving on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. After 16 years at Johns Hopkins, Dr. Smith joined a biotechnology company, Centocor Inc. After directing the clinical development of the Company's products and later serving a leadership role in Business Development, Dr. Smith returned to Baltimore and co-founded Guilford Pharmaceuticals Inc. Under his leadership Guilford grew into a fully integrated, publicly traded company. After 12 years leading Guilford, Dr. Smith retired to Florida where he learned of a new method for converting carbon dioxide into ethanol using hybrid algae. Dr. Smith saw the potential value of this method for carbon capture and utilization and co-founded Algenol Biofuels Inc. Dr. Smith served as Chief Operating Officer for 8 years before retiring again. Dr. Smith has served on many corporate or nonprofit Boards of Directors, been elected to several academic societies, and received numerous awards for his academic and public service."

"Evidence has been accumulating for the past several decades that mankind will likely be threatened by its own existence sometime in the next 50-100 years.

"By the end of the 21st century, population and economic growth will cause depletion of many essential natural resources and serious deterioration in many terrestrial and marine habitats, including our own. This catastrophe can be averted. We have the tools. Why aren't we doing more? What can we do to change course?

"A physician and entrepreneur whose career has spanned academic medicine, the bio-pharmaceutical industry, and environmental biotechnology, Dr. Craig Smith guides you through an objective and apolitical analysis of this threat and describes how we can respond and what we must do now to change course and create a sustainable future. At the end of this journey, you will have a better understanding of population growth, climate change, and natural resource depletion, and why, collectively, they are A Perfect Threat.

"Visit http: //aperfectthreat.com/ for additional data on population growth, climate change, and natural resource depletion, including tables, graphs, and charts with links to primary data sources. The website contains reviews of important new research on population growth, climate change, and natural resource depletion as well as a forum for exchange of ideas on methods and strategies to mitigate the consequences."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (11 ratings)
ISBN 978-1736809426 ?
The Bridge at the Edge of the World:
Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis To Sustainability
James Gustave Speth
New Haven: Yale University Press, Illustrated edition (March 10, 2009)
No Review

"My point of departure in this book is the momentous environmental challenge we face. But today's environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control. . . . As citizens we must now mobilize our spiritual and political resources for transformative change on all three fronts."–Gus Speth

"How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe.

"Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today's destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (55 ratings)
ISBN 978-0300151152 ?
The Agricultural Dilemma:
How Not To Feed the World
Glenn Davis Stone
Routledge (June 30, 2022)
Part of: Earthscan Food and Agriculture (78 books)
No Review
"Glenn Davis Stone is an anthropologist and internationally recognized authority on the history, politics, and ecology of agriculture and food production. He has conducted ethnographic research in Nigeria, India, the Philippines, and Appalachia (US); archaeological research in the Midwestern and Southwestern US; and work in an agricultural biotechnology lab. He has published over 80 academic articles (one of which won the Gordon Willey Prize) and one previous book, and has been awarded fellowships from the School of Advanced Research, the National Endowment for Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is currently Research Professor of Environmental Science at Sweet Briar College, Virginia."

"The Agricultural Dilemma questions everything we think we know about the current state of agriculture and how to, or perhaps more importantly how not to, feed a world with a growing population.

"This book is about the three fundamental forms of agriculture: Malthusian (expansion), industrialization (external-input-dependent), and intensification (labor-based). The best way to understand the three agricultures, and how we tend to get it wrong, is to consider what drives their growth. The book provides a thoughtful, critical analysis that upends entrenched misconceptions such as that we are running out of land for food production and that our only hope is the development of new agricultural technologies. The book contains engaging and enlightening vignettes and short histories, with case studies drawn from across the globe to bring to life this important debate and dilemma. The book concludes by arguing there is a viable alternative to industrial agriculture which will allow us to meet the world's needs and it ponders why such alternatives have been downplayed, obscured, or hidden from view.

"This important book is essential reading for all studying and researching food production and agriculture, and more broadly for all interested in ensuring we are able to feed our growing population."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.0 (2 ratings)
ISBN 978-1032260457 ?
Healing Earth:
An Ecologist's Journey of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship
John Todd
Matt Beam (Illus.)
Janine Benyus (Fwd.)
North Atlantic Books (January 29, 2019)
No Review

"A stand-out from the sea of despairing messages about climate change, well-known sustainability elder John Todd, who has taught, mentored, and inspired such well-known names in the field as Janine Benyus, Bill McKibben, and Paul Hawken, chronicles the different ecological interventions he has created over the course of his career. Each chapter offers a workable engineering solution to an existing environmental problem: healing the aftermath of mountain-top removal and valley-fill coal mining in Appalachia, using windmills and injections of bacteria to restore the health of a polluted New England pond, working with community members in a South African village to protect an important river. A mix of both success stories and concrete suggestions for solutions to tackle as yet unresolved issues, Todd's narrative provides an important addition to the conversation about specific ways we can address the planetary crisis. Eighty-five color photos and images illustrate Todd's concepts. This is a refreshingly hopeful, proactive book and also a personal story that covers a known practitioner's groundbreaking career."

Rating by Amazon customers: 5.0 (4 ratings)
ISBN 978-1623172985 ?
Future Sea:
How to Rescue and Protect the World's Oceans
Deborah Rowan Wright
University of Chicago Press (October 27, 2020)
No Review

"The world's oceans face multiple threats: the effects of climate change, pollution, overfishing, plastic waste, and more. Confronted with the immensity of these challenges and of the oceans themselves, we might wonder what more can be done to stop their decline and better protect the sea and marine life. Such widespread environmental threats call for a simple but significant shift in reasoning to bring about long-overdue, elemental change in the way we use ocean resources. In Future Sea, ocean advocate and marine-policy researcher Deborah Rowan Wright provides the tools for that shift. Questioning the underlying philosophy of established ocean conservation approaches, Rowan Wright lays out a radical alternative: a bold and far-reaching strategy of 100 percent ocean protection that would put an end to destructive industrial activities, better safeguard marine biodiversity, and enable ocean wildlife to return and thrive along coasts and in seas around the globe.

"Future Sea is essentially concerned with the solutions and not the problems. Rowan Wright shines a light on existing international laws intended to keep marine environments safe that could underpin this new strategy. She gathers inspiring stories of communities and countries using ocean resources wisely, as well as of successful conservation projects, to build up a cautiously optimistic picture of the future for our oceans—counteracting all-too-prevalent reports of doom and gloom. A passionate, sweeping, and personal account, Future Sea not only argues for systemic change in how we manage what we do in the sea, but also describes steps that anyone, from children to political leaders (or indeed, any reader of the book), can take toward safeguarding the oceans and their extraordinary wildlife."

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.3 (14 ratings)
ISBN 978-0226542676 ?
Green Illusions:
The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism
Ozzie Zehner
University of Nebraska Press (June, 2012)
No Review

"We don't have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions regarding energy, offers refreshingly straight talk about what's wrong with the way we think and talk about the problem. Though we generally believe we can solve environmental problems with more energy—more solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels—alternative technologies come with their own side effects and limitations. How, for instance, do solar cells cause harm? Why can't engineers solve wind power's biggest obstacle? Why won't contraception solve the problem of overpopulation lying at the heart of our concerns about energy, and what will?

"This practical, environmentally informed, and lucid book persuasively argues for a change of perspective. If consumption is the problem, as Ozzie Zehner suggests, then we need to shift our focus from suspect alternative energies to improving social and political fundamentals: walkable communities, improved consumption, enlightened governance, and, most notably, women's rights. The dozens of first steps he offers are surprisingly straightforward. For instance, he introduces a simple sticker that promises a greater impact than all of the nation's solar cells. He uncovers why carbon taxes won't solve our energy challenges (and presents two taxes that could). Finally, he explores how future environmentalists will focus on similarly fresh alternatives that are affordable, clean, and can actually improve our well-being."

I would expect a book published by the University of Nebraska to be reputable. However, given Ozzie Zehner's performance in Planet of the Humans, a film produced by Michael Moore and released on 21 April 2020, I fear this one is not.

Rating by Amazon customers: 4.2 (86 ratings)
ISBN 978-0803237759 ?
Valid CSS! Valid HTML 4.01 Strict To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.
Copyright © 2011-2024 Christopher P. Winter. All rights reserved.
This page was last modified on 27 December 2024.