Climate Science

This Is Planet Earth is dedicated to the wonders of planet Earth, the most amazing place in the known universe. The ancient Greeks called it Gaia, the Romans Terra. We know it simply as Earth, the planet we call home. And what a planet it is. Formed around 4.6 billion years ago from the debris of the big bang and long-dead stars, at first it was nothing special, but somehow it evolved to become the most amazing place in the known universe.

On the brink of a critical moment in human history, this audiobook presents a vision of "planetary stewardship"—a rethinking of our relationship with our planet—and plots a new course for our future. In 2009, scientists identified nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth stable, ranging from biodiversity to ozone. Beyond these boundaries lurk tipping points. In order to stop short of these tipping points, the 2020s must see the fastest economic transition in history. This audiobook demonstrates how societies are reaching positive tipping points that make this transition possible.

Featuring a foreword by visionary filmmaker and philanthropist Adam McKay, Facing the Climate Emergency takes a deep dive into why disruptive grassroots activism is the fastest, most cost-effective path to transformative change. Whether you're drawn to the front lines of high-stakes, non-violent direct action, or prefer to play a supporting role, this guide will help you combat the forces of climate denial and discover your own power in the face of the greatest planetary crisis.

Mimi is a "waste girl". A member of the lowest caste on Silicon Isle, located off China’s southeastern coast, and home to the world’s largest electronic waste recycling center. There, thousands of miles from home, Mimi struggles to earn a living for her family and dreams of a better life. Luo Jincheng is the head of one of three clans who run the island, a role passed down from his father and grandfather before him. As the government enforces tighter restrictions, Luo in turn tightens the reins on the waste workers in his employ. Ruthlessness is his means of survival.

Every year, droughts, floods, and fires impact hundreds of millions of people and cause massive economic losses. Climate change is making these catastrophes more dangerous. Now. Not in the future: now. This book describes how and why climate change is already fomenting dire consequences and will certainly make climate disasters worse in the near future.

With vivid, observant reporting, veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce transports listeners to the remote cloud forests of Ecuador, the remains of a forest civilization in Nigeria, a mystifying mountain peak in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and the boreal forests of western Canada and the United States, where devastating wildfires are linked to suppressing the natural fire cycles of forests and the maintenance practices of Indigenous peoples. Throughout the book, Pearce interviews the people who traditionally live in forests.

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

From best-selling author James Raffan comes an enlightening and original story about a polar bear’s precarious existence in the changing Arctic, reminiscent of John Vaillant’s The Golden Spruce.

In the blink of an eye, the small Texas town of Harper Springs is flattened by the worst tornadic system to ever hit the area. Homes are demolished, trees are uprooted, and people are left for dead. Taking cover in a cellar with his son, Ryan Gibson narrowly escapes the storm and gets separated from his wife. He hopes that help will come fast - his child is severely injured and the crippling weather pattern rages on, making them pawns in Mother Nature's game.

Surviving Climate Anxiety is the essential guide to coping with the psychological impacts of persistent environmental crisis. In it, the world's leading climate anxiety expert Dr. Thomas Doherty shares his pioneering, evidence-based methods to help you.

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.

The story begins on a windswept beach in Barbados, from where we follow the ascent of a weather balloon that will travel along the jet stream all around the world. From this viewpoint we observe the effect of the jet in influencing human life around the hemisphere, and witness startling changes emerging. What is the jet stream and how well do we understand it? How does it affect our weather and is it changing? These are the main questions tackled in this book.

Economic growth is wrecking the planet. It's the engine driving climate change, pollution, and the shrinking of natural spaces. To save the environment, will we have to shrink the economy? Might this lead to a better society, helping us break free from an obsession with material wealth that only benefits the few? Alessio Terzi takes these questions as a starting point for a journey into the socioeconomic, evolutionary, and cultural origins of our need for growth.

Five miles off the South Carolina coast, Darden and Catherina are getting their promised forty acres, all of it undersea. Like every Black “mer,” they’ve been experimentally modified to adapt to their new subaquatic home - and have met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. Darden has an inspired plan for resolution. For both those on land and the webbed bottom-dwellers below, Darden is hoping to change the wave of the future.

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse. We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond.

If 20 percent of the population implemented half the solutions in this book, it would solve the biggest global problems. All without writing to politicians, joining protests, signing petitions, or being angry at the people that are causing the problems. Good solutions are often different from conventional environmental wisdom. The average American adult has a carbon footprint of 30 tons per year. Replacing a petroleum car with an electric car will cut 2 tons. But if you live in a cold climate and you switch from electric heat to a rocket mass heater, you will cut 27 tons!

Yes, the world faces substantial environmental challenges - climate change, pollution, and extinction. But the surprisingly good news is that we have solutions to these problems. In the past 50 years, a remarkable number of environmental problems have been solved while substantial progress is ongoing on others. The Optimistic Environmentalist chronicles these remarkable success stories. Endangered species - from bald eagles to gray whales - pulled back from the precipice of extinction.

The march of climate change is stunning and vicious, with rising seas, extreme weather, and oppressive heat blanketing the globe. But its effects on our very brains constitute a public-health crisis that has gone largely unreported. Based on seven years of research, this book by the award-winning journalist and trained neuroscientist Clayton Page Aldern, synthesizes the emerging neuroscience, psychology, and behavioral economics of global warming and brain health. A masterpiece of literary journalism, this book shows readers how a changing environment is changing us today, from the inside out.

What if running in beautiful places was paradoxically contributing to the destruction of those precious environments and causing irreversible global harm to people and animals, too? In We Can’t Run Away from This, ultrarunner Damian Hall examines the impact of running in our climate and ecological emergency. Packed with insights from experts, it is an enlightening book that will prompt us all to really think about our kit, food, and travel and to identify simple changes we can make to our running and wider lives.