Conservation Science

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

Meet Earth. Planet Awesome! And your awesome home! Actually, Earth is home to all the plants and all the animals in the solar system, including nearly eight billion people. Humans have accidentally moved Earth's climate change into the fast lane, and she need your help to put on the brakes. Earthlings need Earth, and Earth needs Earthlings, so let’s save Earth together!

Speaking from the cultural viewpoint of the Lakota of the northern Plains, the author discusses the evolution of native cultures to fit within the environment and adapt to it, as opposed to changing it drastically or wholesale to fit human needs and comforts. He suggests that changing our contemporary thinking in relating to the earth in a less harmful way does not mean a drastic change in lifestyles....

Investigative reporter Katie Worth reviewed scores of textbooks, built a 50-state database, and traveled to a dozen communities to talk to children and teachers about what is being taught, and found a red-blue divide in climate education. More than one-third of young adults believe that climate change is not man-made, and science teachers who teach global warming are being contradicted by history teachers who tell children not to worry about it. Who has tried to influence what children learn, and how successful have they been?

Bottled & Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last 100 years - and why we are poorer for it. It's a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than 30 billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales. Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles?

A journalistic memoir by a lapsed evangelical Christian that examines how the ecological crisis is shifting the ground of religious faith.

For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable.

One cannot turn on the news today without a report on an extreme-weather event or the latest update on Antarctica. But while our politicians argue, the truth is that climate change is already here. Nobody knows this better than Indigenous peoples, who, having developed an intimate relationship with ecosystems over generations, have observed these changes for decades. For them, climate change is not an abstract concept or policy issue, but the reality of daily life.

Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities - outcasts and visionaries - on the margins of society.

In this "immersive, densely reported, and altogether remarkable first book [with] the texture and color of a first-rate novel" (New York Times), journalist Doug Bock Clark tells the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers and the threats posed to a tribe on the brink. Deeply empathetic and richly reported, The Last Whalers is a riveting, powerful chronicle of the collision between one of the planet's dwindling indigenous peoples and the irresistible enticements and upheavals of a rapidly transforming world.

In Erin Brockovich’s long-awaited book — her first to reckon with conditions on our planet — she makes clear why we are in the trouble we’re in, and how, in large and practical ways, we each can take actions to bring about change. She shows us what's at stake, and writes of the fraudulent science that disguises these issues, along with cancer clusters not being reported. She writes of the saga of PG&E that continues to this day, and of the communities and people she has worked with who have helped to make an impact.

Prize-winning poet and journalist Eliza Griswold’s Amity and Prosperity is an expose on how fracking shattered a rural Pennsylvania town, and how one lifelong resident brought the story into the national spotlight. This is an incredible true account of investigative journalism and a devastating indictment of energy politics in America.

Change the way you think about the future. The fate of humanity can be daunting, but we don't need to live in that space. First, we need to change our attitude in order to implement nature-based solutions to deal with climate change. Good news: there are environmental trends and examples to change the way you think about how we can protect the planet. Get to know Zahra Biabani, a climate activist, influencer, CEO, and writer.

Environmental insiders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus triggered a firestorm of debate with their self-published essay, "The Death of Environmentalism". In this eagerly anticipated follow-up, the authors expand upon their argument that the paradigms driving the environmental movement and much of liberal politics are outdated and ineffective.

After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis - from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest - in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.

In this highly original work of lyrical reportage, Elizabeth Rush guides listeners through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place. Weaving firsthand accounts from those facing this choice with profiles of wildlife biologists and other members of the communities both currently at risk and already displaced, Rising privileges the voices of those usually kept at the margins.

The complex ecosystem of the Amazon covers an area about the size of the continental US. Approximately one of every four flowering plant species on earth resides in the Amazon. A single Amazonian river may contain more fish species than all the rivers in Europe combined. The rain forest, which contains approximately 390 billion trees, plays a vital role in stabilizing the global climate by absorbing massive amounts of carbon dioxide - or releasing it into the atmosphere if the trees are destroyed.

In this coming-of-middle-age memoir, Kim Heacox, writing in the tradition of Abbey, McPhee, and Thoreau, discovers an Alaska reborn from beneath a massive glacier, where flowers emerge from boulders, moose swim fjords, and bears cross crevasses with Homeric resolve. In such a place Heacox finds that people are reborn too, and their lives begin anew with incredible journeys, epiphanies, and successes. All in an America free of crass commercialism and overdevelopment.

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.

In Wild Winter, John D. Burns, best-selling author of The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, sets out to rediscover Scotland’s mountains, remote places and wildlife in the darkest and stormiest months. He traverses the country from the mouth of the River Ness to the Isle of Mull, from remote Sutherland to the Cairngorms, in search of rutting red deer, pupping seals, minke whales, beavers, pine martens, mountain hares, and otters.