Environmental Ecology

In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the "Hockey Stick", a chart showing global temperature data over the past 1,000 years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.

This audiobook explores the deep past and examines the latest knowledge on bison anatomy and physiology, how bison responded to climate change (especially drought), and early bison hunters and pre-contact trade. It also focuses on the era of European contact, in particular the arrival of the horse, and some of the first known instances of over-hunting. By the 19th century, bison reached a "tipping point" as a result of new tanning practices, an early attempt at protective legislation, and ventures to introducing cattle as a replacement stock.

Climate Change and the Road to Net-Zero is a story of how humanity has broken free from the shackles of poverty, suffering, and war and for the first time in human history, grown both population and prosperity. It’s also a story of how a single species has reconfigured the natural world, repurposed the Earth’s resources, and begun to reengineer the climate. The book uses these conflicting narratives to explore the science, economics, technology, and politics of climate change.

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

In the mid-1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of the devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells the story of the Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Twenty-five years after his book helped to define the new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on the subject of the land and how humans interact with it.

It is the Winter Solstice and Sarah Sands is sitting by her father's bedside, bracing herself for loss. What her father needs to do, she thinks, is conserve his energy - to hibernate like a hedgehog. When the hedgehog curls up in its bed of leaves, its heart rate slows, its body temperature drops and for months there it remains, hardly breathing at all. A few days earlier, Sarah and her grandson had found a poorly hedgehog in the garden and taken it to the local hedgehog sanctuary. They named her Peggy, and her fate had become a matter of pressing concern.

From Geo Rutherford-the creator of the hit series Spooky Lake Month (over sixty-five million likes!)-comes this thrilling nonfiction book that plumbs the depths of twenty-five unusual lakes around the world. Listeners will learn not only about the science of hydrology, but why understanding the natural world is crucial to protecting it from pollution and climate change. Backed by extensive research and packed with all-new content, Spooky Lakes takes listeners on an adventure through weird and wild waters.

After water and air, sand is the natural resource that we consume more than any other - even more than oil. Every concrete building and paved road on Earth, every computer screen and silicon chip, is made from sand. And, incredibly, we're running out of it. The World in a Grain is the compelling true story of the hugely important and diminishing natural resource that grows more essential every day, and of the people who mine it, sell it, build with it - and sometimes, even kill for it.

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history. What is sustainability? Is it always about the environment? What science do we need to fully grasp what it requires? What does sustainability mean for business? How can governments plan for a sustainable future?

We are complacent. We bask in the idea that Canada holds 20% of the world’s fresh water - water crises face other countries, but not ours. We could not be more wrong. In Boiling Point, best-selling author and activist Maude Barlow lays bare the issues facing Canada’s water reserves, including long-outdated water laws, unmapped and unprotected groundwater reserves, agricultural pollution, industrial-waste dumping, boil-water advisories, and the effects of deforestation and climate change. This will be the defining issue of the coming decade, and most of us have no idea that it is on our very own doorstep.

Using her expertise in ancient Israelite society and economy as well as in biblical theology, Richter walks listeners through passages familiar and not-so-familiar, showing how significant environmental theology is in the Bible's witness. She then calls Christians to apply that message to today's environmental concerns. Richter is a master Bible scholar. Each chapter in this timely book draws out a biblical mandate about care for the land, for domestic and wild animals, for people at the margins, and more. She is also a master storyteller.

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. The movement has been growing around the world for a decade. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world.

In this landmark work of environmental history, William Cronon offers an original and profound explanation of the effects European colonists' sense of property and their pursuit of capitalism had upon the ecosystems of New England. Reissued here with an updated afterword by the author and a new preface by the distinguished colonialist John Demos, Changes in the Land provides a brilliant interdisciplinary interpretation of how land and people influence one another.

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

The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence.

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses—on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

It is not your imagination: water crises are more frequent. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. But the grim news reports—of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems—need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author David Sedlak.

An entertaining and accessible listen with profound implications for the future, Teeming takes us on a journey through nature’s most ancient and successful R&D labs, and gives practical prescriptions for redesigning organizations to flourish far into the future. Evolutionary biologist and anthropologist Dr. Woolley-Barker weaves poetic vision and deep scientific expertise to illustrate how flat, agile, and adaptive societies like ants, termites, and underground fungal networks self-organize for resilience and value.

Mark Arax is from a family of Central Valley farmers, a writer with deep ties to the land who has watched the battles over water intensify even as California lurches from drought to flood and back again. In The Dreamt Land, he travels the state to explore the one-of-a-kind distribution system, built in the 1940s, '50s and '60s, that is straining to keep up with California's relentless growth. The Dreamt Land weaves reportage, history and memoir to confront the "Golden State" myth in riveting fashion.

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.