Environmental Engineering

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.

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves.

From an award-winning science journalist comes a lively, informative, and humorous deep dive into the future of the toilet - from creative uses for harvested “biosolids”, to the bold engineers dedicated to bringing safe sanitation to the billions of people worldwide living without.

With the train of civilization hurtling at ever-increasing speed towards self-destruction, the most pressing question facing humanity in the 21st century is that of the preservation of life itself. Can Life Prevail? provides a radical yet firmly grounded perspective on the ecological problems threatening both the biosphere and human culture.

Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigates the impacts of engineered landscapes, the market pressures of development, and the ecological activism and political scrimmages that have carved our contemporary coastline—and foretell even greater changes to our shores. From the beaches of the Mexican border up to the sheer-cliffed North Coast, the voices of Indigenous leaders, community activists, small-town mayors, urban engineers, and environmental scientists commingle. Together, they chronicle the challenges and urgency of forging a climate-wise future.

Eugene Linden wrote his first story on climate change, for Time magazine, in 1988; it was just the beginning of his investigative work, exploring all ramifications of this impending disaster. Fire and Flood represents his definitive case for the prosecution as to how and why we have arrived at our current dire pass, closing with his argument that the same forces that have confused the public’s mind and slowed the policy response are poised to pivot with astonishing speed, as long-term risks have become present-day realities and the cliff’s edge is now within view.

In this brave and provocative work, former US Vice President Al Gore asserts that only a radical rethinking of our relationship with nature will save the Earth's ecology for future generations. Gore's analysis of where we've gone wrong ranges across politics, history, science, economics, psychology, and religion. He argues that only a worldwide mobilization can save us from disaster and presents a brilliant and comprehensive plan for action that encompasses not only the Earth's ecology, but also population trends, appropriate technology, and environmental education.

Coral reefs are a microcosm of our planet: extraordinarily diverse, deeply interconnected, and full of wonders. When they’re thriving, these fairy gardens hidden beneath the ocean’s surface burst with color and life. They sustain bountiful ecosystems and protect vulnerable coasts. Corals themselves are evolutionary marvels that build elaborate limestone formations from their collective skeletons, broker symbiotic relationships with algae, and manufacture their own fluorescent sunblock.

Weisman visits an extraordinary range of the world's cultures, religions, nationalities, tribes, and political systems to learn what in their beliefs, histories, liturgies, or current circumstances might suggest that sometimes it's in their own best interest to limit their growth.

Weaving together findings from a wide range of disciplines, Power traces how four key elements developed to give humans extraordinary power: Tool making ability, language, social complexity, and the ability to harness energy sources - most significantly, fossil fuels. It asks whether we have, at this point, overpowered natural and social systems, and if we have, what we can do about it. Has Homo sapiens - one species among millions - become powerful enough to threaten a mass extinction and disrupt the Earth's climate?

A remedy to climate anxiety by one of the most important voices on humanity’s relationship with the Earth, Hope Dies Last fills a crucial gap in the global conversation: Having reached a point of no return in our climate confrontation, how do we feel, behave, act, plan, and dream as we approach a future decidedly different from what we had expected?

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.

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.

Solving the world’s biggest problems - from climate catastrophe and pandemics to wildfires and corporate malfeasance - requires, more than anything else, coming up with new ways to manage the powerful interactions that surround us. In The Spirit of Green, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Nordhaus describes a new way of green thinking that would help us overcome our biggest challenges without sacrificing economic prosperity, in large part by accounting for the spillover costs of economic collisions.

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

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.

In The Environmentalist’s Dilemma, award-winning journalist Arno Kopecky zeroes in on the core predicament of our times: The planet may be dying, but humanity’s doing better than ever. To acknowledge both sides of this paradox is to enter a realm of difficult decisions: Should we take down the government or try to change it from the inside? Is it okay to compare climate change to Hitler? Is hope naive or indispensable? How do you tackle collective delusion? Should we still have kids? And can we take them to Disneyland?

Wagner and Martin Weitzman explore in lively, clear terms the likely repercussions of a hotter planet, drawing on and expanding from work previously unavailable to general audiences. They show that the longer we wait to act, the more likely an extreme event will happen. A city might go underwater.

In a triumph of marketing, the Tasmanian salmon industry has for decades succeeded in presenting itself as world's best practice and its product as healthy and clean, grown in environmentally pristine conditions. But what are we eating when we eat Tasmanian salmon? Richard Flanagan's expose of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing.

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