Environmental Engineering

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.

In these new essays, Williams explores the concept of erosion: of the land, of the self, of belief, of fear. She wrangles with the paradox of desert lands and the truth of erosion: What is weathered, worn, and whittled away through wind, water, and time is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.

With answers to over 140 everyday green-living questions, Is It Really Green? cuts through the confusion and gives you the facts. Get to the heart of each eco-conundrum, interrogate your instincts, and make informed decisions to reduce your carbon footprint, with help from bite-sized stats and action points. In this complex and shifting landscape where nothing is simple, what we all need is clear facts and careful debate. Let this book be your antidote to the confusion.

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.

The second volume of William T. Vollmann's epic book about the factors and human actions that have led to global warming begins in the coal fields of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. Over the course of four years, Vollmann finds hollowed out towns with coal-polluted streams and acidified drinking water; makes covert visits to mountaintop removal mines; and offers documented accounts of unpaid fines for federal health and safety violations and of miners who died because their bosses cut corners to make more money.

A youth movement is reenergizing global environmental activism. The "climate generation"—late millennials and iGen, or Generation Z—is demanding that policy makers and government leaders take immediate action to address the dire outcomes predicted by climate science. Those inheriting our planet's environmental problems expect to encounter challenges, but they may not have the skills to grapple with the feelings of powerlessness and despair that may arise when they confront this seemingly intractable situation.

The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions and a call for environmentalists to learn from the indigenous community’s rich history of activism.

In 1980, the iconoclastic economist Julian Simon challenged celebrity biologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet. Their wager on the future prices of five metals captured the public’s imagination as a test of coming prosperity or doom. Ehrlich, author of the landmark book The Population Bomb, predicted that rising populations would cause overconsumption, resource scarcity, and famine—with apocalyptic consequences for humanity.

The climate is the fundamental issue of our time, and now we face a critical decision. Whether to be optimistic or fatalistic, whether to profess skepticism or to take action. Yet it seems we can barely agree on what is really going on, let alone what needs to be done. We urgently need facts, not opinions. Insights, not statistics. And a shift from thinking about climate change as a “me” problem to a “we” problem. The Carbon Almanac is a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration that focuses on what we know, what has come before, and what might happen next.

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.

Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts, and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. This created the healthiest, most sustainable, and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known. In this journey from the English fens to Spain, Japan, and California, William Bryant Logan rediscovers what was once an everyday ecology.

When a beloved place is decimated by physical damage, many hit the donate button or call their congressperson. But award-winning author Trebbe Johnson argues that we need new methods for coping with these losses and invites listeners to reconsider what constitutes “worthwhile action”. She discusses real wounded places ranging from weapons-testing grounds at Eglin Air Force Base to Appalachian mountain tops destroyed by mining. These stories, along with tools for community engagement, show us how we can find beauty in these places and discover new sources of meaning and community.

This audiobook narrated by Jennifer Woodward explains why acknowledging diverse eco-social relationships can help us overcome the political polarization that undermines our ability to protect the environment.

From the National Business Book Award winner and GG finalist, a very different book about facing the climate crisis, and what awaits us on the other side.

As global rates of plant and animal extinctions mount, anxieties about the future of the earth's ecosystems are fueling ever more ambitious efforts at conservation, which draw on Western scientific principles to manage species and biodiversity. In Revenant Ecologies, Audra Mitchell argues that these responses not only ignore but also magnify powerful forms of structural violence like colonialism, racism, genocide, extractivism, ableism, and heteronormativity, ultimately contributing to the destruction of unique life forms and ecosystems.

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.

Edwin Black, award-winning author of IBM and the Holocaust, has mined scores of corporate and governmental archives to assemble thousands of previously uncovered and long-forgotten documents and studies into this dramatic story. Black traces a continuum of rapacious energy cartels and special interests dating back nearly 5,000 years, from wood to coal to oil, and then to the bicycle and electric battery cartels of the 1890s, which created thousands of electric vehicles that plied American streets a century ago.

Are you worried about the effects of climate change on our environment? Want to help but don't know where to start? Environmental activist Natalie Fee's new handbook to green living will help you to make small lifestyle changes that will make a big difference to our planet.

This damning account of the forces that have hijacked progress on climate change shares a bold vision of what it will take, politically and economically, to face the existential threat of global warming head-on.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe.