Social Environment

Toyota would like us to think that Mother Nature drives a Prius, Ford wants us to Join the Green Revolution,” and McDonald’s has painted its golden arches green. But are big brands and the celebrities endorsing them really as green as they claim? In The Greenwash Effect, Guy Pearse looks behind the corporate façade in the tradition of Fast Food Nation and No Logo - and what he finds will startle you.

One morning in 2000, Dr. Jane Hightower walked into her exam room to find a patient with disturbing symptoms she couldn’t explain. The woman was nauseated, tired, and had difficulty concentrating, but a litany of tests revealed no apparent cause. She was not alone. Dr. Hightower saw numerous patients with similar, inexplicable ailments, and eventually learned that there were many more around the nation and the world.

When most Americans think of environmentalism, they think of the political left, of vegans dressed in organic-hemp fabric, lofting protest signs. In reality, writes Jacob Darwin Hamblin, the movement - and its dire predictions - owe more to the Pentagon than the counterculture.

Imagine walking into a restaurant and finding chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides, or neonicotinoid insecticides listed in the description of your entree. They may not be printed in the menu, but many are in your food.These are a few of the literally millions of pounds of approved synthetic substances dumped into the environment every day, not just in the US but around the world.

In the mid-1990s, residents of Anniston, Alabama, began a legal fight against the agrochemical company Monsanto over the dumping of PCBs in the city's historically African American and white working-class west side. Simultaneously, Anniston environmentalists sought to safely eliminate chemical weaponry that had been secretly stockpiled near the city during the Cold War. In this probing work, Ellen Griffith Spears offers a compelling narrative of Anniston's battles for environmental justice.

The Agile City engages the fundamental question: what to do about it? Journalist and urban analyst James S. Russell argues that we'll more quickly slow global warming - and blunt its effects - by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. The Agile City shows that change undertaken at the building and community level can reach carbon-reduction goals rapidly. Adapting buildings (39 percent of greenhouse-gas emission) and communities (slashing the 33 percent of transportation related emissions) offers numerous other benefits that tax gimmicks and massive alternative-energy investments can't match.

Melting ice, a military arms race, the rush to exploit resources at any cost - the Arctic is now the stage on which our future will be decided. And as temperatures rise and the ice retreats, Vladimir Putin orders Russia's oil rigs to move north. But one early September morning in 2013, 30 men and women from 18 countries - the crew of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise - decide to draw a line in the ice and protest the drilling in the Arctic.

The discovery of the Americas around AD 1500 was an extraordinary watershed in human experience. It gave rise to the modern period of human ecology, a phenomenon global in scope that set in motion profound changes in almost every society on Earth. This new period, which saw the depletion of the lands of the New World, proved tragic for some, triumphant for others, and powerfully affecting for all.

A landmark work, The Bond is the passionate, insightful, and comprehensive examination of our special connection to all creatures, written by one of America's most important champions of animal welfare. Wayne Pacelle, the president of the Humane Society of the United States, unveils the deep links of the human-animal bond, as well as the conflicting impulses that have led us to betray this bond through widespread and systemic cruelty to animals.

Prototipo del mostro acquatico nell'immaginario occidentale, fonte di ispirazione per filosofi e romanzieri, il Leviatano biblico è il punto di partenza per una indagine originale volta ad analizzare, in un confronto fra tradizioni classiche, ebraiche e cristiane, il sapere degli antichi in merito a draghi e mostri marini. Queste creature fantastiche, che presentano tratti comuni nelle diverse culture di area semitica e mediterranea, rivestono forti significati simbolici, impersonando il caos, l'avversario contro cui lotta la divinità.

Revealing the deep and abiding interest that African American, Latino, and Native American communities - many of whom live in degraded and polluted parts of the country - have in our collective environment, Engage, Connect, Protect is part eye-opening critique of the cultural divide in environmentalism, part biography of a leading social entrepreneur, and part practical toolkit for engaging diverse youth.

A declaration of independence, and a call for systemic change, from the generation that will be most impacted by climate change. If anyone doubted the potential political power of the Millennial generation, Bernie Sanders' campaign put it in the spotlight. Are We Screwed? makes clear that the ardour for change defines this generation, especially when it comes to climate change, and they are willing to consider options that their elders might think naïve and impractical....

Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.

Richard Mabey is Britain’s foremost nature writer. He has written a regular column for BBC Wildlife Magazine for over 25 years and, in doing so, has created a passionate, lyrical and deeply personal record of the natural world

Have you ever looked at the effects of climate change and the apathy of so many around you and wondered, "What are we missing here?" Climate activist Kyle Meyaard-Schaap understands this feeling from personal experience. But in his years of speaking to and equipping Christians to work for climate action, he's seen the trend begin to shift. More and more young Christians are waking up to the realities of climate change. They want to help, but they're not sure how.

In this young readers edition of the New York Times bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before.

Many fantasize about dramatically changing their lives - living in accordance with their ideals rather than the exigencies of job, bills, and possessions. William Powers actually does it. Here, his family, with baby in tow, searches for balance, community, and happiness in a small town in Bolivia. They build an adobe house, plant a prolific orchard and organic garden, and weave their life into a community of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, and creative businesspeople. Can this Transition Town succeed in the face of encroaching North American capitalism?

In Powering Prosperity: A Citizen's Guide to Shaping the 21st Century, Dr. Indranil Ghosh brings together his decades of experience as a sustainable economic development investor, an entrepreneur, and an MIT-trained scientist to provide a new framework for understanding the world's challenges and the choices societies must make to address them.

In this revelatory work, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shows how food affects our moral selves, our health, and the environment. It raises questions to make us conscious of the decisions behind every bite we take: What effect does eating animals have on our land, water, even global warming? What are the results of farming practices - debeaking chickens and separating calves from their mothers - on animals and humans? How does the health of animals affect the health of our planet and our bodies?

For sixth grader Sam Warren and his friends Catalina, Alistair, Jaesang, and Zoe, the effects of climate change are too pressing to ignore. Adults don’t seem to be up to the challenge of taking action to make real change, but kids know it’s their futures on the line. If their parents, teachers, and government officials won’t step up well, then, they will!