Best of
Environment

2011

Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement Under Siege


Will Potter - 2011
    The courts are being used to push conventional boundaries of what constitutes "terrorism" and to hit nonviolent activists with disproportionate sentences. Some have faced terrorism charges for simply chalking slogans on the sidewalk.Like the Red Scare, this "Green Scare" is about fear and intimidation, using a word—"eco-terrorist"—to push a political agenda, instill fear and silence dissent. The animal rights and environmental movements directly threaten corporate profits every time activists encourage people to go vegan, to stop driving, to consume fewer resources and live simply. Their boycotts are damaging, and corporations and the politicians who represent them know it. In many ways, the Green Scare, like the Red Scare, can be seen as a culture war, a war of values.Will Potter outlines the political, legal, extra-legal, and public relations strategies that are being used to threaten even acts of nonviolent civil disobedience with the label of "terrorism." Here is a guided tour into the world of radical activism that introduces the real people behind the headlines and tells the story of how everyday people are being prevented from speaking up for what they believe in."Will Potter unveils this complex movement with its virtues and its flaws, the courage of a few and the false bravado of others. I see this book as the definitive overview of the genesis of what is emerging as the most important social movement in human history – the war to save ourselves from ourselves." --Captain Paul Watson, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society"If we are to survive capitalism's death grip on our discourse and on our lives, it will be in great measure due to the work of people like Will Potter. His courage and integrity, which set him apart from most journalists, are evident throughout this important book, and throughout all of his other crucial work. Thank you, Will Potter." --Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame"Part history, part action thriller and courtroom drama, part memoir, Green is the New Red plunges us into the wild, unruly, and entirely inspirational world of extreme environmental activism. Will Potter, participant-observer and partisan-reporter, is the perfect guide, unpacking with wit and skill the most elusive concepts. . . ." --Bill AyersPotter (a contributor to The Next Eco-Warriors) warns that the U.S. government is using post-9/11 anti-terrorism resources to target environmentalists and animal right activists (in some cases for doing nothing but speaking up). . . . Potter warns of the crumbling of "the legal wall separating ‘terrorist' from ‘dissident' or ‘undesirable,'" and concludes his account with a call to action and a decry of the injustice that results in the "terrorist" label being put on those who threaten American corporate interests. Alarming."--Publishers Weekly"In this hard-hitting debut, journalist Potter likens the Justice Department targeting of environmentalists today to McCarthyism in the 1950s. . . A shocking exposé of judicial overreach." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)Will Potter is an award-winning reporter who has written for publications including the Chicago Tribune, the Dallas Morning News and Legal Affairs, and has testified before the U.S. Congress about his reporting. He is the creator of www[dot]GreenIsTheNewRed[dot]com, where he blogs about the Green Scare.

Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted


Justin Martin - 2011
    Best remembered for his landscape architecture, from New York's Central Park to Boston's Emerald Necklace to Stanford University's campus, Olmsted was also an influential journalist, early voice for the environment, and abolitionist credited with helping dissuade England from joining the South in the Civil War. This momentous career was shadowed by a tragic personal life, also fully portrayed here.Most of all, he was a social reformer. He didn't simply create places that were beautiful in the abstract. An awesome and timeless intent stands behind Olmsted's designs, allowing his work to survive to the present day. With our urgent need to revitalize cities and a widespread yearning for green space, his work is more relevant now than it was during his lifetime. Justin Martin restores Olmsted to his rightful place in the pantheon of great Americans.

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor


Rob Nixon - 2011
    Using the innovative concept of slow violence to describe these threats, Rob Nixon focuses on the inattention we have paid to the attritional lethality of many environmental crises, in contrast with the sensational, spectacle-driven messaging that impels public activism today. Slow violence, because it is so readily ignored by a hard-charging capitalism, exacerbates the vulnerability of ecosystems and of people who are poor, disempowered, and often involuntarily displaced, while fueling social conflicts that arise from desperation as life-sustaining conditions erode.In a book of extraordinary scope, Nixon examines a cluster of writer-activists affiliated with the environmentalism of the poor in the global South. By approaching environmental justice literature from this transnational perspective, he exposes the limitations of the national and local frames that dominate environmental writing. And by skillfully illuminating the strategies these writer-activists deploy to give dramatic visibility to environmental emergencies, Nixon invites his readers to engage with some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World


Joel Salatin - 2011
    In FOLKS, THIS AIN'T NORMAL, he discusses how far removed we are from the simple, sustainable joy that comes from living close to the land and the people we love. Salatin has many thoughts on what normal is and shares practical and philosophical ideas for changing our lives in small ways that have big impact.Salatin, hailed by the New York Times as "Virginia's most multifaceted agrarian since Thomas Jefferson [and] the high priest of the pasture" and profiled in the Academy Award nominated documentary Food, Inc. and the bestselling book The Omnivore's Dilemma, understands what food should be: Wholesome, seasonal, raised naturally, procured locally, prepared lovingly, and eaten with a profound reverence for the circle of life. And his message doesn't stop there. From child-rearing, to creating quality family time, to respecting the environment, Salatin writes with a wicked sense of humor and true storyteller's knack for the revealing anecdote. Salatin's crucial message and distinctive voice--practical, provocative, scientific, and down-home philosophical in equal measure--make FOLKS, THIS AIN'T NORMAL a must-read book.

Can We Save the Tiger?


Martin Jenkins - 2011
    But these and many other animals are in danger of disappearing altogether, joining the dodo, the marsupial wolf, the great auk, and countless other animals we will never see again. Using the experiences of a few endangered species as examples, Martin Jenkins highlights the ways human behavior can either threaten or conserve the amazing animals that share our planet. Vicky White’s stunning portraits of rare creatures offer a glimpse of nature’s grace and beauty — and give us a powerful reason to preserve it.

Wangari Maathai: The Woman Who Planted Millions of Trees


Franck Prévot - 2011
    Her organization planted over thirty million trees in thirty years. This beautiful picture book tells the story of an amazing woman and an inspiring idea.

Frozen Planet


Alastair Fothergill - 2011
    Most of us will never travel to these great wildernesses and, even for those lucky enough to have gone, this portrait of our polar regions will surprise and astound.Take a journey to the last truly great wilderness regions. From the Great Melt in Spring to the 24-hour summer, the beginning of the Big Freeze and long dark winter, this epic series will follow the dramatic landscapes and the emotional life stories of the animals that live there.Following the stories of the polar bear and wolf in the North Pole and the adelie penguin and killer whale in the South Pole, we see how they survive these extremes, how they feed, mate and rear their young. Using the latest hi-tech cameras, the series will reveal animal behaviour as we've never seen before - the long, tender mating ritual of the polar bears, the vast penguin colonies, the Arctic's most impressive hunter, the wolf as well as eider ducks, gentle seals and socialable ravens.But the real star of this series is the ice and Frozen Planet will tell its story, from its formation to its movement and its beauty. And of course what the future holds for it.This is the last chance to explore our Frozen Planet before it changes forever.

The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World


Daniel Yergin - 2011
    A master storyteller as well as a leading energy expert, Yergin shows us how energy is an engine of global political and economic change. It is a story that spans the energies on which our civilization has been built and the new energies that are competing to replace them. From the jammed streets of Beijing to the shores of the Caspian Sea, from the conflicts in the Mideast to Capitol Hill and Silicon Valley, Yergin takes us into the decisions that are shaping our future.The drama of oil-the struggle for access, the battle for control, the insecurity of supply, the consequences of use, its impact on the global economy, and the geopolitics that dominate it-continues to profoundly affect our world.. Yergin tells the inside stories of the oil market and the surge in oil prices, the race to control the resources of the former Soviet empire, and the massive mergers that transformed the landscape of world oil. He tackles the toughest questions: Will we run out of oil? Are China and the United States destined to come into conflict over oil? How will a turbulent Middle East affect the future of oil supply?Yergin also reveals the surprising and sometimes tumultuous history of nuclear and coal, electricity, and the "shale gale" of natural gas, and how each fits into the larger marketplace. He brings climate change into unique perspective by offering an unprecedented history of how the field of climate study went from the concern of a handful of nineteenth- century scientists preoccupied with a new Ice Age into one of the most significant issues of our times.He leads us through the rebirth of renewable energies and explores the distinctive stories of wind, solar, and biofuels. He offers a perspective on the return of the electric car, which some are betting will be necessary for a growing global economy.The Quest presents an extraordinary range of characters and dramatic stories that illustrate the principles that will shape a robust and flexible energy security system for the decades to come. Energy is humbling in its scope, but our future requires that we deeply understand this global quest that is truly reshaping our world.

The View from Lazy Point: A Natural Year in an Unnatural World


Carl Safina - 2011
    We meet Eskimos whose way of life is melting away, explore a secret global seed vault hidden above the Arctic Circle, investigate dilemmas facing foraging bears and breeding penguins, and sail to formerly devastated reefs that are resurrecting as fish graze the corals algae-free."Each time science tightens a coil in the slack of our understanding," Safina writes, "it elaborates its fundamental discovery: connection."He shows how problems of the environment drive very real matters of human justice, well-being, and our prospects for peace.In Safina's hands, nature's continuous renewal points toward our future. His lively stories grant new insights into how our world is changing, and what our response ought to be.

Seeing Trees: Discover the Extraordinary Secrets of Everyday Trees


Nancy Ross Hugo - 2011
    Seeing Trees celebrates seldom seen but easily observable tree traits and invites you to watch trees with the same care and sensitivity that birdwatchers watch birds. Many people, for example, are surprised to learn that oaks and maples have flowers, much less flowers that are astonishingly beautiful when viewed up close. Focusing on widely grown trees, this captivating book describes the rewards of careful and regular tree viewing, outlines strategies for improving your observations, and describes some of the most visually interesting tree structures, including leaves, flowers, buds, leaf scars, twigs, and bark. In-depth profiles of ten familiar species—including such beloved trees as white oak, southern magnolia, white pine, and tulip poplar—show you how to recognize and understand many of their most compelling (but usually overlooked) physical features.

Rat Island: Predators in Paradise and the World's Greatest Wildlife Rescue


William Stolzenburg - 2011
    Once a remote sanctuary for enormous flocks of seabirds, the island gained a new name when shipwrecked rats colonized, savaging the nesting birds by the thousands. Now, on this and hundreds of other remote islands around the world, a massive-and massively controversial-wildlife rescue mission is under way.Islands, making up just 3 percent of Earth's landmass, harbor more than half of its endangered species. These fragile ecosystems, home to unique species that evolved in peaceful isolation, have been catastrophically disrupted by mainland predators-rats, cats, goats, and pigs ferried by humans to islands around the globe. To save these endangered islanders, academic ecologists have teamed up with professional hunters and semiretired poachers in a radical act of conservation now bent on annihilating the invaders. Sharpshooters are sniping at goat herds from helicopters. Biological SWAT teams are blanketing mountainous isles with rat poison. Rat Island reveals a little-known and much-debated side of today's conservation movement, founded on a cruel-to-be-kind philosophy.Touring exotic locales with a ragtag group of environmental fighters, William Stolzenburg delivers both perilous adventure and intimate portraits of human, beast, hero, and villain. And amid manifold threats to life on Earth, he reveals a new reason to hope.

A Great Aridness: Climate Change and the Future of the American Southwest


William deBuys - 2011
    Yet staggering population growth, combined with the intensifying effects of climate change, is driving the oasis-based society close to the brink of a Dust-Bowl-scale catastrophe.In A Great Aridness, William deBuys paints a compelling picture of what the Southwest might look like when the heat turns up and the water runs out. This semi-arid land, vulnerable to water shortages, rising temperatures, wildfires, and a host of other environmental challenges, is poised to bear the heaviest consequences of global environmental change in the United States. Examining interrelated factors such as vanishing wildlife, forest die backs, and the over-allocation of the already stressed Colorado River--upon which nearly 30 million people depend--the author narrates the landscape's history--and future. He tells the inspiring stories of the climatologists and others who are helping untangle the complex, interlocking causes and effects of global warming. And while the fate of this region may seem at first blush to be of merely local interest, what happens in the Southwest, deBuys suggests, will provide a glimpse of what other mid-latitude arid lands worldwide--the Mediterranean Basin, southern Africa, and the Middle East--will experience in the coming years.Written with an elegance that recalls the prose of John McPhee and Wallace Stegner, A Great Aridness offers an unflinching look at the dramatic effects of climate change occurring right now in our own backyard.

Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them


Ted Danson - 2011
    But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries.In Oceana, Danson details his journey from joining a modest local protest in the mid-1980s to oppose offshore oil drilling near his Southern California neighborhood to his current status as one of the world's most influential oceanic environmental activists, testifying before congressional committees in Washington, D.C., addressing the World Trade Organization in Zurich, Switzerland, and helping found Oceana, the largest organization in the world focused solely on ocean conservation.In his incisive, conversational voice, Danson describes what has happened to our oceans in just the past half-century, ranging from the ravages of overfishing and habitat destruction to the devastating effects of ocean acidification and the wasteful horrors of fish farms. Danson also shares the stage of Oceana with some of the world's most respected authorities in the fields of marine science, commercial fishing, and environmental law, as well as with other influential activists.Combining vivid, personal prose with an array of stunning graphics, charts, and photographs, Oceana powerfully illustrates the impending crises and offers solutions that may allow us to avert them, showing you the specific courses of action you can take to become active, responsible stewards of our planet's most precious resource—its oceans.

Cascadia's Fault: The Coming Earthquake and Tsunami That Could Devastate North America


Jerry Thompson - 2011
    The Cascadia Subduction Zone has generated massive earthquakes over and over again throughout geologic time; at least 36 major events in the last 10,000 years. This fault generates a monster earthquake about every 500 years. And the monster is due to return at any time. It could happen 200 years from now, or it could be tonight.The Cascadia Subduction Zone is virtually identical to the offshore fault that wrecked Sumatra in 2004. It will generate the same earthquake we saw in Sumatra, at magnitude 9 or higher, sending crippling shockwaves across a far wider area than any California quake. Slamming into Sacramento, Portland, Seattle, Victoria, and Vancouver, it will send tidal waves to the shores of Australia, New Zealand, and Japan, damaging the economies of the Pacific Rim countries and their trading partners for years to come.In light of recent massive quakes in Haiti, Chile, and Mexico, Cascadia's Fault not only tells the story of this potentially devastating earthquake and the tsunamis it will spawn, it also warns us about the impending crisis almost unprecedented in modern history.

Following the Last Wild Wolves


Ian McAllister - 2011
    This updated textual edition follows what has happened to the wolves since 2007, as they hunt, kill, fish for salmon in fall, haul seals out on rocks in winter, and give birth to their young in the base of thousand-year-old cedar trees in spring. This edition presents discusses the latest scientific research indicating that these wolves are a distinct species, and explains how human and government encroachment in the form of hunting and industry development continues to impact BC wolves.Author Ian McAllister of Pacific Wild was named by Time Magazine as “Leader of the 21st Century” for his conservation efforts, and has been instrumental in speaking out against the government’s proposed wolf cull through the recent Save BC Wolves Campaign. Following the Last Wild Wolves also contains a sixteen-page photographic insert that includes spectacular new photos of the wolves in their natural habitat. This textual edition of the bestselling photo book is updated with the author's recent observations of the wolves of British Columbia’s raincoast.

The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Feed Families


Susan L. Roth - 2011
    The families were hungry, and their goats and sheep were hungry too. Then along came a scientist, Dr. Gordon Sato, who helped change their lives for the better. And it all started with some special trees.These are the trees, Mangrove trees, That were planted by the sea.With alternating verse and prose passages, The Mangrove Tree invites readers to discover how Dr. Sato's mangrove tree-planting project transformed an impoverished village into a self-sufficient community. This fascinating story is a celebration of creativity, hard work--and all those mangrove trees that were planted by the sea!

The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment


Chris Martenson - 2011
    The world is in economic crisis, and there are no easy fixes to our predicament. Unsustainable trends in the economy, energy, and the environment have finally caught up with us and are converging on a very narrow window of time--the Twenty-Teens. The Crash Course presents our predicament and illuminates the path ahead, so you can face the coming disruptions and thrive--without fearing the future or retreating into denial. In this book you will find solid facts and grounded reasoning presented in a calm, positive, non-partisan manner.Our money system places impossible demands upon a finite world. Exponentially rising levels of debt, based on assumptions of future economic growth to fund repayment, will shudder to a halt and then reverse. Unfortunately, our financial system does not operate in reverse. The consequences of massive deleveraging will be severe.Oil is essential for economic growth. The reality of dwindling oil supplies is now internationally recognized, yet virtually no developed nations have a Plan B. The economic risks to individuals, companies, and countries are varied and enormous. Best-case, living standards will drop steadily worldwide. Worst-case, systemic financial crises will toss the world into jarring chaos.This book is written for those who are motivated to learn about the root causes of our predicaments, protect themselves and their families, mitigate risks as much as possible, and control what effects they can. With challenge comes opportunity, and The Crash Course offers a positive vision for how to reshape our lives to be more balanced, resilient, and sustainable.

Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis


Sandra Steingraber - 2011
    Once called "a poet with a knife," she blends precise science with lyrical memoir. In Living Downstream she spoke as a biologist and cancer survivor; in Having Faith she spoke as an ecologist and expectant mother, viewing her own body as a habitat. Now she speaks as the scientist mother of two young children, enjoying and celebrating their lives while searching for ways to protect them--and all children--from the toxic, climate-threatened world they inhabit. Each chapter of this engaging and unique book focuses on one inevitable ingredient of childhood--everything from pizza to laundry to homework to the "Big Talk"--and explores the underlying social, political, and ecological forces behind it. Through these everyday moments, Steingraber demonstrates how closely the private, intimate world of parenting connects to the public world of policy-making and how the ongoing environmental crisis is, fundamentally, a crisis of family life.

Faith of Cranes: Finding Hope and Family in Alaska


Hank Lentfer - 2011
    Lentfer's storytelling achieves its joys and universality not via grand summations but via grounded self-giving, familial intimacy, funny friendships, attentive griefs, and full-bodied immersion in the Alaskan rainforest. The writing is honest, intensely lived, and overflowing with heart: broken, mended, and whole."a "David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs & PlaysHank Lentfer listened to cranes passing over his home in southeast alaska for twenty years before bothering to figure out where they were going. On a very visceral level, he didn't want to know. After all, cranes gliding through the wide skies of Alaska are the essence of wildness. But the same animals, pecking a living between the cornfields and condos of California's Central Valley, seem trapped and diminished. A former wildlife biologist and longtime conservationist, Lentfer had come to accept that no number of letters to the editor or trips to D.C. could stop the spread of clear cuts, alter the course of climate change, or ensure that his beloved cranes would always appear. And he had no idea that following the paths of cranes would lead him to the very things he was most afraid of: parenthood, responsibility, and actions of hope in a frustrating and warming world. Faith of Cranes is Lentfer's quiet, lyrical memoir of his home and community near Glacier Bay that reveals a family's simple acts -- planting potatoes, watching cranes, hunting deer -- as well as a close and eccentric Alaskan community. It shows how several thousand birds and one little girl teach a new father there is no future imaginable that does not leave room for compassion and grace.

Celebritrees: Historic & Famous Trees of the World


Margi Preus - 2011
    Some are remarkable for their age and stature; others for their usefulness. A bristlecone pine tree in California has outlived man by almost 4,000 years; a baobab tree in Australia served as a prison for Aboriginal prisoners at the turn of the twentieth century; and a major oak in England was used as a hiding place for Robin Hood and his men (or so the story goes…). The fourteen trees in this book have earned the title “Celebritrees” for their global fame and significance. Both in fact and in legend, these fascinating trees remind us not only how much pleasure trees bring, but what they can tell us about history.

Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil


Timothy Mitchell - 2011
    Carbon Democracy tells a more complex story, arguing that no nation escapes the political consequences of our collective dependence on oil. It shapes the body politic both in regions such as the Middle East, which rely upon revenues from oil production, and in the places that have the greatest demand for energy.Timothy Mitchell begins with the history of coal power to tell a radical new story about the rise of democracy. Coal was a source of energy so open to disruption that oligarchies in the West became vulnerable for the first time to mass demands for democracy. In the mid-twentieth century, however, the development of cheap and abundant energy from oil, most notably from the Middle East, offered a means to reduce this vulnerability to democratic pressures. The abundance of oil made it possible for the first time in history to reorganize political life around the management of something now called “the economy” and the promise of its infinite growth. The politics of the West became dependent on an undemocratic Middle East.In the twenty-first century, the oil-based forms of modern democratic politics have become unsustainable. Foreign intervention and military rule are faltering in the Middle East, while governments everywhere appear incapable of addressing the crises that threaten to end the age of carbon democracy—the disappearance of cheap energy and the carbon-fuelled collapse of the ecological order.In making the production of energy the central force shaping the democratic age, Carbon Democracy rethinks the history of energy, the politics of nature, the theory of democracy, and the place of the Middle East in our common world.

The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times


Rob Hopkins - 2011
    Since then, the Transition idea has gone viral across the globe, from Italian villages and Brazilian favelas to universities and London neighborhoods. In contrast to the ever-worsening stream of information about climate change, the economy, and resource depletion, Transition focuses on solutions, on community-scale responses, on meeting new people, and on having fun.The Transition Companion picks up the story today, drawing on the experience of one of the most fascinating experiments under way in the world. It tells inspiring tales of communities working for a future where local economies are valued and nurtured; where lower energy use is seen as a benefit; and where enterprise, creativity, and the building of resilience have become cornerstones of a new economy.The first part discusses where we are now in terms of resilience and vulnerability in the face of rising oil prices, climate change, and economic challenge. It presents a vision of the future if we do not address these issues, and how things might change if we start to do so. The book then looks in detail at the process a community in transition goes through, calling on the experience of those who have already embarked on this journey. These examples show how much can be achieved when people harness energy and imagination to create projects that will make their communities more resilient. The Transition Companion combines practical advice--the tools needed to start and maintain a Transition initiative--with numerous inspiring stories from local groups worldwide.

We're Not Leaving: 9/11 Responders Tell Their Stories of Courage, Sacrifice, and Renewal


Benjamin J. Luft - 2011
    While the effects of 9/11 on these everyday heroes and heroines are indelible, and in some cases have been devastating, at the heart of their deeply personal stories-their harrowing escapes from the falling Towers, the egregious environment they worked in for months, the alarming health effects they continue to deal with-is their witness to their personal strength and renewal in the ten years since. These stories, shared by ordinary people who responded to disaster and devastation in extraordinary ways, remind us of America's strength and inspire us to recognize and ultimately believe in our shared values of courage, duty, patriotism, self-sacrifice, and devotion, which guide us in dark times.

Ocean Soul


Brian Skerry - 2011
    It is a story of discovery. It is a story of hope.The story begins when a boy who loves the sea attends an event with underwater photographers and has an epiphany: "I had always wanted to explore the oceans, but I now understood how I would do this. I would do it with a camera." With sheer deter­mination, hard work, and a little bit of luck the boy, named Brian Skerry, realized his dream with more than 20 awe-inspiring articles for National Geographic magazine. Now, with Ocean Soul, he showcases his stunning photography and describes his adventurous life in a gripping portrait of the ocean as a place of beauty and mystery, a place in trouble, and ultimately, a place of hope that will rebound with the proper attention and care.

Piet Oudolf: Landscapes in Landscapes


Piet Oudolf - 2011
    Insightful, accessible text by gardening author Noel Kingsbury places Oudolf's work in context and explains how each garden and the plants selected for it fit the specific environment. Oudolf's detailed plans provide inspiration and insight for all interested in small personal gardens and the design of large-scale public landscapes alike."

What's Gotten into Us?: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World


McKay Jenkins - 2011
    But you also probably figured that most of these products were safe, and that someone—the manufacturers, the government—was looking out for you. The truth might surprise you.After experiencing a health scare of his own, journalist McKay Jenkins set out to discover the truth about toxic chemicals, our alarming levels of exposure, and our government’s utter failure to regulate them effectively. What’s Gotten into Us? reveals how dangerous, and how common, toxins are in the most ordinary things, and in the most familiar of places: • Our water: Thanks to suburban sprawl and agricultural runoff, 97 percent of our nation’s rivers and streams are now contaminated with everything from herbicides to pharmaceutical drugs. • Our bodies: High levels of hormone-disrupting chemicals from cosmetics, flame-retardants from clothing and furniture, even long-banned substances like DDT and lead, are consistently showing up in human blood samples.• Our homes: Many toxins lurk beneath our sinks and in our basements, of course, but did you know that they’re also found in wall-to-wall carpeting, plywood, and fabric softeners? • Our yards: Pesticides, fungicides, even common fertilizers—there are enormous, unseen costs to our national obsession with green, weed-free lawns.  What’s Gotten Into Us? is much more than a wake-up call. It offers numerous practical ways for us to regain some control over our lives, to make our own personal worlds a little less toxic. Inside, you’ll find ideas to help you make informed decisions about the products you buy, and to disentangle yourself from unhealthy products you don’t need—so that you and your family can start living healthier lives now, and in the years to come. Because, as this book shows, what you don’t know can hurt you.

A Californian's Guide to the Trees Among Us


Matt Ritter - 2011
    A Californian s Guide to the Trees among Us features over 150 of California s most commonly grown trees. Whether native or cultivated, these are the trees that muffle noise, create wildlife habitats, mitigate pollution, conserve energy, and make urban living healthier and more peaceful.Used as a field guide or read with pleasure for the liveliness of the prose, this book will allow readers to learn the stories behind the trees that shade our parks, grace our yards, and line our streets. Rich in photographs and illustrations, overflowing with anecdote and information, A Californian s Guide to the Trees among Us opens our eyes to a world of beauty just outside our front doors.

Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life


Kari Marie Norgaard - 2011
    Why have so few taken any action? In Living in Denial, sociologist Kari Norgaard searches for answers to this question, drawing on interviews and ethnographic data from her study of "Bygdaby," the fictional name of an actual rural community in western Norway, during the unusually warm winter of 2000-2001.In 2000-2001 the first snowfall came to Bygdaby two months later than usual; ice fishing was impossible; and the ski industry had to invest substantially in artificial snow-making. Stories in local and national newspapers linked the warm winter explicitly to global warming. Yet residents did not write letters to the editor, pressure politicians, or cut down on use of fossil fuels. Norgaard attributes this lack of response to the phenomenon of socially organized denial, by which information about climate science is known in the abstract but disconnected from political, social, and private life, and sees this as emblematic of how citizens of industrialized countries are responding to global warming.Norgaard finds that for the highly educated and politically savvy residents of Bygdaby, global warming was both common knowledge and unimaginable. Norgaard traces this denial through multiple levels, from emotions to cultural norms to political economy. Her report from Bygdaby, supplemented by comparisons throughout the book to the United States, tells a larger story behind our paralysis in the face of today's alarming predictions from climate scientists.

The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered


John Michael Greer - 2011
    Building on the foundations of E. F. Schumacher's revolutionary "economics as if people mattered," this book examines the true cost of confusing money with wealth. By analyzing the mistakes of contemporary economics, it shows how an economy centered on natural capital—the raw materials that support human life—can move our society toward a more productive relationship with the planet that sustains us all.The Wealth of Nature suggests public policy initiatives and personal choices that can help alleviate the economic impact of Peak Oil. These strategies must address not only financial concerns, but the issues of resource depletion and pollution as well. Examples include:Adjusting tax policy to penalize the use of natural nonrenewable resources over recycled materialsPlacing public welfare above corporate interestsEmpowering individuals, families, and communities by prioritizing local, sustainable solutionsBuilding economies at an appropriate scaleProfoundly insightful and impeccably argued, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of the environment and the economy as we enter the twilight of the Age of Abundance.John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history, an award-winning author, and an internationally renowned peak oil theorist whose blog The Archdruid Report has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society.

Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability


Alison Hope Alkon - 2011
    But many low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have been systematically deprived of access to healthy and sustainable food. These communities have been actively prevented from producing their own food and often live in "food deserts" where fast food is more common than fresh food. Cultivating Food Justice describes their efforts to envision and create environmentally sustainable and socially just alternatives to the food system.Bringing together insights from studies of environmental justice, sustainable agriculture, critical race theory, and food studies, Cultivating Food Justice highlights the ways race and class inequalities permeate the food system, from production to distribution to consumption. The studies offered in the book explore a range of important issues, including agricultural and land use policies that systematically disadvantage Native American, African American, Latino/a, and Asian American farmers and farmworkers; access problems in both urban and rural areas; efforts to create sustainable local food systems in low-income communities of color; and future directions for the food justice movement. These diverse accounts of the relationships among food, environmentalism, justice, race, and identity will help guide efforts to achieve a just and sustainable agriculture.

Lexie World


Kimberly Kinrade - 2011
    The crunch and grind of it all sounded like monsters coming to eat me.Oh my goodness! The crunching and grinding got louder. So loud, I knew it couldn't be just us.My hands shook and my feet stopped working right. I didn't want to look behind me.Then something smacked me in the back of my head! My eyes got all cloudy with tears.I looked behind me. Big mistake.~~ 5-year-old Lexie is tired of getting in trouble for leaving her stuff and trash outside. She doesn’t mean to litter or ruin her shoes, but it’s just so hard to remember sometimes.When she, her two big sisters and their dog TayTay find a portal to Lexie World, Lexie discovers the consequence littering has had on her special world. Garbage Goblins have taken over and are destroying the Earth!To save Lexie World, the girls (and TayTay) must travel with their new Unicorn friend through the Waters of Waste and over the Mountain of Lost Clothes to retrieve a piece of the Mirror of Ice in order to remind the Garbage Goblins of their true form and break their curse.On this journey, Lexie learns about courage, love and the importance of taking care of her world.With full color illustrations, Lexie World bridges the gap between picture books and chapter books, offering children 4-9 years old a new, exciting reading journey.

Nature as Measure: The Selected Essays of Wes Jackson


Wes Jackson - 2011
    The only responsible way to learn the nuances of the land is to study the soil and vegetation in their natural state and pass this knowledge on to future generations.In Nature as Measure, a collection of Jackson’s essays from Altars of Unhewn Stone and Becoming Native to This Place, these ideas of land conservation and education are written from the point of view of a man who has practiced what he’s preached and proven that it is possible to partially restore much of the land that we’ve ravaged. Wes Jackson lays the foundation for a new farming economy, grounded in nature’s principles and located in dying small towns and rural communities. Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both.

Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis


Ian Angus - 2011
    Too Many People? provides a clear, well-documented, and popularly written refutation of the idea that "overpopulation" is a major cause of environmental destruction, arguing that a focus on human numbers not only misunderstands the causes of the crisis, it dangerously weakens the movement for real solutions.No other book challenges modern overpopulation theory so clearly and comprehensively, providing invaluable insights for the layperson and environmental scholars alike.Ian Angus is editor of the ecosocialist journal Climate and Capitalism, and Simon Butler is co-editor of Green Left Weekly.

The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World


Emma Marris - 2011
    For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity. Emma Marris argues convincingly that it is time to look forward and create the "rambunctious garden," a hybrid of wild nature and human management.In this optimistic book, readers meet leading scientists and environmentalists and visit imaginary Edens, designer ecosystems, and Pleistocene parks. Marris describes innovative conservation approaches, including rewilding, assisted migration, and the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems.Rambunctious Garden is short on gloom and long on interesting theories and fascinating narratives, all of which bring home the idea that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by us.

Our Daily Poison: From Pesticides to Packaging, How Chemicals Have Contaminated the Food Chain and Are Making Us Sick


Marie-Monique Robin - 2011
    Since the end of World War II, approximately one hundred thousand synthetic chemical molecules have invaded our environment—and our food chain. In Our Daily Poison, award–winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie–Monique Robin investigates the links between these two trends, revealing how a toxic mix of corporate interests and public ignorance about invisible poisons may be costing us our lives.The result of a rigorous two–year–long investigation that took Robin across three continents, Our Daily Poison documents the shocking array of chemicals in our every–day lives and their effects on our bodies over time. Moving beyond the substances, Robin also dissects the byzantine, entirely inadequate evaluation and approval systems for chemical products, highlighting the fallacy of the “acceptable daily intake” and other regulatory standards for harmful substances.Our Daily Poison also exposes the chemical industry’s lobbying efforts to keep highly toxic products on the market. Drawing on scientific studies, the testimony of international regulatory agencies, and a range of in–depth interviews—from farm workers suffering from acute chronic poisoning to FDA and WHO representatives and to the scientists who develop these compounds—Robin makes a gripping and compelling case for outrage and action.

The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader, Oregon and Washington: Adventure, History, and Legend on the Long-Distance Trail


Rees Hughes - 2011
    The heart of this anthology is these real trail tales, stories taken from PCT hikers: trailside humor and traditions, "trail angels" and "trail magic," encounters with wildlife and wild weather, stories of being lost and found, rescues, and unusual incidents. Revealing a larger context are historical accounts of events such as Moses Schallenberger's winter on Donner Pass and pioneer efforts like the old Naches Road that ended up creating access to today's trails; Native American myths and legends such as that of Lost Lake near Mount Hood; and selections from highly-regarded environmental writers who have captured the region in print, including Mary Austin in The Land of Little Rain ; John Muir in The Mountains of California; and Barry Lopez in Crossing Open Ground. Readers will also enjoy a few more surprising contributions from the likes of Mark Twain and Ursula Le Guin.Organized parallel to the actual sections of the PCt and presented in two regional volumes, The Pacific Crest Trailside Reader and Pacific Crest Trailside Reader 2 volume ebook will entertain everyone from dedicated thru-hikers to lovers of regional lore.Need more from the PCT Readers? Editors Rees Hughes and Corey Lewis are sharing stories from the trail on their website, pcttrailsidereader.com. Submit your own images or stories from the trail, or simply get lost in the tales from other travelers...

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Birds


Birdlife International - 2011
    Spectacular features on the most impressive birds, plus a huge catalogue that profiles nearly fifteen hundred different species makes this a must-have for every bird enthusiast.Published with Birdlife International, the world's leading avian authority.

Bayou-Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country


Kelby Ouchley - 2011
    From Bayou Tigre to Half Moon Bayou, these sluggish streams meander through lowlands, marshes, and even uplands to dominate the state's landscape. In Bayou-Diversity, conservationist Kelby Ouchley reveals the bayou's intricate web of flora and fauna.Through a collection of essays about Louisiana's natural history, Ouchley details an amazing array of plants and animals found in the Bayou State. Baldcypress, orchids, feral hogs, eels, black bears, bald eagles, and cottonmouth snakes live in the well over a hundred bayous of the region. Collectively, Ouchley's vignettes portray vibrant and complex habitats. But human interaction with the bayou and our role in its survival, Ouchley argues, will determine the future of these intricate ecosystems. Bayou-Diversity narrates the story of the bayou one flower, one creature at a time, in turn illustrating the bigger picture of this treasured and troubled Louisiana landscape.

Blue Revolution: Unmaking America's Water Crisis


Cynthia Barnett - 2011
    We use more water than any other culture in the world, much to quench what’s now our largest crop—the lawn. Yet most Americans cannot name the river or aquifer that flows to our taps, irrigates our food, and produces our electricity. And most don’t realize these freshwater sources are in deep trouble.Blue Revolution exposes the truth about the water crisis—driven not as much by lawn sprinklers as by a tradition that has encouraged everyone, from homeowners to farmers to utilities, to tap more and more. But the book also offers much reason for hope. Award-winning journalist Cynthia Barnett argues that the best solution is also the simplest and least expensive: a water ethic for America. Just as the green movement helped build awareness about energy and sustainability, so a blue movement will reconnect Americans to their water, helping us value and conserve our most life-giving resource. Avoiding past mistakes, living within our water means, and turning to “local water” as we do local foods are all part of this new, blue revolution. Reporting from across the country and around the globe, Barnett shows how people, businesses, and governments have come together to dramatically reduce water use and reverse the water crisis. Entire metro areas, such as San Antonio, Texas, have halved per capita water use. Singapore’s “closed water loop” recycles every drop. New technologies can slash agricultural irrigation in half: businesses can save a lot of water—and a lot of money—with designs as simple as recycling air-conditioning condensate. The first book to call for a national water ethic, Blue Revolution is also a powerful meditation on water and community in America.

Extracted: How the Quest for Mineral Wealth Is Plundering the Planet: A Report to the Club of Rome


Ugo Bardi - 2011
    Mineral treasures that took millions, or even billions, of years to form are now being squandered in just centuries-or sometimes just decades. Will there come a time when we actually run out of minerals? Debates already soar over how we are going to obtain energy without oil, coal, and gas. But what about the other mineral losses we face? Without metals, and semiconductors, how are we going to keep our industrial system running? Without mineral fertilizers and fuels, how are we going to produce the food we need?Ugo Bardi delivers a sweeping history of the mining industry, starting with its humble beginning when our early ancestors started digging underground to find the stones they needed for their tools. He traces the links between mineral riches and empires, wars, and civilizations, and shows how mining in its various forms came to be one of the largest global industries. He also illustrates how the gigantic mining machine is now starting to show signs of difficulties. The easy mineral resources, the least expensive to extract and process, have been mostly exploited and depleted. There are plenty of minerals left to extract, but at higher costs and with increasing difficulties.The effects of depletion take different forms and one may be the economic crisis that is gripping the world system. And depletion is not the only problem. Mining has a dark side-pollution-that takes many forms and delivers many consequences, including climate change. The world we have been accustomed to, so far, was based on cheap mineral resources and on the ability of the ecosystem to absorb pollution without generating damage to human beings. Both conditions are rapidly disappearing. Having thoroughly plundered planet Earth, we are entering a new world. Bardi draws upon the world's leading minerals experts to offer a compelling glimpse into that new world ahead.

love letter to the milky way: a book of poems


Drew Dellinger - 2011
    Drew Dellinger's poetry reaches out to the far ends of the Milky Way and to the inner depths of the soul. His poetry and performances have captivated thousands across six continents. He is, in the words of Cornell West, "one of the most creative, courageous and prophetic poets of his generation." This power of his poetry is tied to his passion for ecological survival and social justice movements. The Rev. Osagyefo Sekou calls Dellinger "the poet laureate of the global justice democracy movement."it's 3:23 in the morningand I'm awakebecause my great great grandchildrenwon't let me sleepmy great great grandchildrenask me in my dreamswhat did you do while the planet was plundered?what did you do when the earth was unraveling? from the poem "hieroglyphic stairway" read on the floor of Congress during climate change hearings

A Yorkshire Sketchbook


David Hockney - 2011
    Although his passionate interest in new technologies has led him to develop a virtuosic drawing technique on the iPad, he has also traveled outdoors with a traditional sketchbook, an invaluable tool as he works quickly to capture the changing light and fleeting effects of the weather. Executed in watercolor and ink, these panoramic scenes have the spatial complexity of finished paintings—the broad sweep of sky or road, the patchwork tapestry of land—yet convey the immediacy of Hockney’s impressions. For those who know the East Yorkshire Wolds, the location of the sketches is unmistakable; for those who don’t, its features will come to life in these pages.

When Disaster Strikes: A Comprehensive Guide for Emergency Prepping and Crisis Survival


Matthew Stein - 2011
    Yet armed with the right tools and information, survivors can fend for themselves and get through even the toughest circumstances. Matthew Stein's When Disaster Strikes provides a thorough, practical guide for how to prepare for and react in many of life's most unpredictable scenarios.In this disaster-preparedness manual, he outlines the materials you'll need-from food and water, to shelter and energy, to first-aid and survival skills-to help you safely live through the worst. When Disaster Strikes covers how to find and store food, water, and clothing, as well as the basics of installing back-up power and lights. You'll learn how to gather and sterilize water, build a fire, treat injuries in an emergency, and use alternative medical sources when conventional ones are unavailable.Stein instructs you on the smartest responses to natural disasters-such as fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and floods-how to keep warm during winter storms, even how to protect yourself from attack or other dangerous situations. With this comprehensive guide in hand, you can be sure to respond quickly, correctly, and confidently when a crisis threatens.

Dreams


Derrick Jensen - 2011
    He introduces the mythologies of ancient cultures and modern indigenous peoples as evidence of alternative ways of understanding reality, informed by thinkers such as American Indian writer Jack Forbes, theologian and American Indian rights activist Vine Deloria, Shaman Martin Prechtel, Dakota activist and scholar Waziyatawin, and Okanagan Indian writer Jeannette Armstrong. He draws on the wisdom of Dr. Paul Staments, author of Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, sociologist Stanley Aronowitz, who discusses science's lack of accountability to the earth, and many more. As in his other books, Jensen draws heavily from his own life experience living alongside the frogs, redwoods, snails, birds and bears of the upper northwest, about which he writes with exquisite tenderness.Having taken on the daunting task of understanding one's dreams as a source of knowledge, Jensen achieves the near-impossible in this breathtakingly brave and ambitious new work.

Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description


Tim Ingold - 2011
    Generations of theorists, however, have expunged life from their accounts, treating it as the mere output of patterns, codes, structures or systems variously defined as genetic or cultural, natural or social. Building on his classic work The Perception of the Environment, Tim Ingold sets out to restore life to where it should belong, at the heart of anthropological concern.Being Alive ranges over such themes as the vitality of materials, what it means to make things, the perception and formation of the ground, the mingling of earth and sky in the weather-world, the experiences of light, sound and feeling, the role of storytelling in the integration of knowledge, and the potential of drawing to unite observation and description.Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there.

One Small Island


Alison Lester - 2011
    A speck of green in the vast, windswept sea, it is a haven for many creatures that live above and below the waves.In One Small Island, Alison Lester and Coral Tulloch bring us the story of this remote and precious World Heritage Site. Together they explore the island's unique geological beginnings, discovery and degradation at the hands of humans, and the battle to restore it today.This beautifully presented book leaves us with an important question: can Macquarie Island and places like it be saved?

Eco-Innovators: Sustainability in Atlantic Canada


Chris Benjamin - 2011
    These entrepreneurs and educators, activists and agitators, farmers and fishers have all made measurable contributions both in their respective fields of interest and in motivating others to make change. In the book, we meet Kim Thompson, a strawbale builder and consultant, who has recently brought her building experience to a renovation of an older house in downtown Halifax. Then there’s Edwin Theriault, who bought a bale of clothing back in 1971 and launched Frenchy’s, a chain of seventy-six used-clothing stores that has become an East Coast institution. Edwin doesn’t consider himself an environmentalist at all, but over the years his business has kept countless tonnes of material out of landfills. Also profiled are Speerville Flour Mill and Olivier Soaps in New Brunswick, Sean Gallagher of Local Source in Halifax, David and Edith Ling of Fair Acre Farm on PEI, and Jim Meaney of Cansolair solar heat air exchangers in Newfoundland, among many others. With ten chapters on matters like reducing consumption, greening the home, sustainable eating, dressing, transportation, and vacationing, the book is an important look into the lives of Atlantic Canadians committed to creating viable green options in our region.

Plato's Revenge: Politics in the Age of Ecology


William Ophuls - 2011
    Ophuls warns us that we are headed for a postindustrial future that, however technologically sophisticated, will resemble the preindustrial past in many important respects.

Eco Amazons: 20 Women Who Are Transforming the World


Dorka Keehn - 2011
     Eco Amazons brings together the women leading the charge to create a sustainable future. They are individuals at the forefront of the global preservation movement, making a noticeable difference in all of our lives. Through intimate interviews conducted by journalist Dorka Keehn and arresting images by award-winning photographer Colin Finlay, Eco Amazons chronicles and illuminates the critical environmental issues of our time and shows how concern leads to passion, and how passion leads to action that can be emulated by all. While many of the leaders of the modern environmental movement have consistently been women, most of their names, struggles, and successes have yet to achieve national recognition. A generation ago, conservation held the spotlight; but because of these women, the beam is now shining equally on health and urban issues like clean air and safe drinking water. As the movement has expanded, women continue to spearhead change in new areas of environmental focus such as art, design, economics, and food production. With a forward by Julia Butterfly Hill—the internationally known activist who lived in a redwood tree affectionately know as “Luna” for 738 days—this seminal book brings to light the stories and lives of 20 American women making a difference. These eco-warriors include Majora Carter, who founded the environmental justice organization Sustainable South Bronx, which includes one of the nation’s first urban-farm training programs; Agnes Denes, a pioneer of the ecological art movement; Julia Bonds, a coal miner’s daughter and the director of Coal River Mountain Watch in the Appalachian Mountains who is fighting the highly destructive mining practice known as “mountaintop removal”; and Alice Waters, the chef and owner of the award-wining restaurant Chez Panisse, who has championed farmer’s markets and organic products.

The Beaver Manifesto


Glynnis A. Hood - 2011
    Their ability to create and maintain aquatic habitats has endeared them to conservationists, but puts the beavers at odds with urban and industrial expansion. These conflicts reflect a dichotomy within our national identity. We place environment and our concept of wilderness as a key touchstone for promotion and celebration, while devoting significant financial and personal resources to combating "the beaver problem."We need to rethink our approach to environmental conflict in general, and our approach to species-specific conflicts in particular. Our history often celebrates our integration of environment into our identity, but our actions often reveal an exploitation of environment and celebration of its subjugation. Why the conflict with the beaver? It is one of the few species that refuses to play by our rules and continues to modify environments to meet its own needs and the betterment of so many other species, while at the same time showing humans that complete dominion over nature is not necessarily achievable.

Recovering a Lost River: Removing Dams, Rewilding Salmon, Revitalizing Communities


Steven Hawley - 2011
    As recently as a half century ago, they retained some of their historic bounty, with millions of fish returning to spawn. Now, due to four federal dams, the salmon population has dropped close to extinction. Efforts at salmon recovery through fish ladders, hatcheries, and even trucking them over the dams have failed.   Steven Hawley, journalist and self-proclaimed “river rat,” argues that the best hope for the Snake River lies in dam removal, a solution that pits the power authorities and Army Corps of Engineers against a collection of Indian tribes, farmers, fishermen, and river recreationists. The river’s health, as he demonstrates, is closely connected to local economies, fresh water rights, energy independence—and even the health of orca whales in Puget Sound.   The story of the Snake River, its salmon, and its people raises the fundamental questions of who should exercise control over natural resources and which interests should receive highest priority. It also offers surprising counterpoints to the notion of hydropower as a cheap, green, and reliable source of energy, and challenges the wisdom of heavily subsidized water and electricity.   This regional battle is part of an ambitious river restoration movement that stretches across the country from Maine’s Kennebec to California’s Klamath, and engages citizens from a broad social spectrum. In one successful project, the salmon of Butte Creek rebounded from a paltry fourteen fish to twenty thousand within just a few years of rewilding their river, showing the incredible resiliency of nature when given the slightest chance.  Recovering a Lost River depicts the compelling arguments and actions being made on behalf of salmon by a growing army of river warriors. Their message, persistent but disarmingly simple, is that all salmon need is water in their rivers, and a clear way home.

Divine Rebels: American Christian Activists for Social Justice


Deena Guzder - 2011
    They believe in a community based on ethics, a world with infinite potential for improvement, and an inclusive God of love. These rabble-rousers are small in number, and their efficacy is best measured on the margins, but they are part and parcel of an American tradition that began with the nation’s earliest Quaker abolitionists.By profiling social justice activists on the frontlines of the “Christian Left” since the 1960s, Divine Rebels articulates a forward-thinking, faith-based alternative to both the conservative drone warping religion as well as the political left’s alienating cynicism.

New Zealand's Native Trees


John Dawson - 2011
    

Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction


Deborah Bird Rose - 2011
    In Wild Dog Dreaming, Deborah Bird Rose explores what constitutes an ethical relationship with nonhuman others in this era of loss. She asks, Who are we, as a species? How do we fit into the Earth's systems? Amidst so much change, how do we find our way into new stories to guide us? Rose explores these questions in the form of a dialogue between science and the humanities. Drawing on her conversations with Aboriginal people, for whom questions of extinction are up-close and very personal, Rose develops a mode of exposition that is dialogical, philosophical, and open-ended.An inspiration for Rose--and a touchstone throughout her book--is the endangered dingo of Australia. The dingo is not the first animal to face extinction, but its story is particularly disturbing because the threat to its future is being actively engineered by humans. The brazenness with which the dingo is being wiped out sheds valuable, and chilling, light on the likely fate of countless other animal and plant species."People save what they love," observed Michael Soule, the great conservation biologist. We must ask whether we, as humans, are capable of loving--and therefore capable of caring for--the animals and plants that are disappearing in a cascade of extinctions. Wild Dog Dreaming engages this question, and the result is a bold account of the entangled ethics of love, contingency, and desire.

Edge of Extinction


Kristen Stone - 2011
    To them there is no ‘outside the jungle.’ They are led by Kinda Mala, a golden-haired, amber-eyed foundling who MUST be a god because he has a prehensile tail. When things start to go wrong it is to him the people look.Ms Stone takes the reader on a journey through Kianda’s eyes, out of the Rainforest and into a world that is beyond his comprehension. A world where his people are deemed worthless and profit rules.This beautifully written story touches on some thought provoking issues without ever preaching about what should be done.

Beatty's Cabin


Elliott S. Barker - 2011
    George Beatty, an old-time prospector, built his two-room log cabin on a grassy flat, beside the upper Pecos River, an area Elliott Barker grew to love. Beatty's cabin is the pivotal axis for Barker's thrilling memoir of his experiences and rugged adventures, many happy, a few tragic. He gets his first inspiring glimpse of the remote Pecos high country on the very same adventuresome trip when he first explores Beatty's old cabin and prospect holes. With the babble of the upper Pecos water and the whispers of the mountain breezes among the spruces, he begins chronicling his adventures, starting with his first wilderness pack trip in 1896 at the age of ten and continuing with the awe-inspiring glimpses of mountain meadows and rugged peaks. Elliott relates tales of grizzly bear hunts, capturing outlaws, and a perilous winter rescue of a bunch of snow-trapped horses, among others. The historical development of the Santa Fe National Forest and the Pecos Wilderness area, so dear to Barker's heart, form the foundation for this unprecedented memoir of the beauty and the glory of wild New Mexico.

Comfortably Unaware: Global Depletion and Food Responsibility... What You Choose to Eat Is Killing Our Planet


Richard Oppenlander - 2011
    His book COMFORTABLY UNAWARE introduces us to our responsibility in global depletion, and encourages us to think about our food choices with every bite.

Scorched Earth: Legacies of Chemical Warfare in Vietnam


Fred A. Wilcox - 2011
    Weaving first-person accounts with original research, Vietnam War scholar Fred A. Wilcox examines long-term consequences for future generations, laying bare the ongoing monumental tragedy in Vietnam, and calls for the United States government to finally admit its role in chemical warfare in Vietnam. Wilcox also warns readers that unless we stop poisoning our air, food, and water supplies, the cancer epidemic in the United States and other countries will only worsen, and he urgently demands the chemical manufacturers of Agent Orange to compensate the victims of their greed and to stop using the Earth’s rivers, lakes, and oceans as toxic waste dumps. Vietnam has chosen August 10—the day that the US began spraying Agent Orange on Vietnam—as Agent Orange Day, to commemorate all its citizens who were affected by the deadly chemical. Scorched Earth will be released upon the third anniversary of this day, in honor of all those whose families have suffered, and continue to suffer, from this tragedy.

This Crazy Time: Living Our Environmental Challenge


Tzeporah Berman - 2011
    This unique book--part manifesto from a leader, part humorous activist memoir from a soccer mom--offers a wryly honest, behind-the-scenes, ultimately uplifting look at the state of the planet. For almost 20 years, Tzeporah Berman has been one of our most influential environmentalists. A founder of ForestEthics and PowerUp Canada, she was instrumental in shaping the tactics and concerns of the modern environmental movement. In her early 20s she faced nearly one thousand criminal charges and 6 years in prison for her role organizing blockades in Canada's rainforest. She later transformed her tactics and sat down with CEOs and political leaders to reshape their policies and practices. In her new role at Greenpeace International she is fighting the problem of our time: climate change. This Crazy Time is an impassioned plea for a better world.

The Responsible Business: Reimagining Sustainability and Success


Carol Sanford - 2011
    A Responsible Business sees stakeholders as full partners and meaningful instruments for the evolution of healthier communities and more successful businesses." --from the Introduction The Responsible Business offers a new and strategic approach to doing business that holistically integrates responsibility into all aspects of an organization, allowing for returns at every level, business and social. This book goes beyond the often well intentioned but limited attempts at sustainability to present a framework that allows organizations to bring responsibility into everything they do and re-imagine success. From innovation, product development, and production processes to business management, strategic planning, and shareholder development, the author shows how being a Responsible Business is a practical skill that can be applied day-to-day at every level of the business.No longer just the role of a department or the job of CSR professionals, successful responsibility and business efforts start at the business level, are then taken to the corporate level, and are finally applied throughout the organization. The Responsible Business outlines a framework for building a responsibility and consciousness infrastructure that applies a living systems view to the business and inspires all of its stakeholders, including shareholders.Throughout the book, illustrated by examples from technology to manufacturing, large and small, public and private, Sanford demonstrates how to make responsibility integral to all aspects of a business as an engine for innovation, profitability, and purpose.Praise for The Responsible Business"This is a very significant book. It makes it clear that businesses have a single boss with five interrelated aspects. The stories are among the crispest, most evocative case histories I have seen. The book is for any corporate leader trying to do the impossible: create a business that recreates the world." --Art Kleiner, editor-in-chief, strategy + business, and author, The Age of Heretics"Carol Sanford offers us a proven, practical, and systems-based approach that integrates five stakeholder groups into a business system working as an integral whole. Essential reading for leaders wanting a system framework for sustainability and business success!" --Otto Scharmer, MIT Sloan senior lecturer; author, Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges; and coauthor, Presence"The Responsible Business challenges many assumptions corporate leaders, investment advisors, and sustainability experts have long taken for granted. It provides a road map that can help innovative businesses think about how to be truly transformational." --Sam Ford, Fast Company expert blogger and director, Peppercom"The powerful concepts in The Responsible Business have changed the process of sustainable development and how communities truly thrive. Indeed, these proven approaches will be the roadmap to truly achieve the deepest level of living communities." --Bill Reed, founding member of LEED System and coauthor, The Integrative Design Guide to Green Building"Critical for re-imagining the future of business. Rarely a day goes by that I do not call on this way of thinking and looking at the world. It is useful for taking on the big business decisions that so many of us face every day." --Chad Holliday, chairman, Bank of America

Always Looking Forward


Walter Bond - 2011
    What was left when the smoke cleared were communiques from the self-proclaimed A.L.F Lone Wolf. After his capture the world wanted to know more behind the pseudonym. Walter Bond is the A.L.F Lone Wolf. In this collaboration of his original work, Walter captivates his audience and answers their questions with the raw truth. With stories and articles from behind bars, this book outlines what motivates true animal liberation and what inspired Walter to take action as the Animal Liberation Front.

Kidnapping the Lorax


Patricia K. Lichen - 2011
    Secretary of the Interior-code-named The Lorax-and take her to the Pacific Northwest woods. Their goal is to re-educate her through tasks designed to open her eyes to the wonders of the forest, so that upon her return to Washington, DC she will be an advocate for the land. Detailed descriptions of Pacific Northwest flora and fauna.

Ecologies of Comparison: An Ethnography of Endangerment in Hong Kong


Timothy Choy - 2011
    During his research, Tim Choy became increasingly interested in the power of the notion of specificity. While documenting the expert and lay production of Hong Kong’s biological, cultural, and political specificities, he began comparing the logics and narrative forms that made different types of specificity—such as species, culture, locality, and state autonomy—possible and meaningful. He came to understand these logics and forms as “ecologies of comparison,” conceptual practices through which an event or form of life comes to matter in environmentalist and other political terms. Choy’s ethnography is about environmentalism, Hong Kong, and the ways that we think about environmentalism in Hong Kong and other places. It is also about how politics, freedom, culture, expertise, and other concepts figure in comparison-based knowledge practices.

Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment


Elizabeth DeLoughrey - 2011
    Turning to contemporary works by both well- and little-known postcolonial writers, the diverse contributions highlight the literary imagination as crucial to representing what Eduoard Glissant calls the aesthetics of the earth. The essays are organized around agroup of thematic concerns that engage culture and cultivation, arboriculture and deforestation, the lives of animals, and the relationship between the military and the tourist industry. With chapters that address works by J. M. Coetzee, Kiran Desai, Derek Walcott, Alejo Carpentier, Zakes Mda, andmany others, Postcolonial Ecologies makes a remarkable contribution to rethinking the role of the humanities in addressing global environmental issues.

No Fear: A Whistleblower's Triumph Over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA


Marsha Coleman-Adebayo - 2011
    The account illustrates how the author attempted to convince the government to investigate allegations surrounding a multinational corporation, suspecting that they were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of South Africans who were mining vanadium--a vital strategic mineral. Documenting Coleman-Adebayo's shocking discovery that the EPA itself was the first line of defense for the corporation in question, this record depicts how the agency stonewalled, prompting the author to expose them. The agency's brutal retaliation is captured in detail, revealing their use of every racist and sexist trick in their playbook, costing the protagonist her career, endangering her family, and sacrificing more lives in the vanadium mines of South Africa.Finishing on a hopeful note, the recollection concludes with the upwelling of support the author received from others in the federal bureaucracy, detailing how her subsequent grassroots struggle to protect future whistleblowers ended in victory.

Snake Escape


Justin D'Ath - 2011
    Bella is a giant hungry python who's spied a cockatoo for breakfast.Can Mission Fox save the day without getting tied up in knots?

Introduction to Modern Climate Change


Andrew E. Dessler - 2011
    It is unique among textbooks on climate change in that it combines an introduction of the science with an introduction to the non-science issues such as the economic and policy options. Unlike more purely descriptive textbooks, it contains the quantitative depth that is necessary for an adequate understanding of the science of climate change. The goal of the book is for a student to leave the class ready to engage in the public policy debate on this issue. This is an invaluable textbook for any introductory survey course on the science and policy of climate change, for both non-science majors and introductory science students.

Sustainable Design: A Critical Guide for Architects and Interior, Lighting, and Environmental Designers


David Bergman - 2011
    With clear, simple language and a practical "can do" approach, author David Bergman coverseverything from the profession's ethical responsibility, to design structures and spaces that sustain our natural resources, to specific considerations such as rainwater harvesting, graywater recycling, passive heating techniques, solar orientation, green roofs, wind energy, daylighting, indoor air quality, material evaluation and specification, and how to work with green building certification programs.

Backpacking North Carolina: The Definitive Guide to 43 Can't-Miss Trips from Mountains to Sea


Joe Miller - 2011
    Covering 43 of the best trips the state has to offer, Backpacking North Carolina provides all the information necessary for beginning and experienced backpackers alike to enjoy hiking destinations from the mountains to the coast. Each trip description offers key maps and navigation information, including water sources and camping spots, as well as trip highlights and special considerations. Miller offers tips for enriching the experience, such as filling dark nights with stargazing and other activities, and gives advice for backpacking with children. Offering his expertise in a way that emphasizes the accessibility of backpacking, Miller encourages a wide range of nature lovers to give it a try, perhaps for the first time. Several best-of lists are included, featuring trips with exceptional nature study opportunities, water recreation, and easy excursions for beginners. Backpacking North Carolina takes the reader deep into a state full of natural wonder and adventure. Backpacking North Carolina has all the essentials for planning your trip, whether a quick weekend getaway or a longer adventure: Trips for beginner and expert backpackers alikeHelpful essays to introduce each trail and its featuresGear and safety advice for year-round backpackingMajor points of interest highlighted on each tripFamily-friendly trails and easy bailouts for when hiking with childrenDetailed trail maps and directions to trailheadsElevation profiles for each hikeEstimated hike times and level of difficultyCamping permit requirementsGPS coordinates for water sources and good camping spotsBullet lists of best trips for fishing, bird watching, waterfalls, and moreSouthern Gateways Guide is a registered trademark of the University of North Carolina Press

Powers of Exclusion: Land Dilemmas in Southeast Asia


Derek Hall - 2011
    Powers of Exclusion examines the key processes through which shifts in land relations are taking place, notably state land allocation and provision of property rights, the dramatic expansion of areas zoned for conservation, booms in the production of export-oriented crops, the conversion of farmland to post-agrarian uses, "intimate" exclusions involving kin and co-villagers, and mobilizations around land farmed in terms of identity and belonging. In case studies drawn from seven countries, the authors find that four "powers of exclusion" - regulation, market, force and legitimation - have combined to shape land relations in new and often surprising ways.Land debates are often presented as a conflict between market-oriented land use with full private property rights on one side, and equitable access, production for subsistence, and respect for custom on the other. The authors step back from these debates to point out that any productive use of land requires the exclusion of some potential users, and that most projects for transforming land relations are thus accompanied by painful dilemmas. Rather than counterposing "exclusion" to "inclusion", the book argues taht attention must be paid to who is excluded, how, why, and with what consequences.Powers of Exclusion is a path-breaking book that draws on insights from multiple disciplines to map out the new contours of struggles for land in Southeast Asia. The volume provides a framework for analyzing the dilemmas of land relations across the Global South and beyond.

Vinegar Fridays


Hana Haatainen Caye - 2011
    Based on the most popular weekly feature of the Green Grandma blog, Vinegar Fridays offers tips on how to use vinegar for cleaning, pet care, diet, healthcare, car care, beauty and more! Recipes, facts about the chemicals in common household products and information about vinegar are seasoned with a personal touch. Reading Vinegar Fridays is like sitting down and sharing a salad with a friend .. with balsamic vinaigrette dressing, of course! Practical yet personable, Vinegar Fridays is a handy guide for every day greener and healthier living.

The Way of Natural History


Thomas Lowe Fleischner - 2011
    Throughout this provocative and uplifting book, writers describe their various experiences in nature and portray how careful, and mindful, attention to the larger world around us brings rewarding and surprising discoveries. They give us the literary, personal, and spiritual stories that point a way toward calm and quiet for which many people today hunger. Contributors to The Way of Natural History highlight their individual ways of paying attention to nature and discuss how their experiences have enlivened and enhanced their worlds. The anthology is a rich array of writings that provide models for interacting with the natural world, and together, create a call for the importance of natural history as a discipline.

The Remnant Through the Shroud


M.A. Oberg - 2011
    The secluded city is ruled by “The Remnant” which strictly bars its citizen’s individuality and freedom of speech. Haleigh, the main character who is clairvoyant, is sent by her doctor to a school called the Winter Clinic where she is grouped with other non-conforming students to persuade each of them to submit to The Remnant’s requirements. Soon, Haleigh and her new found friends are on a fast and exhilarating journey discovering a new world outside the shroud. Throughout the book aspects of freedom, nature and art are celebrated as though seen or experienced for the first time.

Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal


Junot Díaz - 2011
    Apocalyptic catastrophes, whether in Haiti or Japan, raze cities, drown coastlines, and—if you are willing to read the ruins—reveal the human sources of "natural" disaster.

Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing (Revised)


Doug McKenzie-Mohr - 2011
    The highly acclaimed manual for changing everyday habits now in an all-newthird edition!"

Nowhere Else on Earth: Standing Tall for the Great Bear Rainforest


Caitlyn Vernon - 2011
    Environmental activist Caitlyn Vernon guides young readers through a forest of information, sharing her personal stories, her knowledge and her concern for this beautiful place. Full of breathtaking photographs and suggestions for ways to preserve this unique ecosystem, Nowhere Else on Earth is a timely and inspiring reminder that we need to stand up for our wild places before they are gone.Visit http: //www.greatbearrainforest.ca to find teacher and student resources, view the online photo gallery, or read a sample chapter from the book. To access the free teacher's guide for Nowhere Else on Earth, click here: http: //orcabook.com/nowhereelseonearth/guide....

Listed


Joe Roman - 2011
    When the Supreme Court sided with the darter, Congress changed the rules. The dam was built, the river stopped flowing, and the snail darter went extinct on the Little Tennessee, though it survived in other waterways. A young Al Gore voted for the dam; freshman congressman Newt Gingrich voted for the fish.A lot has changed since the 1970s, and Joe Roman helps us understand why we should all be happy that this sweeping law is alive and well today. More than a general history of endangered species protection, Listed is a tale of threatened species in the wild--from the whooping crane and North Atlantic right whale to the purple bankclimber, a freshwater mussel tangled up in a water war with Atlanta--and the people working to save them.Employing methods from the new field of ecological economics, Roman challenges the widely held belief that protecting biodiversity is too costly. And with engaging directness, he explains how preserving biodiversity can help economies and communities thrive. Above all, he shows why the extinction of species matters to us personally--to our health and safety, our prosperity, and our joy in nature.

Dark Mountain: Issue 2


Dougald Hine - 2011
    Does the experience of loss on a human scale help us make sense of the ecological grief which confronts us, as we face the loss of species and languages, of ways of being in the world?Among the stories, essays, poems, images and conversations which make up this collection, Naomi Klein visits the Gulf of Mexico, a year on from Deepwater Horizon; David Abram talks about wonder, boundaries and living with loss; Vinay Gupta writes about the Indian tradition of the “kapilika” or “bearers of the skull”; Paul Kingsnorth reflects on the experience of living with suicide. There’s also the final interview with the late Glyn Hughes, a fine poet and a friend of Dark Mountain from its earliest days, who faces the reality of his own death with stoicism and peace of mind.These encounters with mortality sit alongside explorations of language, history, love and place. Luanne Armstrong writes about farming in rural Canada and Charles Hugh Smith gives a self-described hick’s perspective on the fantasies of “survivalists”. Wilfried Hou Je Bek discusses the history of ape-human language experiments, while Venkatesh Rao speculates on “the return of the barbarian” and Warren Draper revisits the Luddite rebellion, two hundred years on. Darren Allen invites us to fall in love, Catherine Lupton wonders around with words, and Tom Keyes offers a recipe for Black Isle Pheasant Stew.There are extracts from Jay Griffiths’ forthcoming novel about the life of Frida Kahlo, Melanie Challenger’s book on extinction, and Antonio Dias’ novel ‘Something for Nothing’, as well as new short stories from Nick Hunt, William Haas and Simon Lys. There’s also new poetry from Albert Pierce Bales, Antony Lioi, Em Strang, Joel Moore, Mario Petrucci, Adrienne Odasso, Robert Walker, Benjamin Morris, Stephen Wheeler, Andrea Dulberger, Heathcote Williams, Gerry Loose and Paul Kingsnorth.Despite the theme of loss, this is not a book which is headed into despair. It ends with an essay from Dougald Hine, ‘Remember the Future?’, which offers a Dark Mountain attitude to how we meet the unknown with hope.

Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City


Leslie Day - 2011
    That sylvan place is New York City, and this is a guide to the diverse trees that line its streets.Field Guide to the Street Trees of New York City acquaints New Yorkers and visitors alike with fifty species of trees commonly found in the neighborhoods where people live, work, and travel. Beautiful, original drawings of leaves and stunning photographs of bark, fruit, flower, and twig accompany informative descriptions of each species. Detailed maps of the five boroughs identify all of the city’s neighborhoods, and specific addresses pinpoint where to find a good example of each tree species.Trees provide invaluable benefits to the Big Apple: they reduce the rate of respiratory disease, increase property values, cool homes and sidewalks in the summer, block the harsh winds of winter, clean the air, absorb storm water runoff, and provide habitat and food for the city’s wildlife.Bald cypress, swamp oak, silver linden, and all of New York’s most common trees are just a page turn away. Your evening walk will never be the same once you come to know the quiet giants that line the city's streets.

The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America's Eden


Lisa Sun-Hee Park - 2011
    But one town in Colorado, under the guise of environmental protection, passed a resolution limiting immigration, bolstering the privilege of the wealthy and scapegoating Latin American newcomers for the area's current and future ecological problems. This might have escaped attention save for the fact that this wasn't some rinky-dink backwater. It was Aspen, Colorado, playground of the rich and famous and the West's most elite ski town.Tracking the lives of immigrant laborers through several years of exhaustive fieldwork and archival digging, The Slums of Aspen tells a story that brings together some of the most pressing social problems of the day: environmental crises, immigration, and social inequality. Park and Pellow demonstrate how these issues are intertwined in the everyday experiences of people who work and live in this wealthy tourist community.Offering a new understanding of a little known class of the super-elite, of low-wage immigrants (mostly from Latin America) who have become the foundation for service and leisure in this famous resort, and of the recent history of the ski industry, Park and Pellow expose the ways in which Colorado boosters have reshaped the landscape and altered ecosystems in pursuit of profit and pleasure. Of even greater urgency, they frame how environmental degradation and immigration reform have become inextricably linked in many regions of the American West, a dynamic that interferes with the efforts of valorous environmental causes, often turning away from conservation and toward insidious racial privilege.

New York Rooftop Gardens


Charles de Vaivre - 2011
    We're talking of course about New York's legendary rooftop gardens. Like their predecessors in Babylon, these urban oases truly are one of the world's great wonders. Set amid the concrete canyons, these horticultural hideaways offer respite from New York's relentless pace. High above the city that never sleeps, these serene spaces offer a chance to laze, potter and nap. The gardens' plants, furnishing, and the landscape engineering that makes them possible are sure to inspire awe. Set against dramatic cityscapes, these are some of the most fascinating green spaces on the planet.

The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes


Jerry Dennis - 2011
    A conservationist with the soul of a poet whose beat is Wild Michigan, Dennis is a kindred spirit of Aldo Leopold and Sigurd Olson. The Windward Shore---his newest effort---is a beautifully written and elegiac memoir of outdoor discovery. Highly recommended!" ---Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America   "Come for a journey; stay for an awakening. Jerry Dennis loves the Great Lakes, the swell of every wave, the curve of every rock. He wants you to love them too before our collective trashing of them wipes out all traces of their original character. Through his eyes, you will treasure the hidden secrets that reveal themselves only to those who linger and long. Elegant and sad at the same time, The Windward Shore is a love song for the Great Lakes and a gentle call to action to save them." ---Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water"In prose as clear as the lines in a Dürer etching, Jerry Dennis maps his home ground, which ranges outward from the back door of his farmhouse to encompass the region of vast inland seas at the heart of our continent. Along the way, inspired by the company of water in all its guises---ice, snow, frost, clouds, rain, shore-lapping waves---he meditates on the ancient questions about mind and matter, time and attention, wildness and wonder. As in the best American nature writing---a tradition that Dennis knows well---here the place and the explorer come together in brilliant conversation." ---Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Conservationist Manifesto If you have been enchanted by Jerry Dennis’s earlier work on sailing the Great Lakes, canoeing, angling, and the natural wonders of water and sky—or you have not yet been lucky enough to enjoy his engaging prose—you will want to immerse yourself in his powerful and insightful new book on winter in Great Lakes country.Grounded by a knee injury, Dennis learns to live at a slower pace while staying in houses ranging from a log cabin on Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula to a $20 million mansion on the northern shore of Lake Michigan. While walking on beaches and exploring nearby woods and villages, he muses on the nature of time, weather, waves, agates, books, words for snow and ice, our complex relationship with nature, and much more.From the introduction: “I wanted to present a true picture of a complex region, part of my continuing project to learn at least one place on earth reasonably well, and trusted that it would appear gradually and accumulatively—and not as a conventional portrait, but as a mosaic that included the sounds and scents and textures of the place and some of the plants, animals, and its inhabitants. Bolstered by the notion that a book is a journey that author and reader walk together, I would search for promising trails and follow them as far as my reconstructed knee would allow.”

The Great Basin: A Natural Prehistory, Revised and Expanded Edition


Donald K. Grayson - 2011
    This fascinating illustrated journey through deep time is the definitive environmental and human history of this beautiful and little traveled region, home to Death Valley, the Great Salt Lake, Lake Tahoe, and the Bonneville Salt Flats. Donald K. Grayson synthesizes what we now know about the past 25,000 years in the Great Basin--its climate, lakes, glaciers, plants, animals, and peoples--based on information gleaned from the region's exquisite natural archives in such repositories as lake cores, packrat middens, tree rings, and archaeological sites. A perfect guide for students, scholars, travelers, and general readers alike, the book weaves together history, archaeology, botany, geology, biogeography, and other disciplines into one compelling panorama across a truly unique American landscape.

Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution


William Bunge - 2011
    Fitzgerald, at its core, is dedicated to understanding global phenomena through the intensive study of a small, local place.Beginning with an 1816 encounter between the Ojibwa population and the neighborhood’s first surveyor, William Bunge examines the racialized imposition of local landscapes over the course of European American settlement. Historical events are firmly situated in space—a task Bunge accomplishes through liberal use of maps and frequent references to recognizable twentieth-century landmarks.More than a work of historical geography, Fitzgerald is a political intervention. By 1967 the neighborhood was mostly African American; Black Power was ascendant; and Detroit would experience a major riot. Immersed in the daily life of the area, Bunge encouraged residents to tell their stories and to think about local politics in spatial terms. His desire to undertake a different sort of geography led him to create a work that was nothing like a typical work of social science. The jumble of text, maps, and images makes it a particularly urgent book—a major theoretical contribution to urban geography that is also a startling evocation of street-level Detroit during a turbulent era.A Sarah Mills Hodge Fund Publication

The Limits To Growth Revisited (Springer Briefs In Energy / Energy Analysis)


Ugo Bardi - 2011
    First hailed as a great advance in science, The Limits to Growth was subsequently rejected and demonized. However, with many national economies now at risk and global peak oil apparently a reality, the methods, scenarios, and predictions of The Limits to Growth are in great need of reappraisal. In "The" "Limits to Growth Revisited," Ugo Bardi examines both the science and the polemics surrounding this work, and in particular the reactions of economists that marginalized its methods and conclusions for more than 30 years. The Limits to Growth was a milestone in attempts to model the future of our society, and it is vital today for both scientists and policy makers to understand its scientific basis, current relevance, and the social and political mechanisms that led to its rejection. Bardi also addresses the all-important question of whether the methods and approaches of The Limits to Growth can contribute to an understanding of what happened to the global economy in the Great Recession and where we are headed from there."

Hummingbirds and Butterflies


Bill Thompson III - 2011
    This second collaboration between the Peterson Field Guide series and Bird Watcher’s Digest includes tips on how to attract hummingbirds and butterflies to backyards—and how to identify them once they’ve arrived. Bill Thompson III and Connie Toops have decades of firsthand experience and have written the book in a fun, lighthearted style, providing both amateur and veteran nature watchers with need-to-know information, including where hummingbirds and butterflies live, what they eat, and the best garden plants to attract them. The species profiles of the 15 most common hummingbirds and 40 most common butterflies serve as a field guide, showing ranges, identifying marks, and preferred habitats. Full-color photographs and detailed drawings make attracting, identifying, and feeding these colorful creatures a snap.

Empire of the Beetle: How Human Folly and a Tiny Bug Are Killing North America's Great Forests


Andrew Nikiforuk - 2011
    An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico.The pine beetle didn't act alone. Misguided science, out-of-control logging, bad public policy, and a hundred years of fire suppression released the world's oldest forest manager from all natural constraints. The beetles exploded wildly in North America and then crashed, leaving in their wake grieving landowners, humbled scientists, hungry animals, and altered watersheds. Although climate change triggered this complex event, human arrogance assuredly played a role. And despite the billions of public dollars spent on control efforts, the beetles burn away like a fire that can't be put out.Author Andrew Nikiforuk draws on first-hand accounts from entomologists, botanists, foresters, and rural residents to investigate this unprecedented pine beetle plague, its startling implications, and the lessons it holds. Written in an accessible way, Empire of the Beetle is the only book on the pine beetle epidemic that is devastating the North American West.Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Foundation.

The Call Goes Out from the Cetacean Nation


Dianne Robbins - 2011
    We are here in our full consciousness, waiting patiently for Earth's children to bloom into the caretakers you were meant to be. We are all connected as one."The Call Goes Out is a series of messages channeled from the cetacean species - whales and dolphins. This book graphically spells out why they are here on Earth, how they work with extraterrestrials, and how we humans are interfering with their mission. They make an impassioned plea for us to stop whaling and cease using fishing nets, and also to free whales and dolphins in captivity. Readers will have their eyes opened to the rich culture and family life of another intelligent species on this planet.The Call Goes Out is a simple, direct plea from the heart to stop killing those who are trying to help us.Greetings from my sea aquarium in Miami. I am Lolita – your friend and compatriot, communicating to you. I, and all Orcas, are here to help humanity become aware of themselves and aware of the consciousness of all life forms. We Cetaceans are here to bring forth all of Earth’s history to humans at this time. All the records we have kept stored within our massive brains are due to be released and transferred to humanity at this time. However – please note that at this crucial time when humanity should be connecting with us to receive these memories, the Navy escalated its war on our species by blasting us with sonic sound waves to confuse, disorient, and still our voices.We have been committing suicide by beaching ourselves in ever increasing numbers because we have been unable to tolerate the war that’s being waged against us.We are connected to the vast network of Christ Consciousness Beings in the galaxy. We are connected by radiating our love out to the Universe and connecting to the Grids of Light that plug Earth into our Galactic Communications Center. We send out information about Earth to the Galactic Command and receive back information that’s crucial to life on Earth. We are in direct communication with Mother Earth herself and she depends on us to relay information to her about the whereabouts and conditions of her human children on the land.All the minerals in the Earth are a part of Mother Earth’s body. The uranium is her brain. As humans mine these minerals in ever increasing amounts, Mother Earth’s body is being depleted and she is losing her ability to track and monitor population centers and she is losing her control over her body. She desperately needs our information and guidance at this time – precisely the time when the Navy chose to bombard us with their sonar sound devices to disable our communication system so that we would no longer be able to communicate with Mother Earth to send her the vital information she needs to stabilize and balance herself without harming areas where there are large centers of population.I look forward to your visiting me. I am Lolita and my love flows to you. (Received 2008 by Dianne Robbins)

The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past Our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy


Shi-Ling Hsu - 2011
    That's the central argument of The Case for a Carbon Tax, a clear-eyed, sophisticated analysis of climate change policy.   Shi-Ling Hsu examines the four major approaches to curbing CO2: cap-and-trade; command and control regulation; government subsidies of alternative energy; and carbon taxes. Weighing the economic, social, administrative, and political merits of each, he demonstrates why a tax is currently the most effective policy. Hsu does not claim that a tax is the perfect or only solution-but that unlike the alternatives, it can be implemented immediately and paired effectively with other approaches.   In fact, the only real barrier is psychological. While politicians can present subsidies and cap-and-trade as "win-win" solutions, the costs of a tax are immediately apparent. Hsu deftly explores the social and political factors that prevent us from embracing this commonsense approach. And he shows why we must get past our hang-ups if we are to avert a global crisis.

A Banksia Album: 200 Years of Botanical Art


Alexander S. George - 2011
    A Banksia Album features over 90 stunning full-colour reproductions of watercolours, pencil and sepia-wash drawings, colour prints and early hand-coloured engravings and lithographs of banksias from the National Library of Australia's collections. A Banksia Album covers over two centuries of botanical illustration, from 1770 when the Endeavour's artist, Sydney Parkinson, was the first European to make drawings of banksias at Botany Bay, to 2007 with two prints of Banksia rosserae by Celia Rosser.

Pineros: Latino Labour and the Changing Face of Forestry in the Pacific Northwest


Brinda Sarathy - 2011
    By contrast, pineros -- itinerant workers who form the backbone of the forest management labour force on federal land -- toil in obscurity.Drawing on government papers, media accounts, and interviews with federal employees and Latino forest workers in Oregon's Rogue Valley, Brinda Sarathy investigates how the federal government came to be one of the single largest employers of Latino labour in the Pacific Northwest. She documents pinero wages, working conditions, and benefits in comparison to those of white loggers and tree planters, exposing exploitation that, she argues, is the product of an ongoing history of institutionalized racism, fragmented policy, and intra-ethnic exploitation in the West. To overcome this legacy, Sarathy offers a number of proposals to improve the visibility and working conditions of pineros and to provide them with a stronger voice in immigration and forestry policy-making.This vividly drawn account fills many gaps in our understanding of forest management in the Pacific Northwest, making clear that true environmental justice must take into account not only stewardship of forests, but also the treatment of the people who work in them.

I Want to Go Green! But What Does That Mean?


Jill Dunn - 2011
    Via rhyming text, provides an introduction to the green lifestyle.

Inside Butterflies


Hazel Davies - 2011
    Readers can observe each stage of metamorphosis, watch butterflies feed in a tropical rainforest, follow monarchs on their long migration, and shadow scientists to see how they work with butterflies and moths.

Foraging: Discover Free Food from Fields, Streets, Gardens and the Coast


Paul Chambers - 2011
    This must buy guide uniquely blends the practical skills of foraging with the best elements of natural history writing. As well as recipes, identification tips and collecting advice, you will also learn about the historical, cultural and medicinal uses for each plant as well as its ecological significance. Much of this information is based on Paul's own research and experience and will not be found in any comparable books. With chapters that cover all parts of the British countryside, including urban environments and the seashore, FORAGING offers a comprehensive guide that will suit beginners and experienced foragers as well as those with a general interest in the natural and cultural history of edible plants. Highly illustrated and expertly written, this invaluable guide also includes a seasonal calendar and a handy A-Z of edible plants.

Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Perceptions


Philippa Brakes - 2011
    They are the most conspicuous ambassadors for entire marine ecosystems and possibly even for the biosphere as a whole. Concurrent with our realisation of impending threats to their environment is a growing scientific understanding of the social and cognitive complexity of many of these species.This book brings together experts in the relevant diverse fields of cetacean research, to provide authoritative descriptions of our current knowledge of the complex behaviour and social organization of whales and dolphins. The authors consider this new information in the context of how different human cultures from around the world view cetaceans and their protection, including attitudes to whaling. They show how new information on issues such as cetacean intelligence, culture and the ability to suffer, warrants a significant shift in global perceptions of this group of animals and how these changes might be facilitated to improve conservation and welfare approaches.

Rise of the Ranges of Light: Landscapes and Change in the Mountains of California


David Scott Gilligan - 2011
    Califorina is One of the Newest Places on Earth, freshly hewn, young and full of vitality, a place where one can literally watch the world in the making.

Amphibians


Melvin A. Berger - 2011
    It’s the truth-the Scholastic True or False series is a hit!

Making Trouble: Essays Against the New Australian Complacency


Robert Manne - 2011
    It covers much ground – from Howard to Gillard by way of Rudd, from Victoria's bushfires to the Apology, from Wilfred Burchett to Primo Levi.Making Trouble includes an essay on the new Australian complacency, as well an exchange of letters with Tony Abbott, an appreciation of W.E.H. Stanner, a reflection on ways of remembering the Holocaust and an incisive analysis of the asylum-seeker issue, among others.

The Other End of the Driveway: An Amateur Naturalist's Observations in the Maine Woods


Dana Wilde - 2011
    These essays, short and long, follow trails blazed by writers like Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard to bring the facts of nature into their own peculiar light.

Wild Heart: The possibility of wilderness in Aotearoa New Zealand


Mick Abbott - 2011
    The seventeen essays come from trampers, scientists, conservationists, policy-makers, photographers, historians, and writers. Together they examine many aspects of the idea of wilderness. What and where is New Zealand's wilderness? Is the wilderness something that we lock up or not? How do Maori see wilderness? How is it defined by law and what is government policy? Why? Where does that leave us? What do we want of wilderness? Can we exploit its resources?