Book picks similar to
Paleoclimate by Michael L. Bender


science
climate
climate-change
non-fiction

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power: Your Action Handbook to Learn the Science, Find Your Voice, and Help Solve the Climate Crisis


Al Gore - 2017
    It exposes the reality of how humankind has aided in the destruction of our planet and delivers hope through groundbreaking information on what you can do now.Vice President Gore, one of our environmental heroes and a leading expert in climate change, brings together cutting-edge research from top scientists around the world; approximately 200 photographs and illustrations to visually articulate the subject matter; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness (and with humor, too) that the fact of global climate change is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be assuredly disastrous if left unchecked. Follow Vice President Gore around the globe as he tells a story of change in the making. He connects the dots of Zika, flooding, and other natural disasters we’ve lived through in the last 10+ years—and much more. The book also offers a comprehensive how-to guide on exactly how we can change the course of fate. With concrete, actionable advice on topics ranging from how to run for office to how to talk to your children about climate change, An Inconvenient Sequel will empower you to make a difference—and lets you know how exactly to do it. Where Gore’s first documentary and book took us through the technical aspects of climate change, the second documentary is a gripping, narrative journey that leaves you filled with hope and the urge to take action immediately. This book captures that same essence and is a must-have for everyone who cares deeply about our planet.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things


William McDonough - 2002
    But as architect William McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart point out in this provocative, visionary book, such an approach only perpetuates the one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model, dating to the Industrial Revolution, that creates such fantastic amounts of waste and pollution in the first place. Why not challenge the belief that human industry must damage the natural world? In fact, why not take nature itself as our model for making things? A tree produces thousands of blossoms in order to create another tree, yet we consider its abundance not wasteful but safe, beautiful, and highly effective.Waste equals food. Guided by this principle, McDonough and Braungart explain how products can be designed from the outset so that, after their useful lives, they will provide nourishment for something new. They can be conceived as "biological nutrients" that will easily reenter the water or soil without depositing synthetic materials and toxins. Or they can be "technical nutrients" that will continually circulate as pure and valuable materials within closed-loop industrial cycles, rather than being "recycled" -- really, downcycled -- into low-grade materials and uses. Drawing on their experience in (re)designing everything from carpeting to corporate campuses, McDonough and Braungart make an exciting and viable case for putting eco-effectiveness into practice, and show how anyone involved with making anything can begin to do as well.

Odds Against Tomorrow


Nathaniel Rich - 2013
    The business operates out of an empty office in the Empire State Building; Mitchell is employee number two. He is asked to calculate worst-case scenarios in the most intricate detail, and his schemes are sold to corporations to indemnify them against any future disasters. This is the cutting edge of corporate irresponsibility, and business is booming.     As Mitchell immerses himself in the mathematics of catastrophe—ecological collapse, war games, natural disasters—he becomes obsessed by a culture’s fears. Yet he also loses touch with his last connection to reality: Elsa Bruner, a friend with her own apocalyptic secret, who has started a commune in Maine. Then, just as Mitchell’s predictions reach a nightmarish crescendo, an actual worst-case scenario overtakes Manhattan. Mitchell realizes he is uniquely prepared to profit. But at what cost?     At once an all-too-plausible literary thriller, an unexpected love story, and a philosophically searching inquiry into the nature of fear, Nathaniel Rich’s Odds Against Tomorrow poses the ultimate questions of imagination and civilization. The future is not quite what it used to be.

How to Save Our Planet: The Facts


Mark A. Maslin - 2021
    No beating around the bush. This brilliant book contains all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward' Christiana Figueres, Former Executive Secretary UN Climate Change Convention'A timely and important book, not only laying out the facts...but suggesting real solutions to the challenges facing us' Professor Alice Roberts, Anatomist, Professor of Public Engagement in Science, University of Birmingham_________________________ How can we save our planet and survive the 21st century? How can you argue with deniers? How can we create positive change in the midst of the climate crisis?Professor Mark Maslin has the key facts that we need to protect our future.Global awareness of climate change is growing rapidly. Science has proven that our planet and species are facing a massive environmental crisis. How to Save Our Planet is a call to action, guaranteed to equip everyone with the knowledge needed to make change.Be under no illusion the challenges of the twenty-first century are immense. We need to deal with: climate change, environmental destruction, global poverty and ensure everyone's security.We have the technology.We have the resources.We have the money.We have the scientists, the entrepreneurs and the innovators.We lack the politics and policies to make your vision of a better world happen.So we need a plan to save our planet...How to Save Our Planet is your handbook of how we together can save our precious planet. From the history of our planet and species, to the potential of individuals and our power to create a better future, Maslin inspires optimism in these bleak times.We stand at the precipice. The future of our planet is in our hands.It's time to face the facts and save our planet from, and for, ourselves._________________________'A handbook of clearly established, authoritative facts and figures about the terrible toll we as humans have taken of our planet, plus ways in which we can lessen the impact. For laypeople like me, who can see what is happening but haven't always got the precise statistics to hand, it's hugely valuable' John Simpson CBE, BBC World Affairs Editor, Broadcaster, Author & Columnist'Saving the world is no small thing, but picking up this book's a good start' Paris Lees, Contributing Editor at British Vogue, campaigner

Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth


Mathis Wackernagel - 1994
    An excellent handbook for community activists, planners, teachers, students and policy makers.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know


Joseph Romm - 2015
    The last decade's spate of superstorms, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts has accelerated the public discourse on this topic and lent credence to climatologist Lonnie Thomson's 2010 statement that climate change represents a clear and present danger to civilization. In June 2015, the Pope declared that action on climate change is a moral issue.This book offers the most up-to-date examination of climate change's foundational science, its implications for our future, and the core clean energy solutions. Alongside detailed but highly accessible descriptions of what is causing climate change, this entry in the What Everyone Needs to Know series answers questions about the practical implications of this growing force on our world:- How will climate change impact you and your family in the coming decades?- What are the future implications for owners of coastal property? - Should you plan on retiring in South Florida or the U.S. Southwest or Southern Europe? - What occupations and fields of study will be most in demand in a globally warmed world? - What impact will climate change have on investments and the global economy?As the world struggles to stem climate change and its effects, everyone will become a part of this story of the century. Here is what you need to know.

Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All


Michael Shellenberger - 2020
    He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the predecessor to today’s Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions.But in 2019, as some claimed “billions of people are going to die,” contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that, as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction.Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for over a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas.Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions.What’s really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence. This spiritual impulse can be natural and healthy. But in preaching fear without love, and guilt without redemption, the new religion is failing to satisfy our deepest psychological and existential needs.

The Bee: A Natural History


Noah Wilson-Rich - 2014
    Bees are crucial to the reproduction and diversity of flowering plants, and the economic contributions of these irreplaceable insects measure in the tens of billions of dollars each year. Yet bees are dying at an alarming rate, threatening food supplies and ecosystems around the world. In this richly illustrated natural history of the bee, Noah Wilson-Rich and his team of bee experts provide a window into the vitally important role that bees play in the life of our planet.Earth is home to more than 20,000 bee species, from fluorescent-colored orchid bees and sweat bees to flower-nesting squash bees and leaf-cutter bees. This book takes an incomparable look at this astounding diversity, blending an engaging narrative with practical, hands-on discussions of such topics as beekeeping and bee health. It explores our relationship with the bee over evolutionary time, delving into how it came to be, where it stands today, and what the future holds for humanity and bees alike.Provides an accessible, illustrated look at the human-bee relationship over timeFeatures a section on beekeeping and handy go-to guides to the identification, prevention, and treatment of honey bee diseasesCovers bee evolution, ecology, genetics, and physiologyIncludes a directory of notable bee speciesPresents a holistic approach to bee health, including organic and integrated pest management techniquesShows what you can do to help bee populations

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change


George Marshall - 2014
    What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall’s search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize–winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world’s leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired—our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, we can halt it if we make it our common purpose and common ground. In the end, Don’t Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.

Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming


Anthony D. Barnosky - 2009
    Half polar bear, half grizzly, this never-before-seen animal might be dismissed as a fluke of nature. Anthony Barnosky instead sees it as a harbinger of things to come.In Heatstroke, the renowned paleoecologist shows how global warming is fundamentally changing the natural world and its creatures. While melting ice may have helped produce the pizzly, climate change is more likely to wipe out species than to create them. Plants and animals that have followed the samerhythms for millennia are suddenly being confronted with a world they’re unprepared for—and adaptation usually isn’t an option.This is not the first time climate change has dramatically transformed Earth. Barnosky draws connections between the coming centuries and the end of the last ice age, when mass extinctions swept the planet. The differences now are that climate change is faster and hotter than past changes, and for the first time humanity is driving it. Which means this time we can work to stop it.No one knows exactly what nature will come to look like in this new age of global warming. But Heatstroke gives us a haunting portrait of what we stand to lose and the vitality of what can be saved.

Markets and the Environment


Nathaniel O. Keohane - 2007
    It offers a clear overview of the fundamentals of environmental economics that will enable students and professionals to quickly grasp important concepts and to apply those concepts to real-world environmental problems. In addition, the book integrates normative, policy, and institutional issues at a principles level. Chapters examine: the benefits and costs of environmental protection, markets and market failure, natural resources as capital assets, and sustainability and economic development. Markets and the Environment is the second volume in the Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Studies Series, edited by James Gustave Speth. The series presents concise guides to essential subjects in the environmental curriculum, incorporating a problem-based approach to teaching and learning.

The Right To Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting Her Culture, the Arctic and the Whole Planet


Sheila Watt-Cloutier - 2015
    And it's not just the Arctic. The whole world is changing in dangerous, unpredictable ways. Sheila Watt-Cloutier has devoted her life to protecting what is threatened and nurturing what has been wounded. In this culmination of Watt-Cloutier's regional, national, and international work over the last twenty-five years, The Right to Be Cold explores the parallels between safeguarding the Arctic and the survival of Inuit culture, of which her own background is such an extraordinary example. This is a human story of resilience, commitment, and survival told from the unique vantage point of an Inuk woman who, in spite of many obstacles, rose from humble beginnings in the Arctic to become one of the most influential and decorated environmental, cultural, and human rights advocates in the world.

Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence


Christian Parenti - 2011
    Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency.Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism"--a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America


Thomas L. Friedman - 2008
    Friedman speaks to America's urgent need for national renewal and explains how a green revolution can bring about both a sustainable environment and a sustainable America. Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a dangerously unstable planet--one that is "hot, flat, and crowded."  In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession.  The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy.  And it could inspire Americans to something we haven't seen in a long time--nation-building in America--by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources. Hot, Flat, and Crowded is classic Thomas L. Friedman: fearless, incisive, forward-looking, and rich in surprising common sense about the challenge--and the promise--of the future.

Clearing the Air: The Beginning and the End of Air Pollution


Tim Smedley - 2019
    Sustainability journalist Tim Smedley explains exactly what air pollution is, which chemicals are the dangerous ones and where they come from. He interviews the scientists and politicians at the forefront of air pollution research as well as those whose lives have been affected by smog. This groundbreaking book reveals the extreme instances of air pollution that have happened around the world, including London, Beijing, Delhi and LA, as well as examining recent stories like the VW diesel scandal.Globally, 18,000 people die each day from air pollution. For the most part, air pollution is anonymous; an invisible killer borne from the cars in our driveways and the industrial processes used to make stuff, but there is so much we don't know. Parents on the school run in their 4x4s have never been told that the pollution inside the car is 5 times worse than that on the street outside, or that studies show how air pollution stunts lung growth in children.Around the world, more than eight-out-of-ten people who live in cities breathe in concentrations of air pollutants that exceed international air quality guidelines. The annual number of deaths--6.5 million--is far greater than those from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and car crashes combined, and it is getting worse. These problems can be solved, and the message of the book is positive. The overwhelming majority of air pollutants are local, short-lived, and can be stopped at source; the benefits to health, instant and dramatic. There are many stories that show how the fightback against air pollution can and does work, and we can all play a part to clear our air.