The question is no longer Is climate change actually happening? but What do we do about it? George Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping back—away from catastrophe. Though writing with a "spirit of optimism," Monbiot does not pretend it will be easy. The only way to avoid further devastation, he argues, is a 90% cut in CO2 emissions in the rich nations of the world by 2030. In other words, our response will have to be immediate, and it will have to be decisive. In every case he supports his proposals with a rigorous investigation into what works, what doesn’t, how much it costs, and what the problems might be. He wages war on bad ideas as energetically as he promotes good ones. And he is not afraid to attack anyone—friend or foe—whose claims are false or whose figures have been fudged.After all, there is no time to waste. As Monbiot has said himself, "we are the last generation that can make this happen, and this is the last possible moment at which we can make it happen." George Monbiot is the best-selling author of The Age of Consent and Captive State, as well as the investigative travel books Poisoned Arrows, Amazon Watershed, and No Man’s Land. In 1995, Nelson Mandela presented him with a United Nations Global 500 Award for outstanding environmental achievement. He has held visiting fellowships or professorships at the universities of Oxford (environmental policy), Bristol (philosophy), Keele (politics), and East London (environmental science). Currently visiting professor of planning at Oxford Brookes University, he writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper.

    Advancements in technology and frenzied development have created the world’s largest energy project in Fort McMurray where, rather than shooting up like a fountain in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, the sticky bitumen is extracted from the earth. Providing almost 20 percent of America’s fuel, much of this dirty oil is being processed in refineries in the Midwest. This out-of-control megaproject is polluting the air, poisoning the water, and destroying boreal forest at a rate almost too rapid to be imagined. In this hard-hitting book, journalist Andrew Nikiforuk exposes the disastrous environmental, social, and political costs of the tar sands and argues forcefully for change.

    that the science is settled. Author Lawrence Solomon an internationally renowned environmentalist shows these men have faced a vicious campaign of intimidation by those who, like Al Gore, seek to pervert science and silence dissent to advance their own political agenda. Some have been intimidated into silence. Others have seen their funding denied and their labs shut down as a result of political pressure. But the testimony of their work remains too powerful to deny. Extensively footnoted including URLs to crucial scientific papers (and lively e-mails detailing the inside politics of global warming) and lavishly illustrated with charts and graphs, The Deniers will do more than spark controversy. The Deniers is destined to become the most reliable and provocative sourcebook on the real global warming debate.

    It’s a staple of small talk, the app on our smartphones, and often the first thing we check each morning. Yet behind these quotidian interactions is one of the most expansive machines human beings have ever constructed—a triumph of science, technology and global cooperation. But what is this ‘weather machine’ and who created it? In The Weather Machine, Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey through an everyday miracle. In a quest to understand how the forecast works, he visits old weather stations and watches new satellites blast off. He follows the dogged efforts of scientists to create a supercomputer model of the atmosphere and traces the surprising history of the algorithms that power their work. He discovers that we have quietly entered a golden age of meteorology—our tools allow us to predict weather more accurately than ever, and yet we haven’t learned to trust them, nor can we guarantee the fragile international alliances that allow our modern weather machine to exist.Written with the sharp wit and infectious curiosity Andrew Blum is known for, The Weather Machine pulls back the curtain on a universal part of our everyday lives, illuminating our relationships with technology, the planet, and the global community.

    

    and longs to effect easy green changes when it comes to the food they buy, cook, and eat, The Conscious Kitchen is an invaluable resource filled with real world, practical solutions.  Alexandra Zissu walks readers through every kitchen-related decision with three criteria in mind: what’s good for personal health, what’s good for the planet, and what tastes great. Learn, among other things, how to: - Keep pesticides, chemicals, and other harmful ingredients out of your diet- Choose when to spend your dollars on organic fruit and when to buy conventionally grown- Avoid plastic—including which kinds in particular and why- Figure out what seafood is safe to eat and is sustainable- Use COOL (country of origin labels) to your advantage- Determine if a vegetable is genetically modified just from reading its PLU (price look up) code- Decipher meat labels in the supermarket- Cook using the least energy—good for the earth and your wallet- Eat locally, even in winter - Understand what “natural” and other marketing terms really mean- Buy packaged foods wisely Navigate farmers’ markets, giant supermarkets, and every shop in between to find the freshest and healthiest local ecologically grown and produced meat, dairy, fruits, and vegetables—no matter where you live With The Conscious Kitchen as your guide, you will never again stand in the market bewildered, wondering what to buy. You can feel confident you are making the best possible choices for you, your family, and our planet.  ALEXANDRA ZISSU writes about green living, food, and parenthood. She is the author of The Conscious Kitchen, coauthor of The Complete Organic Pregnancy, and contributes the “Ask an Organic Mom” column to The DailyGreen.com. Her stories have appeared in The New York Times, The Green Guide, Cookie, Details, Bon Appétit, Self, and Health, among other publications. She is also a public speaker and “greenproofer,” an eco-lifestyle consultant. Visit her website, www.alexandrazissu.com.

    The ability to duplicate that process in a lab, once thought impossible, may now be closer than we think. Today, teams of scientists around the world are being assembled by the boldest entrepreneurs, big business, and governments to solve what is the most difficult technological challenge humanity has ever faced: building the equivalent of a star on earth. If their plans to capture star power are successful, they will unlock thousands, potentially millions, of years of clean, carbon-free energy. Not only would controlled nuclear fusion help solve the climate crisis, it could also make other highly desired technological ambitions possible—like journeying to the stars. Given the rising alarm over deterioration of the environment, and the strides being made in laser and magnetic field technology, powerful momentum is gathering behind fusion and the possibilities it offers. In The Star Builders, award-winning young plasma physicist Arthur Turrell “offers an optimistic outlook for the future of fusion power and is adamant about the need to invest in it” (The New York Times). Turrell describes fascinating star machines with ten times as many parts as the NASA Space Shuttle, and structures that extend over 400 acres in an accessible and entertaining account, spotlighting the individuals, firms, and institutions racing for the finish line: science-minded entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Peter Thiel, companies like Goldman Sachs and Google, universities like Oxford and MIT, and virtually every rich nation. It’s an exciting and game-changing international quest that will make all of us winners.

    This region is home to the largest tract of temperate rainforest on earth, First Nations who have lived there for millennia, and some of the world’s most biodiverse waters—one spill is all it will take to erase ten thousand years of evolution.Arno Kopecky and his companions travel aboard a forty-one-foot sailboat exploring the pristine route—a profoundly volatile marine environment that registered 1,275 marine vessel incidents—mechanical failures, collisions, explosions, groundings, and sinkings—between 1999 and 2009 alone. Neither Kopecky nor the boat’s owner have ever sailed before, yet they brave these waters alone when their captain leaves them part way through the journey.Written with Kopecky’s quick humor and deft touch, this is a rich evocation of a mythic place and the ecology, culture, and history of a legendary region with a knife at its throat.

    We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions regarding energy, offers refreshingly straight talk about what’s wrong with the way we think and talk about the problem. Though we generally believe we can solve environmental problems with more energy—more solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels—alternative technologies come with their own side effects and limitations. How, for instance, do solar cells cause harm? Why can’t engineers solve wind power’s biggest obstacle? Why won’t contraception solve the problem of overpopulation lying at the heart of our concerns about energy, and what will? This practical, environmentally informed, and lucid book persuasively argues for a change of perspective. If consumption is the problem, as Ozzie Zehner suggests, then we need to shift our focus from suspect alternative energies to improving social and political fundamentals: walkable communities, improved consumption, enlightened governance, and, most notably, women’s rights. The dozens of first steps he offers are surprisingly straightforward. For instance, he introduces a simple sticker that promises a greater impact than all of the nation’s solar cells. He uncovers why carbon taxes won’t solve our energy challenges (and presents two taxes that could). Finally, he explores how future environmentalists will focus on similarly fresh alternatives that are affordable, clean, and can actually improve our well-being. Watch a book trailer.

    The consequences of this gathering may be enormous. In this new ebook, experts Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger assess the issues sure to drive the debate before, during, and after the Paris meeting.

    Infused with next-generation candor and optimism, Power Trip examines the ways in which oil and coal have shaped America as an international superpower—even as they posed political and environmental dangers to the nation and the world. Hard-hitting yet optimistic, Power Trip is a manifesto for the younger generations who are inheriting the earth.

    As the world teeters on the edge of catastrophic climate change, Alberta plunges ahead with uncontrolled development of its fossil fuels, levelling its northern Boreal forest to get at the oil sands, and carpet-bombing its southern half with tens of thousands of gas wells. In so doing, it is running out of water, destroying its range land, wiping out its forests and wildlife and spewing huge amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, adding to global warming at a rate that is unrivalled in Canada or almost anywhere else in the world. It’s digging, drilling and blasting its way to oblivion, becoming the ultimate symbol of Canada’s – and the world’s – pathological will to self-destruct.Nowhere has the world seen such colossal environmental destruction as is being wreaked on Alberta. At one point the province even went so far as to consider a scientist’s idea of nuking its underbelly to get at the tar sands. Stupid to the Last Drop looks at the increasingly violent geopolitical forces that are gathering as the world’s gas and oil dwindle and the Age of Oil begins its inevitable slide towards oblivion. As Canadians deplete their energy reserves, selling them off to Americans at bargain-basement prices, no thought is given to conservation or the long-term needs of the nation.In this powerful polemic, William Marsden journeys across the heart of a province seized by the destructive forces of greed, power and the energy business, and envisions a very bleak future.

    However, several revolutionary discoveries in the twentieth century revealed that there is a fundamental uncertainty at the heart of reality. Take a tour of chaos theory, the uncertainty principle, and read the saga of the South Pole and the Multiverse. Discover how uncertainty is the only certainty.

    With concerns about catastrophic global warming mounting, it is vital that we examine all our energy options. "Power to Save the World "describes the efforts of one determined woman, Gwyneth Cravens, initially a skeptic about nuclear power, as she spends nearly a decade immersing herself in the subject. She teams up with a leading expert in risk assessment and nuclear safety who is also a committed environmentalist to trace the path of uranium--the source of nuclear fuel--from start to finish. As we accompany them on visits to mines as well as to experimental reactor laboratories, fortress-like power plants, and remote waste sites normally off-limits to the public, we come to see that we already have a feasible way to address the causes of global warming on a large scale. On the nuclear tour, Cravens converses with scientists from many disciplines, public health and counterterrorism experts, engineers, and researchers who study both the harmful and benign effects of radiation; she watches remote-controlled robotic manipulators unbolt a canister of spent uranium fuel inside a "hot cell" bathed in eerie orange light; observes the dark haze from fossil-fuel combustion obscuring once-pristine New Mexico skies and the leaky, rusted pipes and sooty puddles in a coal-fired plant; glimpses rainbows made by salt dust in the deep subterranean corridors of a working nuclear waste repository. She refutes the major arguments against nuclear power one by one, making clear, for example, that a stroll through Grand Central Terminal exposes a person to more radiation than a walk of equal length through a uranium mine; that average background radiation around Chernobyl and in Hiroshima is lower than in Denver; that there are no "cancer clusters" near nuclear facilities; that terrorists could neither penetrate the security at an American nuclear plant nor make an atomic bomb from its fuel; that nuclear waste can be--and already is--safely stored; that wind and solar power, while important, can meet only a fraction of the demand for electricity; that a coal-fired plant releases more radiation than a nuclear plant and also emits deadly toxic waste that kills thousands of Americans a month; that in its fifty-year history American nuclear power has not caused a single death. And she demonstrates how, time and again, political fearmongering and misperceptions about risk have trumped science in the dialogue about the feasibility of nuclear energy. In the end, we see how nuclear power has been successfully and economically harnessed here and around the globe to become the single largest displacer of greenhouse gases, and how its overall risks and benefits compare with those of other energy sources."""Power to Save the World "is an eloquent, convincing argument for nuclear power as a safe energy source and an essential deterrent to global warming.

    As was the case with Gore's first movie (An Inconvenient Truth), the movie is bursting with bad science, bad policy and some outright falsehoods. The storm events Gore addresses occur naturally, and there is little or no evidence they are being made worse from human activities: sea level is rising at the same rate it was before humans started burning fossil fuels; in Miami Beach the natural rise is magnified because buildings and streets were constructed on reclaimed swampland that has been sinking; the 9/11 memorial was not flooded by sea level rise from melting ice sheets, but a storm surge at high tide, which would have happened anyway and was not predicted by Gore in his first movie, as he claims; the Greenland ice sheet undergoes melt every summer, which was large in 2012 but then unusually weak in 2017; glaciers advance and retreat naturally, as evidenced by 1,000 to 2,000 year old tree stumps being uncovered in Alaska; rain gauge measurements reveal the conflict in Syria was not caused by reduced rainfall hurting farming there, and in fact the Middle East is greening from increasing CO2 in the atmosphere; agricultural yields in China have been rising, not falling as claimed by Gore. The renewable energy sources touted by Gore (wind and solar), while a laudable goal for our future, are currently very expensive: their federal subsidies per kilowatt-hour of energy produced are huge compared to coal, natural gas, and nuclear power. These costs are hidden from the public in increased federal and state tax rates. Gore is correct that "it is right to save humanity", but what we might need saving from the most are bad decisions that reduce prosperity and hurt the poor.