Cynthia Barnett does it by telling us the stories of the amazing personalities behind our water wars, the stunning contradictions that allow the wettest state to have the most watered lawns, and the thorough research that makes her conclusions inescapable. Barnett has established herself as one of Florida’s best journalists and Mirage is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the state.”—Mary Ellen Klas, Capital Bureau Chief, Miami Herald “Mirage is the finest general study to date of the freshwater-supply crisis in Florida. Well-meaning villains abound in Cynthia Barnett’s story, but so too do heroes, such as Arthur R. Marshall Jr., Nathaniel Reed, and Marjorie Harris Carr. The author’s research is as thorough as her prose is graceful. Drinking water is the new oil. Get used to it.”—Michael Gannon, Distinguished Professor of history, University of Florida, and author of Florida: A Short History “With lively prose and a journalist’s eye for a good story, Cynthia Barnett offers a sobering account of water scarcity problems facing Florida—one of our wettest states—and the rest of the East Coast. Drawing on lessons learned from the American West, Mirage uses the lens of cultural attitudes about water use and misuse to plead for reform. Sure to engage and fascinate as it informs.”—Robert Glennon, Morris K. Udall Professor of Law and Public Policy, University of Arizona, and author of Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America’s Fresh Waters Part investigative journalism, part environmental history, Mirage reveals how the eastern half of the nation—historically so wet that early settlers predicted it would never even need irrigation—has squandered so much of its abundant freshwater that it now faces shortages and conflicts once unique to the arid West. Florida’s parched swamps and supersized residential developments set the stage in the first book to call attention to the steady disappearance of freshwater in the American East, from water-diversion threats in the Great Lakes to tapped-out freshwater aquifers along the Atlantic seaboard. Told through a colorful cast of characters including Walt Disney, Jeb Bush and Texas oilman Boone Pickens, Mirage ferries the reader through the key water-supply issues facing America and the globe: water wars, the politics of development, inequities in the price of water, the bottled-water industry, privatization, and new-water-supply schemes. From its calamitous opening scene of a sinkhole swallowing a house in Florida to its concluding meditation on the relationship between water and the American character, Mirage is a compelling and timely portrait of the use and abuse of freshwater in an era of rapidly vanishing natural resources.

    One hundred techniques and practices are described here—some are well known; some you may have never heard of. They range from clean energy to educating girls in lower-income countries to land use practices that pull carbon out of the air. The solutions exist, are economically viable, and communities throughout the world are currently enacting them with skill and determination. If deployed collectively on a global scale over the next thirty years, they represent a credible path forward, not just to slow the earth’s warming but to reach drawdown, that point in time when greenhouse gases in the atmosphere peak and begin to decline. These measures promise cascading benefits to human health, security, prosperity, and well-being—giving us every reason to see this planetary crisis as an opportunity to create a just and livable world.

    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.

    Climate Change: The Facts features the world’s leading experts and commentators on climate change. Highlights of Climate Change: The Facts include: Ian Plimer draws on the geological record to dismiss the possibility that human emissions of carbon dioxide will lead to catastrophic consequences for the planet. Patrick Michaels demonstrates the growing chasm between the predictions of the IPCC and the real world temperature results. Richard Lindzen shows the climate is less sensitive to increases in greenhouse gases than previously thought and argues that a warmer world would have a similar weather variability to today. Willie Soon discusses the often unremarked role of the sun in climate variability. Robert Carter explains why the natural variability of the climate is far greater than any human component. John Abbot and Jennifer Marohasy demonstrate how little success climate models have in predicting important information such as rainfall. Nigel Lawson warns of the dire economic consequences of abandoning the use of fossil fuels. Alan Moran compares the considerable costs of taking action compared to the relatively minor potential benefits of doing so. James Delingpole looks at the academic qualifications of the leading proponents of catastrophic climate change and finds many lack the credentials of so-called ‘sceptics’. Garth Paltridge says science itself will be damaged by the failure of climate forecasts to eventuate. Jo Nova chronicles the extraordinary sums of public money awarded to climate change activists, in contrast to those who question their alarmist warnings. Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong compare climate change alarmism to previous scares raised over the past 200 years. Rupert Darwall explains why an international, legally binding climate agreement has extremely minimal chances of success. Ross McKitrick reviews the ‘hockey stick’ controversy and what it reveals about the state of climate science. Donna Laframboise explains how activists have taken charge of the IPCC. Mark Steyn recounts the embarrassing ‘Ship of Fools’ expedition to Antarctica. Christopher Essex argues the climate system is far more complex than it has been presented and there is much that we still don’t know. Bernie Lewin examines how climate change science came to be politicised. Stewart Franks lists all the unexpected developments in climate science that were not foreseen. Anthony Watts highlights the failure of the world to warm over the past 18 years, contrary to the predictions of the IPCC. Andrew Bolt reviews the litany of failed forecasts by climate change activists.

    But there was a lot of merit in creating a privately funded, clean energy source for energy-starved New England, and he felt sure most people would recognize it eventually. Instead, all Hell broke loose. Gordon had unwittingly challenged the privileges of some of America's richest and most politically connected people, and they would fight him tooth and nail, no matter what it cost, and even when it made no sense.Cape Wind is a rollicking tale of democracy in action and plutocracy in the raw as played out among colorful and glamorous characters on one of our country's most historic and renowned pieces of coastline. As steeped in American history and local color as The Prince of Providence; as biting, revealing and fun as Philistines at the Hedgerow, it is also a cautionary tale about how money can hijack democracy while America lags behind the rest of the developed world in adopting clean energy.

    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.

    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.

    The book traces her development from child activist who warned other children not to eat snow because it contained Strontium 90 to waitress and cook on Cape Breton Island to law student, lawyer, and environmentalist and finally to leader of the Green Party and first elected Green Party Member of Parliament. As a result of these disparate experiences, May has come to believe that Canada must strengthen its weakened democracy, return to its role as a world leader, develop a green economy, and take drastic action to address climate change. The book also sets out how these goals might be accomplished, incorporating the thoughts of such leaders and thinkers as Rachel Carson, Jim MacNeill, Joe Clark, Chris Turner, Andrew Nikiforuk, and Robert F. Kennedy. The result is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable woman and an urgent call to action.

    James Hansen—the nation’s leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: The planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return.Although the threat of human-caused climate change is now widely recognized, politicians have failed to connect policy with the science, responding instead with ineffectual remedies dictated by special interests. Hansen shows why President Obama’s solution, cap-and-trade, which Al Gore has signed on to, won’t work; why we must phase out all coal; and why 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a goal we must achieve if our children and grandchildren are to avoid global meltdown and the horrific storms of the book’s title. This urgent manifesto bucks conventional wisdom (including the Kyoto Protocol) and is sure to stir controversy, but Hansen—whose climate predictions have come to pass again and again, beginning in the 1980s when he first warned Congress about global warming—is the single most credible voice on the subject worldwide.Hansen paints a devastating, all-too-realistic picture of what will happen in the near future, mere years and decades from now, if we follow the course we’re on. But he is also an optimist, showing that there is still time to do what we need to save the planet. Urgent, strong action is needed, and this book will be key in setting the agenda going forward to create a groundswell, a tipping point, to save humanity—and our grandchildren—from a dire fate more imminent than we had supposed.

    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.

    (We can!)

    Now one of the most dynamic writers and one of the most respected scientists in the field of climate change offer the first concise guide to both the problems and the solutions. Guiding us past a blizzard of information and misinformation, Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King explain the science of warming, the most cutting-edge technological solutions from small to large, and the national and international politics that will affect our efforts. While there have been many other books about the problem of global warming, none has addressed what we can and should do about it so clearly and persuasively, with no spin, no agenda, and no exaggeration. Neither Walker nor King is an activist or politician, and theirs is not a generic green call to arms. Instead they propose specific ideas to fix a very specific problem. Most important, they offer hope: This is a serious issue, perhaps the most serious that humanity has ever faced. But we can still do something about it. And they’ll show us how.

    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.

    Whatever you or I do personally--eat tofu in a Hummer or hamburgers in a Prius--the planet doesn't notice. In our confrontation with climate change, species preservation, and a planet going off the cliff, it is what several billion people do that makes a difference. The solution? It isn't science, politics, or activism. It's smarter economics.The hope of mankind, and indeed of every living thing on the planet, is now in the hands of the dismal science. Fortunately, we've been there before. Economists helped crack the acid rain problem in the 1990's (admittedly with a strong assist from a phalanx of lawyers and activists). Economists have helped get lead out of our gas, and they can explain why lobsters haven't disappeared off the coast of New England but tuna is on the verge of extinction. More disquietingly, they can take the lessons of the financial crisis and model with greater accuracy than anyone else the likelihood of environmental catastrophe, and they can help save us from global warming, if only we let them.

    Energy experts are all saying the same thing: solar photovoltaics (PV) is our future. Reports from universities, investment banks, international institutions and large investors agree. It's not about whether the switch from fossil fuels to solar power will happen, but when.Solar panels are being made that will last longer than ever hoped; investors are seeing the benefits of the long-term rewards provided by investing in solar; in the Middle East, a contractor can now offer solar-powered electricity far cheaper than that of a coal-fired power station. The Switch tracks the transition away from coal, oil and gas to a world in which the limitless energy of the sun provides much of the energy the 10 billion people of this planet will need. It examines both the solar future and how we will get there, and the ways in which we will provide stored power when the sun isn't shining. We learn about artificial photosynthesis from a start-up in the US that is making petrol from just CO2 and sunlight; ideas on energy storage are drawn from a company in Germany that makes batteries for homes; in the UK, a small company in Swindon has the story of wind turbines; and in Switzerland, a developer shows how we can use hydrogen to make 'renewable' natural gas for heating.Told through the stories of entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists from around the world, and using the latest research and studies, The Switch provides a positive solution to the climate change crisis, and looks to a brighter future ahead.