At present, Lake Powell is less than half full. Bathtub rings ten stories tall encircle its blue water; boat ramps and marinas lie stranded and useless. To refill it would require surplus water—but there is no surplus: burgeoning populations and thirsty crops consume every drop of the Colorado River. Add to this picture the looming effects of global warming and drought, and the scenario becomes bleaker still. Dead Pool, featuring rarely seen historical photographs, explains why America built the dam that made Lake Powell and others like it and then allowed its citizens to become dependent on their benefits, which were always temporary. Writing for a wide audience, Powell shows us exactly why an urgent threat during the first half of the twenty-first century will come not from the rising of the seas but from the falling of the reservoirs.

    With conventional solutions failing, a new culture of decision-making is called for. Strategic design is about applying the principles of traditional design to "big picture" systemic challenges such as healthcare, education and the environment. It redefines how problems are approached and aims to deliver more resilient solutions. In this short book, Dan Hill outlines a new vocabulary of design, one that needs to be smuggled into the upper echelons of power. He asserts that, increasingly, effective design means engaging with the messy politics - the "dark matter"- taking place above the designer's head. And that may mean redesigning the organization that hires you.

    Now, in the ruins of a deserted city, a young man mining metal risks his life to win a priceless clue. That discovery will send him and an unlikely band of seekers on a quest for a place out of legend where human beings might once have communicated with distant worlds - a place called Star's Reach.

    But how many of us can afford such a spread without a crippling mortgage? If you can't make the hefty payments on your survival retreat, the bankers will evict you, leaving you worse off than those who failed to prepare in the first place. M.D. Creekmore's motivation for finding a low-cost retreat was the need to live on a lot less money after he lost his job and got divorced. He started living in a travel trailer, parked on two acres he'd bought a few years back to use as a campsite and bug-out location, never dreaming he'd be living there full time. But he has called his trailer home for the past four years and says that "for the first time in my life, I'm actually content." Living off the grid in a travel trailer isn't for everyone. But if you are looking for a way to own a debt-free home--and enjoy the security that comes with it--here's the author's dirt-cheap plan for finding suitable land; buying a used trailer; securing it against the elements and intruders; providing alternative power sources; dealing with water and waste issues; maximizing your space; and establishing a workable storage system for food, water, medicine, tools, and other equipment. The good news is that the author has done the hard part for you.

    Yet for all the excitement, there is work to do to ensure it actually realizes its potential. Will impact investment empower millions of people worldwide, or will it just replicate the same failures that have plagued the aid and antipoverty industry? Enter Morgan Simon. When she was a twenty-year-old college student at Swarthmore, Simon compelled Lockheed Martin to change their LGBTQ policies by convincing her college to stop investing in the firm. And that was just the beginning. With passion and counterintuitive arguments, Simon shows how impact investing can make real change. But she also illustrates how easy it is to make mistakes, showing how wind farms can lead to land grabs, and how short-term thinking by well-meaning investors can actually lead to more oppression and hardship in the communities they are trying to help. Impact investing, Simon argues, is making the same mistakes the aid industry has been making for years. But there are ways to invest and have real impact: by making sure the communities are involved in the decision-making and ownership of the project, that investors are adding more value than they extract, and that the risk and returns are balanced between the investors and the communities. As an activist, and as a trusted leader in the field, Simon argues that we can work within the system and use capital to effect change. Centered around real, on-the-ground case studies from her decades of investment analysis and offering clear strategies that are proven to work, this book is a clarion call for more effective, socially conscious investing.

    Although Australia’s prompt, science-led response to COVID-19 has not been perfect, it has saved tens of thousands of lives. But for decades, governments have ignored, ridiculed or understated the advice of scientists on the climate emergency.Now, in the wake of the megafires of 2020, a time of reckoning has arrived. In The Climate Cure renowned climate scientist Tim Flannery takes aim at those responsible for the campaign of obfuscation and denial that has already cost so many Australian lives and held back action on climate change.Flannery demands a new approach, based on the nation’s response to COVID-19, that will lead to effective government policies. The Climate Cure is an action plan for our future. We face a fork in the road, and must decide now between catastrophe and survival.

    Everything you ever wanted to know about the counter-culture. 442 pages, illustrations. 16th edition, corrected to June, 1975.

    The aim of the Transition movement is to galvanize people into taking action, whether on a large or a small scale, with the goal of creating communities that model a local economy rooted in place, in well-being, in entrepreneurship, and in creativity. While the book is primarily focused on food production and sustainable energy, the practical applications it offers also address how to rebuild a local community in the face of austerity due to a natural disaster or economic collapse. Eschewing political arguments of any kind, this discussion will appeal to readers of all persuasions who are eager to play a role in creating a more stable and healthier world one community at a time.

    Many of us understandably feel resigned to an eroding standard of living in the years to come. At best.But what if we told you that there are specific, attainable steps you can take today that can limit your vulnerability to these trends and help you be:- Richer- Live with greater purpose- Healthier- More valued by others- Happier- Safer from harmThat’s exactly what Prosper! offers: a blueprint for taking control of and improving your destiny. It outlines practical, actionable investments of your time & resources that will ensure you enjoy greater prosperity in your life, whatever the future may bring.In Prosper!, Martenson and Taggart will explain:- The trends mostly likely to shape your life over the next 20 years- Why developing resilience offers your best chance for thriving, even though society may suffer from the changes these trends may bring- How to build true wealth- What specific actions to take now to secure a prosperous future, no matter what the future holds- How everybody can benefit from this guidance, regardless of age, income or ability How we can best serve the next generation by the actions we take todayProsper! is the highly anticipated follow-up to Martenson’s acclaimed book The Crash Course (Wiley, 2011)

    These institutions make the difference between societies that thrive and those paralyzed by discord, the difference between prosperous and poor economies. Such societies are pluralist but their pluralism is disciplined.Successful societies are also rare and fragile. We could not have built modernity without the exceptional competitive and co-operative instincts of humans, but in recent decades the balance between these instincts has become dangerously skewed: mutuality has been undermined by an extreme individualism which has weakened co-operation and polarized our politics.Collier and Kay show how a reaffirmation of the values of mutuality could refresh and restore politics, business and the environments in which people live. Politics could reverse the moves to extremism and tribalism; businesses could replace the greed that has degraded corporate culture; the communities and decaying places that are home to many could overcome despondency and again be prosperous and purposeful. As the world emerges from an unprecedented crisis we have the chance to examine society afresh and build a politics beyond individualism.

    With compelling evidenced based on research in the rise and fall of Mayan, Khmer, and Roman empires, Costa shows how the tendency to find a quick solution leads to frightening long-term consequence: Society's ability to solve its most challenging, intractable problems becomes gridlocked, progress slows, and collapse ensues.A provocative new voice in the tradition of thought leaders Thomas Friedman, Jared Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell, Costa reveals how we can reverse the downward spiral. Part history, part social science, part biology, The Watchman's Rattle is sure to provoke, engage, and incite change.

    Written by Arizona t.v. gardening guru, the "Garden Guy," David Owens covers topics including watering, design, tools, schedules, fertilizing, companion planting, and soils.

    This timely anthology calls on twenty eminent humanists and scientists to revitalize curiosity, observation, and transdisciplinary conversation about life on earth.As human-induced environmental change threatens multispecies livability, Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet puts forward a bold proposal: entangled histories, situated narratives, and thick descriptions offer urgent “arts of living.” Included are essays by scholars in anthropology, ecology, science studies, art, literature, and bioinformatics who posit critical and creative tools for collaborative survival in a more-than-human Anthropocene. The essays are organized around two key figures that also serve as the publication’s two openings: Ghosts, or landscapes haunted by the violences of modernity; and Monsters, or interspecies and intraspecies sociality. Ghosts and Monsters are tentacular, windy, and arboreal arts that invite readers to encounter ants, lichen, rocks, electrons, flying foxes, salmon, chestnut trees, mud volcanoes, border zones, graves, radioactive waste—in short, the wonders and terrors of an unintended epoch.Contributors: Karen Barad, U of California, Santa Cruz; Kate Brown, U of Maryland, Baltimore; Carla Freccero, U of California, Santa Cruz; Peter Funch, Aarhus U; Scott F. Gilbert, Swarthmore College; Deborah M. Gordon, Stanford U; Donna J. Haraway, U of California, Santa Cruz; Andreas Hejnol, U of Bergen, Norway; Ursula K. Le Guin; Marianne Elisabeth Lien, U of Oslo; Andrew Mathews, U of California, Santa Cruz; Margaret McFall-Ngai, U of Hawaii, Manoa; Ingrid M. Parker, U of California, Santa Cruz; Mary Louise Pratt, NYU; Anne Pringle, U of Wisconsin, Madison; Deborah Bird Rose, U of New South Wales, Sydney; Dorion Sagan; Lesley Stern, U of California, San Diego; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus U.

     The world's population is exploding, wild species are vanishing, our environment is degrading, and the costs of resources from oil to water are going nowhere but up. So what kind of world are we leaving for our children and grandchildren? Geoscientist and Guggenheim fellow Laurence Smith draws on the latest global modeling research to construct a sweeping thought experiment on what our world will be like in 2050. The result is both good news and bad: Eight nations of the Arctic Rim (including the United States) will become increasingly prosperous, powerful, and politically stable, while those closer to the equator will face water shortages, aging populations, and crowded megacities sapped by the rising costs of energy and coastal flooding.The World in 2050 combines the lessons of geography and history with state-of-the-art model projections and analytical data-everything from climate dynamics and resource stocks to age distributions and economic growth projections. But Smith offers more than a compendium of statistics and studies- he spent fifteen months traveling the Arctic Rim, collecting stories and insights that resonate throughout the book. It is an approach much like Jared Diamond took in Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse, a work of geoscientific investigation rich in the appreciation of human diversity. Packed with stunning photographs, original maps, and informative tables, this is the most authoritative, balanced, and compelling account available of the world of challenges and opportunities that we will leave for our children.

    It is a book about the advantages of living a less cluttered, less stressful life than that which has become the norm in the overcrowded and manic-paced consuming nations. It is a book about having less and enjoying more, enjoying time to do the work you love, enjoying time to spend with your family, enjoying time to pursue creative projects, enjoying time for good eating, enjoying time just to be.