Environmental Engineering

Most books about the environmental crisis are densely academic, depressingly doom-laden, and crammed with impersonal statistics. We Are the Weather is different--accessible, immediate, and with a single clear solution that individual readers can put into practice straight away. A significant proportion of global carbon emissions come from farming meat. Giving up meat is incredibly hard and nobody is perfect--but just cutting back is much easier and still has a huge positive effect on the environment.

We have a perennial fascination with sharks. Portrayed in the media and popular culture as killing machines, we are awed by their power and strength. But the shark is so much more—a marvel of the sea, they have evolved over 450 million years into more than 500 species, from the bioluminescent kitefin to the tiny dwarf lantern shark, the sociable lemon shark to the cow shark, which can birth up to 100 pups in one litter. Bringing balance to the ocean’s ecosystem, our planet is at serious risk when these amazing creatures are threatened.

Called "one of the greatest men alive" by the Times of London, E. O. Wilson proposes an historic partnership between scientists and religious leaders to preserve Earth's rapidly vanishing biodiversity.

In 1980, the iconoclastic economist Julian Simon challenged celebrity biologist Paul Ehrlich to a bet. Their wager on the future prices of five metals captured the public’s imagination as a test of coming prosperity or doom. Ehrlich, author of the landmark book The Population Bomb, predicted that rising populations would cause overconsumption, resource scarcity, and famine—with apocalyptic consequences for humanity.

Using her expertise in ancient Israelite society and economy as well as in biblical theology, Richter walks listeners through passages familiar and not-so-familiar, showing how significant environmental theology is in the Bible's witness. She then calls Christians to apply that message to today's environmental concerns. Richter is a master Bible scholar. Each chapter in this timely book draws out a biblical mandate about care for the land, for domestic and wild animals, for people at the margins, and more. She is also a master storyteller.

Today, we are at a turning point as we face ecological and political crises that are rooted in conflicts over the land itself. But these problems can be solved if we draw on elements of our tradition that move us toward a new commonwealth - a community founded on the well-being of all people and the natural world.

"The climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it is happening very quickly - and has become a true planetary emergency....[I]nconvenient truths do not go away just because they are not seen. Indeed, when they are not responded to, their significance doesn't diminish; it grows." -Al Gore

The Blue Communities Project is dedicated to three primary things: that access to clean, drinkable water is a basic human right; that municipal and community water will be held in public hands; and that single-use plastic water bottles will not be available in public spaces. The movement has been growing around the world for a decade. In Whose Water Is It, Anyway?, renowned water justice activist Maude Barlow recounts her own education in water issues as she and her fellow grassroots water warriors woke up to the immense pressures facing water in a warming world.

How would you like to be the center of a massive outpouring of wealth, innovation, success, and prosperity... the force behind a wave of abundance that rolls over your friends, family, and associates? Now you can be! Despite what the pessimists say, we live in an era of exponential growth and abundance. Astonishing new technologies are driving a new world where the unimaginable is being imagined and turned into reality.

Economists insist that recovery is at hand, yet unemployment remains high, real estate values continue to sink, and governments stagger under record deficits. The End of Growth proposes a startling diagnosis: humanity has reached a fundamental turning point in its economic history. The expansionary trajectory of industrial civilization is colliding with non-negotiable natural limits.

Are you worried about the effects of climate change on our environment? Want to help but don't know where to start? Environmental activist Natalie Fee's new handbook to green living will help you to make small lifestyle changes that will make a big difference to our planet.

Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as a species.

Robin Attfield introduces environmental ethics, exploring the values involved in issues, such as pollution, habitat loss, and climate change. Considering the different groups involved in environmental ethics and the attitudes of the world's religions to environmental stewardship, he calls for action from us all to manage our environment ethically.

For billions of years, microbes have produced and consumed greenhouse gases that regulate global temperature and in turn other aspects of our climate. The balance of these gases maintains Earth's habitability. Methane, a greenhouse gas produced only by microbes, may have kept Earth out of a deep freeze billions of years ago. Likewise, variations in carbon dioxide, another greenhouse gas released by microbes and other organisms, help to explain the comings and goings of ice ages over the last million years. Now we face a human-made climate crisis with drastic consequences.

New York Times best-selling author Seth Siegel tells how contaminants got in our drinking water, what they’re doing to us, and what we must do to make our water safe.

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years, the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe.

Scientists' understanding of life is progressing more rapidly than at any point in human history, from the extraordinary decoding of DNA to the controversial emergence of biotechnology. Featuring pioneering biologists, geneticists, physicists, and science writers, Life explains just how far we've come - and takes a brilliantly educated guess at where we're heading.

In 1994, The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.

Everyone knew it was crazy to try to extract oil and natural gas buried in shale rock deep below the ground. Everyone, that is, except a few reckless wildcatters - who risked their careers to prove the world wrong. Things looked grim for American energy in 2006. Oil production was in steep decline and natural gas was hard to find. The Iraq War threatened the nation’s already tenuous relations with the Middle East. China was rapidly industrializing and competing for resources.

Increasingly, cracks are appearing in the capacity of communities, ecosystems, and landscapes to provide the goods and services that sustain our planet's well-being. The response from most quarters has been for "more of the same" that created the situation in the first place: more control, more intensification, and greater efficiency. "Resilience thinking" offers a different way of understanding the world and a new approach to managing resources. It embraces human and natural systems as complex entities continually adapting through cycles of change.