Social Environment

Mark Lynas delivers a vital account of the future of our earth, and our civilisation, if current rates of global warming persist. And it’s only looking worse. We are living in a climate emergency. But how much worse could it get? Will civilisation collapse? Are we already past the point of no return? What kind of future can our children expect? Rigorously cataloguing the very latest climate science, Mark Lynas explores the course we have set for Earth over the next century and beyond.

In Secondhand, Adam Minter delves into the vast, multibillion-dollar industry that resells used stuff around the world. He follows the trail of unwanted objects from the closets, garages, and storage units of Middle America to epic used-goods markets in Canada, Mexico, Japan, Ghana, India, Malaysia, and beyond. Secondhand takes us through the often painful and heartbreaking process of cleaning out a lifetime’s worth of possessions and shows that used stuff still has a place in a world that values the new and shiny.

In Life's Biohack, discover the basics of how your body pushes the buttons to keep you healthy in the most holistic of ways—how these buttons support your health not just for today but for 5, 10, 20 years from now.

A prize-winning journalist upends our centuries-long assumptions about migration through science, history, and reporting - predicting its lifesaving power in the face of climate change.

We have reached the point of no return. The existential threat of climate change is now a reality. The world has never been more vulnerable. Yet corporations are already planning a life beyond this point. The business models of fossil fuel giants factor in continued profitability in a scenario of a five-degree increase in global temperature. An increase that will kill millions, if not billions. This is the shocking reality laid bare in a hard-hitting new book by David Whyte.

Former President of Ireland Mary Robinson's mission to bring together the fight against climate change and the global struggle for human rights has taken her all over the world. It also brought her to a heartening revelation: that that an irrepressible driving force in the battle for climate justice could be found at the grassroots level, mainly among women, many of them mothers and grandmothers like herself.

If you had a trillion dollars and a year to spend it for the good of the world and the advancement of science, what would you do? It's an unimaginably large sum, yet it's only around one per cent of world GDP, and about the valuation of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. It's a much smaller sum than the world found to bail out its banks in 2008 or deal with Covid-19. But what could you achieve with $1 trillion? You could solve the problem of the pandemic, for one, and eradicate malaria, and maybe cure all disease. You could end global poverty.

Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America’s endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world around them in their favor. So Jon Mooallem ventures into the field, often taking his daughter with him, to move beyond childlike fascination and make those creatures feel more real. Wild Ones is a tour through our environmental moment and the eccentric cultural history of people and wild animals in America that inflects it.

For decades, our world has understood that we are on the brink of an apocalypse—yet the only implemented solutions have been small and convenient, feel-good initiatives that avoid unpleasant truths about the root causes of our impending disaster. Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen argue that we must reconsider the origins of the consumption crisis and the challenges we face in creating a survivable future. Longstanding assumptions about economic growth and technological progress—the dream of a future of endless bounty—are no longer tenable.

The science is overwhelming; the facts are in. The planet is heating up at an alarming rate and the results are everywhere to be seen. Yet, as time runs out, climate progress is blocked by the men who are profiting from the burning of the planet: energy moguls like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Powerful politicians like Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe, who receive massive contributions from the oil and coal industries. Most of these men are too intelligent to truly believe that climate change is not a growing crisis.

Plastic bags are cheap and easy to use. But what happens when a bag breaks or is no longer needed? In Njau, Gambia, people simply dropped the bags and went on their way. One plastic bag became two. Then 10. Then a hundred. The bags accumulated in ugly heaps alongside roads. Water pooled in them, bringing mosquitoes and disease. Some bags were burned, leaving behind a terrible smell. Some were buried, but they strangled gardens. They killed livestock that tried to eat them. Something had to change.

One of the essential books of our time, Reclaiming the Sacred draws on the work of thousands of psychologists and economists, cosmologists and activists, saints and poets to ground us in our inherent joy, purpose, and belonging—both for our own sakes and the sake of the world. It starts with an overview of the science of happiness, highlighting the things that most nourish human well-being—and some that don’t, most notably money and possessions.

Every 15 seconds, a child dies from waterborne disease. Three times an hour, another species becomes extinct. Each day, we consume 85 million barrels of oil and pump 23 million tons of carbon dioxide into an already warming atmosphere. But against this bleak backdrop, beacons of hope shine from thousands of large and small initiatives. Thriving Beyond Sustainability draws a collective map of individuals, organizations, and communities that are committed to building an alternative future.

After 1991, international organizations from the Red Cross to Greenpeace sought to help the victims, yet found themselves stymied by post-Soviet political circumstances they did not understand. International diplomats and scientists allied to the nuclear industry evaded or denied the fact of a wide-scale public health disaster caused by radiation exposure. Efforts to spin the story about Chernobyl were largely successful; the official death toll ranges between 31 and 54 people. In reality, radiation exposure from the disaster caused between 35,000 and 150,000 deaths in Ukraine alone.

Natural, legal, and innovative after-death care options are transforming the paradigm of the existing funeral industry, helping families and communities recover their instinctive capacity to care for a loved one after death. Reimagining Death offers stories and guidance for home funeral vigils, advance after-death care directives, green burials, and conscious dying. When we bring art and beauty, meaningful ritual, and joy to ease our loss and sorrow, we are greening the gateway of death and returning home to ourselves, to the wisdom of our bodies, and to the earth.

One of the most ubiquitous indicators of human activity, roads typically promise development and prosperity. Yet they carry with them the threat of disruption to both human and animal lives. Jones surveys the myriad, innovative ways stakeholders across the world have sought to reduce animal-vehicle collisions and minimize road-crossing risks for wildlife, including efforts undertaken at the famed fauna overpasses of Banff National Park, the Singapore Eco-Link, "tunnels of love" in the Australian Alps, and others.

In its 2001 report on global climate, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations prominently featured the "Hockey Stick", a chart showing global temperature data over the past 1,000 years. The Hockey Stick demonstrated that temperature had risen with the increase in industrialization and use of fossil fuels. The inescapable conclusion was that worldwide human activity since the industrial age had raised CO2 levels, trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and warming the planet.

Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes.

Yes, the world faces substantial environmental challenges - climate change, pollution, and extinction. But the surprisingly good news is that we have solutions to these problems. In the past 50 years, a remarkable number of environmental problems have been solved while substantial progress is ongoing on others. The Optimistic Environmentalist chronicles these remarkable success stories. Endangered species - from bald eagles to gray whales - pulled back from the precipice of extinction.

How should a law enforcement officer manage an encounter with someone who might be mentally unstable or in crisis - but does not appear to pose an immediate threat? How might a platoon commander engage with a foreign civilian who has key information for intelligence-gathering, but is wary of sharing - even being seen - with a stranger? In The Coordinator, Ellis Amdur and Robert Hubal share their decades of experience working with law enforcement and military personnel in training and developing social interaction skills, particularly in "high risk, high consequence" situations.