Citizens expect their governments to lead on sustainability. But from largely disappointing international conferences like Rio II to the U.S.’s failure to pass meaningful climate legislation, governments’ progress has been lackluster. That’s not to say leadership is absent; it just often comes from the bottom up rather than the top down. Action—on climate, species loss, inequity, and other sustainability crises—is being driven by local, people’s, women’s, and grassroots movements around th...

Sixteen of the world's 20 most polluted cities are in China. A serious water pollution incident occurs once every two-to-three days. China's breakneck growth causes great concern about its global environmental impacts, as others look to China as a source for possible future solutions to climate change. But how are Chinese people really coming to grips with environmental problems? This book provides access to otherwise unknown stories of environmental activism and forms the first real-life ...

As the U.N. moves closer to a new global warming treaty, it is time to examine the calls for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The health and welfare of humanity has benefited from access to fossil fuels, and any drastic move to limit that access must have extraordinary evidence to support it.While alternative energy technologies will increasingly be relied upon in the face of dwindling fossil fuel supplies, leading climate researcher Dr. Roy W. Spencer argues that the free m...

In this classic work that continues to inspire its many readers, Jim Lovelock puts forward his idea that life on earth functions as a single organism. Written for non-scientists, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that living matter is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the earth's livingmatter air, ocean...

Beginning in 1967 and for just over 30 years, the oil industry toiled in the relative obscurity of Northern Alberta as machines peeled away earth and boreal forest to exhume what has now become one of humanity’s most precious and contentious resources: bitumen. As the years passed, the bitumen mines sprawled, poisonous tailings ponds spread, toxins polluted the environment, cancer reared its head downstream and the price of petroleum soared beyond all expectations.As plans continue...

There is a force out there that could destroy our world in minutes. . . .Solar flares—brief bursts of radiation from our sun—have always existed and have never been particularly dangerous. Nature hasn’t changed. But we have. By making our world so dependent on electricity delivered by huge, unprotected power grids we have inadvertently placed humanity at terrible risk. As bestselling author Whitley Strieber explores in this urgent new work, a powerful solar flare could demolish our...

Reshaping Environments: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sustainability in a Complex World draws together a team of specialist authors from disciplines including urban planning, social sciences, engineering and environmental science to examine the diverse influences humans have upon the natural environment. This interdisciplinary approach presents multifaceted responses for complex environmental issues. The book explores current environmental science theories to provide a solid foundation ...

This sobering examination of climate-change and the disastrous effects of rising sea levels explains what must be done to avoid the worst outcomes.By the end of this century, hundreds of millions of people living at low elevations along coasts will be forced to retreat to higher and safer ground. Because of sea-level rise, major storms will inundate areas farther inland and will lay waste to critical infrastructure, such as water-treatment and energy facilities, cr...

This groundbreaking work remains as relevant today as when it was when first published. Two of Zed's best-known authors argue that ecological destruction and industrial catastrophes constitute a direct threat to everyday life, the maintenance of which has been made the particular responsibility of women. In both industrialized societies and the developing countries, the new wars the world is experiencing, violent ethnic chauvinisms and the malfunctioning of the economy also pose urgent que...

Today we find ourselves exhausted and depleted by natural and economic disruption. Worse, we face more of the same but on a greater, even more frightening scale. Hopeful and provocative, this book considers the principle social and ecological threats facing Australia, and outlines ways in which these crises need to be confronted and addressed. Leading writer and commentator Brendan Gleeson wants to rouse us and his book makes a big statement about our collective future.

Here is the truth that the powerful Dirty Energy public relations machine doesn't want you to know: the ascent of solar energy is upon us. Solar-generated electricity has risen exponentially in the last few years and employment in the solar industry has doubled since 2009. Meanwhile, electricity from coal has declined to pre-World War II levels as the fossil fuel industry continues to shed jobs.Danny Kennedy systematically refutes the lies spread by solar's opponents—that it is expe...

Humanity is facing an unprecedented global catastrophe as a result of global warming. This book examines the reasons why international agencies, together with national governments, are seemingly unable to provide real and binding solutions to the problems. The reasons presented relate to the existing dominant global economic structure of capitalism as well as the fact that global warming is too often seen as an isolated problem rather than one of a suite of exceptional, converging and acce...