-
Disaster by Choice
- How Our Actions Turn Natural Hazards Into Catastrophes
- Narrated by: Rupert Bush
- Length: 5 hrs and 17 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Buy for $16.35
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's summary
An earthquake shatters Haiti and a hurricane slices through Texas. We hear that nature runs rampant, seeking to destroy us through these 'natural disasters'. Science recounts a different story, however: disasters are not the consequence of natural causes; they are the consequence of human choices and decisions. we put ourselves in harm's way; we fail to take measures which we know would prevent disasters, no matter what the environment does.
This can be both hard to accept and hard to unravel. A complex of factors shape disasters. They arise from the political processes dictating where and what we build, and from social circumstances which create and perpetuate poverty and discrimination. They develop from the social preference to blame nature for the damage wrought, when in fact events such as earthquakes and storms are entirely commonplace environmental processes. We feel the need to fight natural forces, to reclaim what we assume is ours, and to protect ourselves from what we perceive to be wrath from outside our communities. This attitude distracts us from the real causes of disasters: humanity's decisions, as societies and as individuals. It stops us accepting the real solutions to disasters: making better decisions.
This audiobook explores stories of some of our worst disasters to show how we can and should act to stop people dying when nature unleashes its energies. The disaster is not the tornado, the volcanic eruption, or climate change, but the deaths and injuries, the loss of irreplaceable property, and the lack and even denial of support to affected people, so that a short-term interruption becomes a long-term recovery nightmare. But we can combat this, as Kelman shows, describing inspiring examples of effective human action that limits damage, such as managing flooding in Toronto and villages in Bangladesh, or wildfire in Colorado.
Throughout, his message is clear: there is no such thing as a natural disaster. The disaster lies in our inability to deal with the environment and with ourselves.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Disasterology
- Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
- By: Samantha Montano
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.
-
-
This should have been a better book
- By Soudant on 09-09-24
By: Samantha Montano
-
Trigger Points
- Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America
- By: Mark Follman
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings listeners inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising.
-
-
this book is one of many to be read on this topic
- By NC on 11-15-22
By: Mark Follman
-
You're It
- Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most
- By: Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty, Joseph M. Henderson, and others
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today, in an instant, leaders can find themselves face-to-face with crisis. An active shooter. A media controversy. A data breach. In You're It, the faculty of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University takes you to the front lines of some of the toughest decisions facing our nation's leaders - from how to mobilize during a hurricane or in the aftermath of a bombing to halting a raging pandemic. They also take listeners through the tough decision-making inside the world's largest companies, hottest startups, and leading nonprofits.
-
-
Great course...great book!
- By Brian on 08-15-19
By: Leonard J. Marcus, and others
-
Five Days at Memorial
- Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- By: Sheri Fink
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs.
-
-
Five Days in Hell/Years in Purgatory
- By Cynthia on 09-15-13
By: Sheri Fink
-
Moment of Truth
- The Nature of Catastrophes and How to Prepare for Them
- By: Kelly McKinney
- Narrated by: Shelly Raffle
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a global pandemic to social unrest to election messes to murder hornets, 2020 and beyond has been a time of maximum chaos. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Because, there are professionals inside and outside of government who are responsible for keeping us prepared for these things. When disasters happen, they spring into action to coordinate and communicate so that instead of confusion and fear, we get clarity and confidence.
-
-
I'll save you the time
- By reviewer on 01-29-24
By: Kelly McKinney
-
Disposable City
- Miami's Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe
- By: Mario Alejandro Ariza
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miami, Florida, is likely to be entirely underwater by the end of this century. Residents are already starting to see the effects of sea level rise today. From sunny day flooding caused by higher tides to a sewer system on the brink of total collapse, the city undeniably lives in a climate changed world. In Disposable City, Miami resident Mario Alejandro Ariza shows us not only what climate change looks like on the ground today, but also what Miami will look like 100 years from now, and how that future has been shaped by the city's racist past and present.
-
-
Significantly Insightful
- By wil arguedas on 11-13-22
-
Disasterology
- Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
- By: Samantha Montano
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.
-
-
This should have been a better book
- By Soudant on 09-09-24
By: Samantha Montano
-
Trigger Points
- Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America
- By: Mark Follman
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It's time to go beyond all the thoughts and prayers, misguided blame on mental illness, and dug-in disputes over the Second Amendment. Through meticulous reporting and panoramic storytelling, journalist Mark Follman chronicles the decades-long search for identifiable profiles of mass shooters and brings listeners inside a groundbreaking method for preventing devastating attacks. Eight years in the making, Trigger Points illuminates a way forward at a time when the failure to prevent mass shootings has never been more costly—and the prospects for stopping them never more promising.
-
-
this book is one of many to be read on this topic
- By NC on 11-15-22
By: Mark Follman
-
You're It
- Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most
- By: Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty, Joseph M. Henderson, and others
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 12 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Today, in an instant, leaders can find themselves face-to-face with crisis. An active shooter. A media controversy. A data breach. In You're It, the faculty of the National Preparedness Leadership Initiative at Harvard University takes you to the front lines of some of the toughest decisions facing our nation's leaders - from how to mobilize during a hurricane or in the aftermath of a bombing to halting a raging pandemic. They also take listeners through the tough decision-making inside the world's largest companies, hottest startups, and leading nonprofits.
-
-
Great course...great book!
- By Brian on 08-15-19
By: Leonard J. Marcus, and others
-
Five Days at Memorial
- Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- By: Sheri Fink
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs.
-
-
Five Days in Hell/Years in Purgatory
- By Cynthia on 09-15-13
By: Sheri Fink
-
Moment of Truth
- The Nature of Catastrophes and How to Prepare for Them
- By: Kelly McKinney
- Narrated by: Shelly Raffle
- Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From a global pandemic to social unrest to election messes to murder hornets, 2020 and beyond has been a time of maximum chaos. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Because, there are professionals inside and outside of government who are responsible for keeping us prepared for these things. When disasters happen, they spring into action to coordinate and communicate so that instead of confusion and fear, we get clarity and confidence.
-
-
I'll save you the time
- By reviewer on 01-29-24
By: Kelly McKinney
-
Disposable City
- Miami's Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe
- By: Mario Alejandro Ariza
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Miami, Florida, is likely to be entirely underwater by the end of this century. Residents are already starting to see the effects of sea level rise today. From sunny day flooding caused by higher tides to a sewer system on the brink of total collapse, the city undeniably lives in a climate changed world. In Disposable City, Miami resident Mario Alejandro Ariza shows us not only what climate change looks like on the ground today, but also what Miami will look like 100 years from now, and how that future has been shaped by the city's racist past and present.
-
-
Significantly Insightful
- By wil arguedas on 11-13-22
-
Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
-
-
Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
-
A Life on Our Planet
- My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future
- By: Sir David Attenborough, Jonnie Hughes
- Narrated by: Sir David Attenborough
- Length: 6 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this scientifically informed account of the changes occurring in the world over the last century, award-winning broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough shares a lifetime of wisdom and a hopeful vision for the future.
-
-
Engaging, powerful, hopeful, visionary.
- By K. Stark on 10-15-20
By: Sir David Attenborough, and others
-
Fossil Future
- Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right.
-
-
Strongly Recommend
- By Kevin on 06-14-22
By: Alex Epstein
-
The Uninhabitable Earth
- Life After Warming
- By: David Wallace-Wells
- Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An "epoch-defining book" (The Guardian) and "this generation’s Silent Spring" (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it - the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action.
-
-
Don’t read if you have depressive tendencies.
- By Ricky on 03-17-19
-
False Alarm
- How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet
- By: Bjorn Lomborg
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
False Alarm will convince you that everything you think about climate change is wrong. It points the way toward making the world a vastly better, if slightly warmer, place for us all.
-
-
Stop climate change panic!
- By Wayne on 07-16-20
By: Bjorn Lomborg
-
Saving Us
- A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World
- By: Katharine Hayhoe
- Narrated by: Katharine Hayhoe
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Called “one of the nation's most effective communicators on climate change” by The New York Times, Katharine Hayhoe knows how to navigate all sides of the conversation on our changing planet. A Canadian climate scientist living in Texas, she negotiates distrust of data, indifference to imminent threats, and resistance to proposed solutions with ease. Over the past 15 years, Hayhoe has found that the most important thing we can do to address climate change is talk about it - and she wants to teach you how.
-
-
Saving ME!
- By Wendy on 10-02-21
By: Katharine Hayhoe
-
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We're taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives.
-
-
A different point of view
- By Ballofyarn on 01-12-17
By: Alex Epstein
-
Our Final Warning
- Six Degrees of Climate Emergency
- By: Mark Lynas
- Narrated by: Richard Burnip
- Length: 11 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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.
-
-
One of the best
- By Stephen on 08-15-20
By: Mark Lynas
-
On Fire
- The Case for the Green New Deal
- By: Naomi Klein
- Narrated by: Naomi Klein - introduction, Rebecca Lowman
- Length: 10 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An instant best seller, On Fire shows Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but also as a spiritual and imaginative one. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of “perpetual now,” to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of “climate barbarism,” this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink.
-
-
Preaching to the choir, but nobody else.
- By Fountain of Chris on 09-25-19
By: Naomi Klein
-
The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
-
-
Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
-
Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
-
-
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
-
The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
-
-
Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
Critic reviews
"This is an excellent little audiobook that crystallises ideas about the influence and impact of human actions on natural catastrophes into a thoughtful and informative narrative, concluding - and rightly so - that there is no such thing as a natural disaster. A must-read book." (Professor Bill McGuire, author of Waking the Giant)
Related to this topic
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?
- By: Yorick Wilks
- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.
By: Yorick Wilks
-
Overheated
- How Climate Change Will Cause Floods, Famine, War, and Disease
- By: Andrew T. Guzman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
-
-
A must read!
- By Ted on 03-22-15
By: Andrew T. Guzman
-
Disasterology
- Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
- By: Samantha Montano
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.
-
-
This should have been a better book
- By Soudant on 09-09-24
By: Samantha Montano
-
The End of Ice
- Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
- By: Dahr Jamail
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis - from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest - in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.
-
-
Dealing with the Ultimate Climate Change Question
- By red_dog on 02-03-19
By: Dahr Jamail
-
Water in Plain Sight
- Hope for a Thirsty World
- By: Judith D. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Tia Rider
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.
-
-
Crucial solutions
- By Shane Emanuelle on 07-25-19
-
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
-
-
One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
-
Artificial Intelligence
- Modern Magic or Dangerous Future?
- By: Yorick Wilks
- Narrated by: Hannibal Hills
- Length: 5 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
AI expert Yorick Wilks takes a journey through the history of artificial intelligence up to the present day, examining its origins, controversies, and achievements, as well as looking into just how it works. He also considers the future, assessing whether these technologies could menace our way of life and how we are all likely to benefit from AI applications in the years to come.
By: Yorick Wilks
-
Overheated
- How Climate Change Will Cause Floods, Famine, War, and Disease
- By: Andrew T. Guzman
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Deniers of climate change sometimes quip that claims about global warming are more about political science than climate science. They are wrong on the science, but may be right with respect to its political implications. A hotter world, writes Andrew Guzman, will bring unprecedented migrations, famine, war, and disease. It will be a social and political disaster of the first order.
-
-
A must read!
- By Ted on 03-22-15
By: Andrew T. Guzman
-
Disasterology
- Dispatches from the Frontlines of the Climate Crisis
- By: Samantha Montano
- Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With temperatures rising and the risk of disasters growing, our world is increasingly vulnerable. Most people see disasters as freak, natural events that are unpredictable and unpreventable. But that simply isn’t the case - disasters are avoidable, but when they do strike, there are strategic ways to manage the fallout.
-
-
This should have been a better book
- By Soudant on 09-09-24
By: Samantha Montano
-
The End of Ice
- Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption
- By: Dahr Jamail
- Narrated by: Tom Parks
- Length: 7 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis - from Alaska to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest - in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice.
-
-
Dealing with the Ultimate Climate Change Question
- By red_dog on 02-03-19
By: Dahr Jamail
-
Water in Plain Sight
- Hope for a Thirsty World
- By: Judith D. Schwartz
- Narrated by: Tia Rider
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Water scarcity is on everyone's mind. Long taken for granted, water availability has entered the realm of economics, politics, and people's food and lifestyle choices. But as anxiety mounts - even as a swath of California farmland has been left fallow and extremist groups worldwide exploit the desperation of people losing livelihoods to desertification - many are finding new routes to water security with key implications for food access, economic resilience, and climate change.
-
-
Crucial solutions
- By Shane Emanuelle on 07-25-19
-
The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated
- The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late
- By: Thom Hartmann, Neale Donald Walsch - associate editor
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
While everything appears to be collapsing around us - ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, water shortages, global famine, wars - we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children's children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio's feature documentary movie The 11th Hour, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture's blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
-
-
One of the Most Important Books of our Time
- By Jana on 04-24-20
By: Thom Hartmann, and others
-
The Vanishing Face of Gaia
- A Final Warning
- By: James Lovelock
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Vanishing Face of Gaia, British scientist James Lovelock predicts global warming will lead to a Hot Epoch. Lovelock is best known for formulating the controversial Gaia theory in the 1970s, with Ruth Margulis of the University of Massachusetts, which states that organisms interact with and regulate Earth's surface and atmosphere. We ignore this interaction at our peril.
-
-
A New Perspective - A Must Listen - Very Moving
- By Thomas on 01-29-12
By: James Lovelock
-
The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 6 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades environmentalists have told us that using fossil fuels is a self-destructive addiction that will destroy our planet. Yet by every measure of human well-being, from life expectancy to clean water to climate safety, life has been getting better and better. How can this be? The explanation is that we usually hear only one side of the story. We're taught to think only of the negatives of fossil fuels, their risks and side effects, but not their positives.
-
-
A different point of view
- By Ballofyarn on 01-12-17
By: Alex Epstein
-
Climate Change
- What Everyone Needs to Know
- By: Joseph Romm
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Joseph Romm, Chief Science Advisor for National Geographic's Years of Living Dangerously series and one of Rolling Stone's "100 people who are changing America," Climate Change offers user-friendly, scientifically rigorous answers to the most difficult (and commonly politicized) questions surrounding what climatologist Lonnie Thompson has deemed "a clear and present danger to civilization."
-
-
Religious not scientific claims and preachings
- By Jeanne Renzo on 09-19-19
By: Joseph Romm
-
The Great Warming
- Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
- By: Brian Fagan
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The history of the Great Warming of a half millennium ago suggests that we may yet be underestimating the power of climate change to disrupt our lives todayand our vulnerability to drought, writes Fagan, is the silent elephant in the room.
-
-
Good book but unpracticed, disjointed narration.
- By Paul on 09-12-10
By: Brian Fagan
-
Coal
- A Human History
- By: Barbara Freese
- Narrated by: Shelly Frasier
- Length: 7 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.
-
-
Uses Coal to push her Political Agenda
- By Kismet on 08-22-06
By: Barbara Freese
-
The Well-Tempered City
- What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life
- By: Jonathan F. P. Rose
- Narrated by: Barry Abrams
- Length: 14 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Cities are birthplaces of civilization; centers of culture, trade, and progress; cauldrons of opportunity - and the home of 80 percent of the world's population by 2050. As the 21st century progresses, metropolitan areas will bear the brunt of global megatrends such as climate change, natural resource depletion, population growth, income inequality, mass migrations, and education and health disparities, among many others.
-
-
The best way to save the future is to look at the past
- By Kate on 10-01-22
-
Fossil Future
- Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less
- By: Alex Epstein
- Narrated by: Alex Epstein
- Length: 16 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For over a decade, philosopher and energy expert Alex Epstein has predicted that any negative impacts of fossil fuel use on our climate will be outweighed by the unique benefits of fossil fuels to human flourishing--including their unrivaled ability to provide low-cost, reliable energy to billions of people around the world, especially the world’s poorest people. And contrary to what we hear from media “experts” about today’s “renewable revolution” and “climate emergency,” reality has proven Epstein right.
-
-
Strongly Recommend
- By Kevin on 06-14-22
By: Alex Epstein
-
The Nature of Nature
- Why We Need the Wild
- By: Enric Sala
- Narrated by: Will Damron
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.
-
-
mediocre
- By Anthony Dimaggio on 01-16-24
By: Enric Sala
-
The Ocean of Life
- The Fate of Man and the Sea
- By: Callum Roberts
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, Callum Roberts - one of the world’s foremost conservation biologists - leads listeners on a fascinating tour of mankind’s relationship to the sea, from the earliest traces of water on Earth to the oceans as we know them today. In the process, Roberts looks at how the taming of the oceans has shaped human civilization and affected marine life. Like Four Fish and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, The Ocean of Life takes a long view to tell a story in which each one of us has a role to play.
-
-
Immediate fan of Mr Roberts
- By Anna on 06-25-24
By: Callum Roberts
-
Collapse
- How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
- By: Jared Diamond
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 27 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion, and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization. Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted.
-
-
Jared Diamond Downs You in Explanation
- By Rob on 07-20-18
By: Jared Diamond
-
Dark Winter
- How the Sun Is Causing a 30-Year Cold Spell
- By: John L. Casey
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 5 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Climate change has been a perplexing problem for years. Casey's research into the Sun's activity, which began almost a decade ago, resulted in discovery of a solar cycle that is now reversing from its global warming phase to that of dangerous global cooling for the next 30 years or more. This new cold climate will dramatically impact the world's citizens.
-
-
Global Warming Is A Hoax
- By Catamount on 11-20-17
By: John L. Casey
-
A Furious Sky
- The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes
- By: Eric Jay Dolin
- Narrated by: Bob Souer
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history.
-
-
Good start but went political at the end.
- By thebreeze on 03-24-21
By: Eric Jay Dolin
What listeners say about Disaster by Choice
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Iuliia
- 01-05-22
The best nonfiction book I read last year
An excellent book by the expert, a leading scientist working at the top UK university. The author has managed to explain very complicated concepts in simple words, using a lot of examples. If you are tempted to read Bill Gates' book, read this one instead! The narrator is exceptional, very easy to follow.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Reed Martin
- 07-21-24
Very thought-provoking.
A good primer on the topic. Informative, insightful, and timely, especially given global warming and climate change’s impact on the world’s glaciers and ice sheets.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!