Showing titles in Natural Resources

From Ice to Heat: A Climate Change Book Exploring Global Warming, Earth’s Climate History, and the Future of Our Planet For over four billion years, Earth’s climate has transformed through powerful natural cycles—glacial advances, warming interglacials, and dramatic atmospheric changes that reshaped life on the planet. These transformations were slow, giving ecosystems time to adapt. But now, that ancient rhythm has been broken. In just over a century, human activity has driven Earth into a state of rapid and unprecedented climate change. The burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, ...

It is not your imagination: water crises are more frequent. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. But the grim news reports—of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems—need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author David Sedlak.

When you turn on the tap or twist the cap, you might not give a second thought to where your drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to your glass is far more complex than you might think. Is it safe to drink tap water? Should you feel guilty buying bottled water? Is your water vulnerable to terrorist attacks? With springs running dry and reservoirs emptying, where is your water going to come from in the future? In Drinking Water, Duke professor James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time.

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.

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.

Fascinated by the Earth's Natural Treasures? Dive into the vivid and diverse universe of rocks, crystals, and minerals. Whether you're a budding enthusiast or an aspiring expert, this comprehensive guide is your key to unlocking the secrets of the Earth's most captivating creations.

Black Snake is the story of four leaders - LaDonna Allard, Jasilyn Charger, Lisa DeVille, and Kandi White - and their fight against the pipeline. It is the story of a new generation of environmental activists, galvanized at Standing Rock, becoming the protectors of America's natural resources.

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out.Robert Glennon captures the irony - and tragedy - of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical.

The Reindeer Chronicles takes listeners on a global tour of Earth repair, with visits to unsung heroes who are pushing the boundaries of ecological restoration to show how even the world’s most wounded places can be revived. The book begins in China’s Loess Plateau, where a landmark project successfully restored a blighted region the size of Belgium, lifting millions of people out of poverty.

What can nature teach us about living together? Investigating eight symbiotic relationships trying to survive the climate and biodiversity crises, Sophie Pavelle explains why it has never been more vital for us to understand symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships regulate ecosystems, strengthen resilience and bind pivotal connections. Species living together in symbiosis is no accident – these dynamics evolved.

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada's petroleum industry and America's biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

In Greek mythology, plants were used for tools, intoxication, warfare, food, medicine, magic, and rituals. When Prometheus stole fire from the Olympian gods and gave it to mankind, he hid it in a stalk of giant fennel. Ancient Greeks waiting to question the oracles were given cannabis as part of their cleansing rituals. A quince fruit started the Trojan war. The goddess Demeter was so distraught when Hades kidnapped her daughter that she caused winter to blanket the earth, killing all plants.

Coal mining in the UK dates back to Roman times, but in the 21st century, has practically disappeared. In this history, Jeremy Paxman charts our vital relationship with coal and all the extraordinary change it has fuelled. Told through the stories of real people, Paxman travels the regions of the UK where communities were built around coal, to the industrial revolution, to the beginnings of time and coal’s geological formation, to the great tragedies such as Aberfan, and to the picket lines of the miners’ strike.

The most recent research tells us that seaweed is one possible solution for our future on the planet. It could feed human beings, reduce plastic pollution, absorb enough carbon to cool the atmosphere, reconstruct generative ecosystems, treat certain illnesses that are incurable today, replace land livestock farming that exhausts the environment, and give jobs to coastal populations. The seaweed revolution is a hope for tomorrow!

Humans depend on soil for 95 percent of global food production, yet let it erode at unsustainable rates. In the United States, China, and India, vast tracts of farmland will be barren of topsoil within this century. The combination of intensifying erosion caused by climate change and the increasing food needs of a growing world population is creating a desperate need for solutions to this crisis.

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over eighty visionaries, theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturalists, activists, and writers to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibility to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do.

Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo sachets and ultra-processed foods. In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.

Winner Take All is about the commodity dynamics that the world will face over the next several decades. In particular, it is about the implications of China’s rush for resources across all regions of the world. The scale of China’s resource campaign for hard commodities (metals and minerals) and soft commodities (timber and food) is among the largest in history.

A shocking investigative journey into the way the resource trade wreaks havoc on Africa, The Looting Machine explores the dark underbelly of the global economy. Africa: the world's poorest continent and arguably its richest. While accounting for just 2 percent of global GDP, it is home to 15 percent of the planet's crude oil, 40 percent of its gold, and 80 percent of its platinum. A third of the Earth's mineral deposits lie beneath its soil. But far from being a salvation, this buried treasure has been a curse.