Climate Change

This quote sums it up: “even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed...toward total disaster.... The military produces enough greenhouse
gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants ... in the most immanent danger of extinction.” The only book that addresses this key element of the challenge we face.

A recent popularization our complex evolutionary history. Addresses many of the same questions Chris Stringer’s book does, but is weaker.

One of the world’s leading paleoanthropologists discusses the complex evolutionary history of our species in the last several million years. Choose this book for an understanding of our evolutionary roots, which may provide key insights into the nature of our species and what changes we are capable of making.

The authors argue that civilization is the problem. Humanity went wrong when we settled down, started building cities and began modifying nature to suit our needs. An anarchist vision, that posits we must rapidly return to a pre-industrial pastoral life-style, if life, as we know it on earth, is to survive. The best way to protect the earth’s ecology is to sabotage modern industrial society.

The author, a back-to-nature survivalist who lives in the Rockies, was once a graduate student in anthropology who dropped out to become a Green Beret medic during the Vietnam War. We explores the original peopling of North America at the end of the Pleistocene (Ice Age); a time of rapid climate change and mass extinction of mammalian mega-fauna. He discusses the lessons we can learn from their success at a time of rapid climate change and mass extinction.

A book-length compilation of long articles written by the authors around common themes. They explore Marx’s early analysis of humanity’s “metabolic” relationship to the environment and how capitalism severs that relationship. The author’s argue powerfully that it will be impossible to solve environmental problems within the framework of capitalism.

First published under the title “Plenitude,” this professor with degrees in both economics and sociology, whose previous work The Overspent American was a New York Times bestseller, discusses how we can consume less and still have better quality lives while protecting the environment. This important book provides a glimmer of light in an otherwise dark landscape, but its efficacy is skeptical since it would requires a majority of people to voluntarily transform how they live.

A political philosopher describes his personal journey. The author is a South African Jew, who immigrated to Israel, joined at kibbutz, then its defense forces, became disillusioned and ultimately joined the faculty of the University of Hawaii. He argues that we can get in tune with our environment and solve the current crisis by re-connecting with our Shamanistic roots, evolved during the hunting and gathering stage of human development, as epitomized by the Bushman of the Kalahari dessert.

A journalistic overview of the hole we’ve dug ourselves into and what actions we must take to avoid the worst consequences. Written from the perspective of someone who wants to protect the quality of life of his daughter, born in 2005. The author believes we can do this without changing the nature of our economic system.

The best scientific models in 2007 indicated that the global climate might warm by six degrees Celsius this century. The author employs current information and climatological data from prior geologic eras in six chapters, one for each degree of warming, to present précis of the global climate for each degree of warming.

250 million years ago something triggered an event that caused the extinction of 90% of all species. It was the greatest mass extinction of all time. The planet was hotter and the atmosphere contained much more methane than it does today. Could this be our fate if things get really bad?

Anatomically modern humans arose about 200,000 years ago, but for 130,000 years nothing much changed. 70,000 to 50,000 years ago there were only a few thousand of us living in a relatively confined area of eastern Africa. A change occurred, our species spread out from Africa, and by 15,000 years ago there were millions of us living on every continent except Antarctica. The authors’ argue that how we related to each other and the planet during that epic global conquest can teach us a lot about ourselves today.

A basic primer that explores all the aspects of climate change. An essential reference for the informed lay-person that also examines potential but always within the framework of the existing system.

A series of articles in which the authors explore apocalyptic theories of the right and left. They argue that environmental activists who warn of impending catastrophes are playing into the hands of the right and fueling defeatism. I find the author’s lumping together of “end of times” religious visions with scientific analyses of ongoing climate change unpersuasive.

Since 1984 the World Watch Institute has published an annual survey of how the earth is withstanding the human onslaught. They’ve become increasingly shrill in their warnings of the dire consequences of our not taking corrective action. The 2012 report’s subtitle “Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity” previews this attempt at a more upbeat approach. Much of the 2012 report is based on papers presented at the Rio+20 global ecological, summit in June, 2012. World Watch Institute has consistently assumed that we can alleviate our worst problems without changing the basic nature of our system.

An overview that first attempts to prove global warming is happening, then explores its potential consequences and posits that it in not too late to avoid the worst of them. The author warns, however, that if we don’t act soon, the most likely way to control the ensuing chaos will be through totalitarian “carbon dictatorships.”

An exposé of the corporate-driven effort to equate Green and Animal Rights Activism with terrorism. New laws initially generated by ALEC have resulted in the jailing of animal rights activists who succeeded in turning public opinion against certain corporations. There are important lessons here to be learned by all progressive activists.