Global Change

In the last few years, it has become abundantly clear that the effects of accelerating climate change will be catastrophic, from rising seas to more violent storms to desertification. Yet why do nation-states find it so difficult to implement transnational policies that can reduce carbon output and slow global warming? In Oceans Rise, Empires Fall, Gerard Toal identifies geopolitics as the culprit.

We live at a time in which scientists race to reanimate extinct beasts, our most essential ecosystems require monumental engineering projects to survive, chicken breasts grow in test tubes, and multinational corporations conspire to poison the blood of every living creature. No rock, leaf, or cubic foot of air on Earth has escaped humanity's clumsy signature. The old distinctions - between natural and artificial, dystopia and utopia, science fiction and science fact - have blurred, losing all meaning. We inhabit an uncanny landscape of our own creation.

Alibaba, ahora la empresa de comercio electrónico más grande del mundo, escapó de la atención del mundo occidental durante más de diez años, mientras construía una base de clientes que sumaba más del doble de la de Amazon y se encargaba de la mayor parte de las transacciones de comercio electrónico en China. ¿Cómo pasó? ¿Y qué significó ser parte de tan revolucionario proyecto? En este libro, Porter Erisman, uno de los primeros empleados occidentales de Alibaba y jefe de marketing internacional entre 2000 y 2008, muestra cómo Jack Ma se levantó de la oscuridad para fundar Alibaba y dirigirla.

Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate. In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring.

Wildfires, hurricanes, and heat waves make headlines. But what is happening in Debra Hendrickson’s clinic tells another story of this strange and unsettling time. Hendrickson is a pediatrician in Reno, Nevada—the fastest warming city in the United States, where ash falls like snow during summer wildfires. In The Air They Breathe, Dr. Hendrickson recounts patients she’s seen who were harmed by worsening smoke, smog, and pollen.

Canada is collapsing. Economic and social pressures spawned by climate change have made the federation untenable. British Columbia has seceded from Canada, and Cascadia stretches from The Rockies to the Pacific, Alaska to the 49th parallel. Though a sanctuary amid global chaos, Cascadia is not safe. Internal divisions fueled by disparity and ethnicity have spawned violent protests. The beaches and borders are besieged with waves of desperate migrants and external powers conspire to obtain their natural resources on a planet all but depleted of them. The pressures and threats from without ...

Can you love someone whose worldview is different from yours? Who is committed to a cause that excludes you because of your race? Simon is an Indigenous person dedicated to the struggle for justice for First Nations people. Mattie loves him but is love enough? Birds are dying. At the Saunders Bird Rescue and Sanctuary where rescued parrots abandoned by their owners are rehabilitated and re-homed, a deadly virus has them dying in Mattie's hands. In the midst of this outbreak, she's called to investigate a mortality event where dozens of starlings fly into the pavement as if committing ...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Global Discontents by Noam Chomsky, read by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian. Global Discontents is an essential guide to geopolitics and how to fight back, from the world's leading public intellectual. What kind of world are we leaving to our grandchildren? How are the discontents kindled today likely to blaze and explode tomorrow?

Cyber-risk, climate change, and terrorism are all man-made risks. Daniel Wagner and Dante Disparte, two leading authorities in global risk management, make a compelling case for the need to bring traditional approaches to risk management and decision-making into the 21st century.

Grandpa is a heroic, freedom-loving polar bear from East Greenland who understands that his proud species is in far greater danger from the interventions of the federal government, overzealous wildlife scientists and Hollywood celebrities than from man-made global warming. He and his family live in a parallel, comfortable and modern world that humans cannot see and know nothing about. When he learns the U.S. Senate plans to add polar bears to the Endangered Species List he blows his top because he knows that it will mean tight government control over every part of their perfectly safe and ...

How Bad Are Bananas? was a groundbreaking book when first published in 2009, when most of us were hearing the phrase 'carbon footprint' for the first time. Mike Berners-Lee set out to inform us what was important (aviation, heating, swimming pools) and what made very little difference (bananas, naturally packaged, are good!). This new edition updates all the figures (from data centres to hosting a World Cup) and introduces many areas that have become a regular part of modern life - Twitter, the Cloud, Bitcoin, electric bikes and cars, even space tourism.

Jenna lives in the year 2080. It is a dystopian nightmare; a world ravished by climate change and non-stop wars, an Earth on the verge of becoming a lifeless, barren rock with toxic air and acidic oceans. But there is hope as she finds a way to travel back into the past to 2019. Now she must try to change the course of history, create a new timeline, and save the planet. “Super 8 Images” is a clever, thrilling, touching tale of time travel from James J. Caterino, the author of “Fireflies”, “Watch the Skies”, and the “The Last Neanderthal.”

On the brink of a critical moment in human history, this audiobook presents a vision of "planetary stewardship"—a rethinking of our relationship with our planet—and plots a new course for our future. In 2009, scientists identified nine planetary boundaries that keep Earth stable, ranging from biodiversity to ozone. Beyond these boundaries lurk tipping points. In order to stop short of these tipping points, the 2020s must see the fastest economic transition in history. This audiobook demonstrates how societies are reaching positive tipping points that make this transition possible.

This work positions itself as an essential guide for understanding the challenges of the 21st century, offering a critical and comprehensive analysis of the climate crisis and its profound political, economic, and social implications. With a multidisciplinary approach, the book explores the intersections between climate change, geopolitics, the global economy, and intergenerational justice, establishing itself as a crucial reference in the current debate.

In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s — when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress — to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland.

He has been working since his birth, hiding from the authorities to restore human civilization. Can he save the world from its path of destruction? Arhat is eight years old and almost an orphan. His parents have left him on the earth to control their private expeditions into space. He works with remote assistance from his parents and an elk. The elk is part of a community of elks with enhanced intelligence. Few people know about their existence. Very few know about their activities with Arhat and his parents. A training session of the elks goes out of control. Life of the elk, Arhat and his...

Every day we hear terrifying stories of prolonged droughts, heat waves, torrential floods, deepfreezes & hurricanes on the news. Every new year these weather phenomena become more extreme & unpredictable, it appears that mother nature grows angrier every new coming day. What more evidence do people need to fully believe that the climate is not just changing but has already changed for the worse. Hurricanes, tornadoes & typhoons are showing up in places they have never been before, & happening more frequently, they unleash the full wrath of mother nature onto the inhabitants of the coasts ...

Distinguished British historian Geoffrey Parker spent 15 years writing this ambitious history of the tumultuous 17th century, when nations were in the grip of what was known as the General Crisis. First published in 2013, Global Crisis reveals that freak weather was a key reason why the people of the 1600s lurched between droughts, famines, and countless wars.

Produced by Climate Central — a highly regarded, independent, nonprofit journalism and research organization founded in 2008 — and reviewed by scientists at major educational and research institutions the world over, Global Weirdness summarizes, in clear and accessible prose, everything we already know about the science of climate change. It explains what is likely to happen to the climate in the future and lays out in practical terms what we can and cannot do to avoid further shifts.

With its emphasis on relation over substance and possibility over predetermined endings, open and relational theology provides a way forward for both Muslims and Christians. This way, as “Open and Relational Theology and its Social and Political Implications: Muslim and Christian Perspectives” posits, aligns beautifully with important and ancient thinking from both traditions. Our world desperately needs “people of the book” to pursue cooperation over competition. Open and relational theology affords us that possibility. These essays were presented in their original forms at a ...