Archives de catégorie : Environment

EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL de Markus Rex

One year in the eternal ice – a milestone in climate research

EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL
(Frozen at the North Pole)
by Markus Rex
C. Bertelsmann, November 2020

On the 20th September 2019 began the largest polar expedition of all time: The research vessel RV Polarstern set off from the port of Tromsø, Norway, to be frozen to the ice of the North Pole. Scientists from 20 countries have boarded to research the consequences of climate change for one whole year. Markus Rex, the head of this research expedition called MOSAiC, recounts in his book the story of this unique endeavour. He tells of everyday life in the extreme environment of the Arctic, of the challenges in terms of logistics and planning, and of the scientific findings that the researchers were able to gather. EINGEFROREN AM NORDPOL is not only the story of the largest research adventure ever but at the same time a vivid insight into the dramatic consequences of climate change.

Markus Rex is the head of atmospheric research at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Sea Research, and he is professor for atmospheric physics at the University of Potsdam. He had already joined numerous expeditions to the Arctic, Antarctica and other remote regions of the world to research the complex climatic processes that lead to at times dramatic climate changes. He heads the MOSAiC project, a unique research collaboration by 90 institutions from 20 countries.

MILL TOWN de Kerri Arsenault

Part memoir, part journalism, MILL TOWN is a multi-layered book that wrestles with some of the most worrying themes in our world today, including economic inequality, the environment, and unchecked corporate behavior, delivered in the most intimate package that is the story of one woman, her family and the small town in Maine where they are from.

MILL TOWN: Reckoning With What Remains
by Kerri Arsenault
St. Martin’s Press, September 2020

Kerri Arsenault grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for that seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, moral, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.” In Mill Town, Arsenault undertakes an excavation of a collective past, sifting through historical archives and scientific reports, talking to family and neighbors, and examining her own childhood to present a portrait of a community that illuminates not only the ruin of her hometown and the collapse of the working-class of America, but also the hazards of both living in and leaving home, and the silences we are all afraid to violate. In exquisite prose, Arsenault explores the corruption of bodies: the human body, bodies of water, and governmental bodies, and what it’s like to come from a place you love but doesn’t always love you back. A galvanizing and powerful debut, Mill Town is a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

Kerri Arsenault serves on the board of the National Books Critics Circle, is the Book Review Editor at Orion magazine, and Contributing Editor at Lithub. Arsenault received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and studied in Malmö University’s Communication for Develoment master’s programme. Her writing has appeared in Freeman’s, Lithub, Oprah.com, and The Minneapolis Star Tribute, among other publications. She lives in New England. This is her first book.

THE FUTURE EARTH de Eric Holthaus

The first hopeful book about climate change, THE FUTURE EARTH shows readers how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades.

THE FUTURE EARTH:
A Radical Vision for What’s Possible in the Age of Warming
by Eric Holthaus
HarperOne, June 2020

Credit: Karen Edquist

The basics of climate science are easy. We know it is entirely human-caused. Which means its solutions will be similarly human-led. In THE FUTURE EARTH, leading climate change advocate and weather-related journalist Eric Holthaus (“the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology”—Rolling Stone) offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists, biologists, economists, and climate change activists, it shows what the world could look like if we implemented radical solutions on the scale of the crises we face. What could happen if we reduced carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next decade? What could living in a city look like in 2030? How could the world operate in 2040, if the proposed Green New Deal created a 100 percent net carbon-free economy in the United States?

This is the book for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the current state of our environment. Hopeful and prophetic, THE FUTURE EARTH invites us to imagine how we can reverse the effects of climate change in our own lifetime and encourages us to enter a deeper relationship with the earth as conscientious stewards and to re-affirm our commitment to one another in our shared humanity.

Eric Holthaus is the leading journalist on all things weather and climate change. His work, which is regularly cited in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Buzzfeed, has appeared in Rolling Stone, Grist, and The Correspondent, where he currently covers climate science, policy, and solutions. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

FIRE DRILL FRIDAYS de Jane Fonda

Jane Fonda’s next book focuses on the climate crisis and her Fire Drill Friday weekly demonstrations in Washington D.C.

FIRE DRILL FRIDAYS:
Bold Moves for a Burning Planet
by Jane Fonda
Penguin Press, July 2021

Since October 11th, Jane Fonda has been leading weekly Friday protests in Washington D.C. in her now iconic red coat, heeding the urgent call of young activists like Greta Thunberg to take fighting climate change to the streets. She and the Friday actions have gotten so much media attention, in part because of Jane’s unyielding commitment in the form of civil disobedience, in which other celebrities and growing crowds of activists have been inspired to participate.

In the book, she writes of her awakening from an environmentally responsible lifestyle to an urgent need to engage in global activism as she hikes in Big Sur. With urgency as well as her signature humanity and humor, Jane will take readers with her as she leaves her comfort zone, bonds with activists young and old, experiences each week’s actions, is arrested and spends time in jail. In addition, she will write about how she learns from experts before the events—activists and scientists—about everything from stopping fossil fuel production to the impact on health and women. As she says, so many of us feel overwhelmed; we need to connect the dots to better understand what needs to be done.

FEASTING WILD de GinaRae LaCerva

A writer and anthropologist searches for wild foods―and reveals what we lose in a world where wildness itself is misunderstood, commodified, and hotly pursued.

FEASTING WILD:
In Search of the Last Untamed Food
by GinaRae LaCerva
Greystone Books, May 2020

Anthropologist and geographer GinaRae LaCerva’s fascination with hunting and gathering quickly exploded into a personal obsession that sent her on a quest to taste the wild foods we still eat and the ones we have forgotten: from wild boar in Borneo, to a lobster bake on an island in Maine, to gathering herbs near Kierkegaard’s grave in Copenhagen. She didn’t expect to find something much more profound—an untamable love affair and the elusive pleasure of simple sustenance. Along the way, she illuminates that the history of food is also the history of environmental conservation, examines the rapid transformation of wild food from nutritional necessity to luxury good, explores how this shift reflects our attempts to tame and commodify “natures” of all kinds, and ultimately finds that her own sense of adventure is just as unruly as the natural places she explores.
This impeccably researched narrative history uncovers something essential about what it means to love the planet in the age of extinction. Equal parts environmental history and adventure narrative, FEASTING WILD weaves together extensive field research and personal narrative to interrogate our concept of nature, investigate how our insatiable appetites have contributed to the current landscape of environmental crisis, and question what we might do about it now.

GinaRae LaCerva is a geographer, environmental anthropologist, and award-winning writer who has traveled extensively to research a variety of environmental and food-related topics. A National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, La Cerva holds a Master of Environmental Science from Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Master of Philosophy from the University of Cambridge. Originally from New Mexico, she lives in New York.