Archives de catégorie : Environment

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED de Harald Lesch & Axel Kleidon

Policy-makers must act now, but first, they need to understand how nature actually works. The physicists Harald Lesch and Axel Kleidon express frustration over the widespread unwillingness among broad political circles to understand how nature functions—an essay intended as a wake-up call.

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED
(Nature Belongs to No Party)
by Harald Lesch & Axel Kleidon
C. Bertelsmann/PRH Germany, March 2026

Again and again, political and economic leaders act as if we can simply ignore the laws of nature, and like to think that technology can perform magic tricks à la Harry Potter. In « Nature Belongs to No Party », two physicists speak truth to power: they explain in clear terms that nature does not negotiate, is not a party member and won’t cede to our demands. What exactly do energy-efficiency and climate protection entail? Why does energy depreciate? And what policies would a government that understands how nature works adopt?

DIE NATUR IST KEIN PARTEIMITGLIED is useful ammunition for anyone who’s as frustrated and angry as the authors about the seeming inability of politicians to tackle climate change head on.

Harald Lesch is a professor of theoretical astrophysics at the Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, and one of Germany’s most famous scientists. He has presented several accessible and popular science programmes, and written and co-written many popular and bestselling books.

Axel Kleidon studied physics and meteorology at the universities of Hamburg and Purdue. After graduating with a PhD in meteorology, he did a postdoc at Stanford and joined the faculty of the University of Maryland. Since 2006, he has led a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. In his research, he uses thermodynamics to quantify natural energy conversions within the earth system, and applies this approach to understanding atmosphere-biosphere interactions, our planet’s response to global change, and the natural limits of renewable energy.

THE GLORIANS de Terry Tempest Williams

From the visionary New York Times bestselling author, a revelatory work of narrative nonfiction exploring beauty in the desert, climate change, and, transformative moments of power in a world beset by uncertainty.

THE GLORIANS
by Terry Tempest Williams
Grove Press, March 2026

Whether we believe it or not, rapid change is upon us. I am searching for grace.

In this time of political fragility, climate chaos, and seeking beauty wherever we can find its glimmer, Terry Tempest Williams introduces us to the Glorians. They are not distant deities, but the ordinary, often overlooked presences—animal, plant, memory, moment—that reveal our shared vulnerability and interconnectedness with the natural world. The Glorians can be as small as an ant ferrying a coyote willow blossom to its queen or as commonplace as the night sky. But what they can collectively show us—about the radical act of attending to beauty and carrying forward against all odds—is immense.

Journeying through encounters with the Glorians in the red rock desert of Utah during the pandemic to Harvard University where she teaches in the Divinity School, Williams weaves a story of astonishing personal and societal insight. As she grapples with the unsettled state of the world, she turns not to despair but to deep reflection. She sees how the Glorians are calling us to attention, not as an army, but as fellow inhabitants of our sacred, threatened home. They remind us of the power of contact between species and the profound courage—and awareness—it will take to dream a more cohesive future into being.

Wise and lyrical, The Glorians is a testament to the power of witness, a field guide to finding grace in the unexpected, and a moving invitation to engage with one another and our surroundings with renewed intention. In a modern world filled with increasing noise and anxiety, Terry Tempest Williams offers honest sustenance for the mind and spirit and distinguishes herself again as a trusted voice to whom we can turn to more fully understand our times.

Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of over twenty books of creative nonfiction, including the environmental classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. Among her other books are Leap; Red; The Open Space of Democracy; Finding Beauty in a Broken World; When Women Were Birds; The Hour of Land; and Erosion: Essays of Undoing. Her work has been translated and anthologized worldwide. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Lannan Literary Award, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and is currently writer-in-residence at the Harvard Divinity School. She divides her time between Cambridge, Massachusetts and Southeastern Utah.

THE RETURN OF THE OYSTERCATCHER de Scott Weidensaul

From the New York Times best-selling author of A World on the Wing, an exploration of the efforts led by scientists, conservationists, and Indigenous peoples to save birds around the world.

THE RETURN OF THE OYSTERCATCHER:
Saving Birds to Save the Planet
by Scott Weidensaul
W. W. Norton, April 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

As populations fall and once-great migration multitudes wither away, the future of birds may seem grim. But surprisingly, around the world, bird conservation is making things better. From the hyperlocal to the hemispherically immense, The Return of the Oystercatcher explores the recovery efforts that are not only preventing declines in bird populations but are helping them to thrive. Scott Weidensaul compiles amazing stories of hope and progress in some of the most unlikely places—from the resurgence of ducks in North America to the return of ospreys nesting in Southern Britain—to provide a road map of breathtaking environmental resilience. Because birds are so diverse, so ubiquitous, and cover virtually every square mile of the Earth’s surface, Weidensaul argues that by saving the birds we can also save the world. The result is an inspiring story of what’s working in bird conservation, recovery, and reintroduction, and what can work for the rest of the planet.

“Scott Weidensaul ranks among an elite group of writer-naturalists—Bruce Chatwin, John McPhee and David Quammen come to mind—whose straightforward eloquence elevates ecology to the level of philosophy.” —The Los Angeles Times Book Review

Scott Weidensaul is a Pennsylvania-based naturalist, most recently the New York Times bestseller A World on The Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds, and one of the most respected natural history writers in the country. He was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for his book Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere With Migratory Birds, and has written more than 30 other books on birds. He is a contributing editor to Audubon magazine and a columnist for Bird Watcher’s Digest. For the past 20 years Weidensaul has overseen one of the largest owl-migration research projects in the country, and he is one of fewer than 200 licensed hummingbird banders in the world.

ZEN ECOLOGY de Christopher Ives

Discover a way of living that can help you slow down and stay grounded—and at the same time reduce your ecological impact and engage more fully with the climate crisis.

ZEN ECOLOGY
by Christopher Ives
Wisdom Publications, March 2025

It may seem as though living ecologically and engaging in activism sacrifices our own enjoyment and happiness on the altar of doing the right thing. In this book, professor, naturalist, and Buddhist author Christopher Ives offers an alternative: a way of living that can actually be more fulfilling than the modern consumerist lifestyle. Rather than deprivation, it can bring us richness.

In Zen Ecology, Chris outlines his environmental ethic as a series of concentric circles, beginning with ourselves and then moving outward into our communities, all the while focusing on spaciousness, mindfulness, generosity, and contentment. At the individual level, we deal with distraction, clutter, and ecological harm. Here, Chris offers ways to help us pay attention, simplify our lives, and lower our impact. Then, we explore how to envision our home as a “place of the Way,” with Zen monastic life as a model for this—without having to be a monk! Next, we realize our embeddedness in nature and emplace ourselves in community with others, including other forms of life. Finally, we build on this basis to engage in activism to create a world that is more supportive of ecological health and spiritual fulfillment.

In this way, we avoid the two extremes of apathy and burnout, and uncover a way of living that is simple, joyful, embedded in nature, connected to others in community, and supportive of collective action.

Christopher Ives is a professor of religious studies at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. In his teaching and writing, he focuses on ethics in Zen Buddhism and Buddhist approaches to nature and environmental issues. His publications include Zen on the Trail: Hiking as Pilgrimage; Meditations on the Trail: A Guidebook for Self-Discovery; Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen’s Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics; Zen Awakening and Society; a translation (with Masao Abe) of Nishida Kitaro’s An Inquiry into the Good; a translation (with Gishin Tokiwa) of Shin’ichi Hisamatsu’s Critical Sermons of the Zen Tradition. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA de Joseph Ogilvy

A cautionary tale of human exploitation and the consequences for our oceans.

BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
by Joseph Ogilvy
Bloomsbury, Spring 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

Look west from San Francisco, or Monterey, or Long Beach, past the pleasure boats and the surfers and the cargo ships. This is the California Current, the ocean system that made the Golden State; 1900 miles of the most productive waters on earth, flowing all the way from the Salish Sea to the furthest tip of the Baja Peninsula. For more than ten millennia generation after generation of Native Californians built their lives on the Current—delicately managed and exceptionally productive—home to innumerable sardines, tuna, and abalone galore.

But it was not to last. As modernity beckoned we could not resist the urge to plunder. As each stock collapsed we moved to seek another, reconstituting our economies around each new creature we found in plenty, until all were gutted in turn. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea is the untold ocean story that brought California violently into the modern world, helped build its major cities, and brought thousands to its shores. At the heart of tremendous growth lay a remarkable boom-bust cycle, not just of the ocean, but of the human cultures that wrought it unwittingly on themselves, from Russian fur hunters tearing through territory in search of fresh otterskin, to the Chinese refugees seeking advantage in the ecological turmoil the Russians left behind, to the canning aristocracy born and destroyed by the sardine trade.

The world has vanishingly few untouched waters left to move into. At some point, we might want to start learning from our mistakes. BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA is a history of how we got here and a warning for what we may not wish to repeat.

Joseph Ogilvy is a writer and chef from London, based in Austin, TX. After graduating from Oxford University he spent several years working in London restaurants including Bocca di Lupo, while writing on his days off. His experience in kitchens led him to investigate both the tangled human and ecological history of food. He will do for the oceans what John Vaillant did for fire and has all the makings of the next Barry Lopez while appealing to the same readership as Mark Arax’s The Dreamt Land and Earl Swift’s Chesapeake Requiem.