Fierce Climate, Sacred Ground is an ethnographic account of the impacts of climate change in Shishmaref, Alaska. In this small Iupiaq community, flooding and erosion are forcing community members to consider relocation as the only possible solution for long-term safety. However, a tangled web of policy obstacles, lack of funding, and organizational challenges leaves the community without a clear way forward, creating serious questions of how to maintain cultural identity under the new climate regime. Elizabeth Marino analyzes this unique and grounded example of a warming world as a confluence of political injustice, histories of colonialism, global climate change, and contemporary development decisions. The book merges theoretical insights from disaster studies, political analysis, and passages from field notes into an eminently readable text for a wide audience. This is an ethnography of climate change; a glimpse into the lived experiences of a global phenomenon.--(Source of description unspecified.)

From Africa to Asia and Latin America, the era of climate wars has begun. Extreme weather is breeding banditry, humanitarian crisis, and state failure. In Tropic of Chaos, investigative journalist Christian Parenti travels along the front lines of this gathering catastrophe--the belt of economically and politically battered postcolonial nations and war zones girding the planet's midlatitudes. Here he finds failed states amid climatic disasters. But he also reveals the unsettling presence of Western military forces and explains how they see an opportunity in the crisis to prepare for open-ended global counterinsurgency. Parenti argues that this incipient "climate fascism" -- a political hardening of wealthy states-- is bound to fail. The struggling states of the developing world cannot be allowed to collapse, as they will take other nations down as well. Instead, we must work to meet the challenge of climate-driven violence with a very different set of sustainable economic and development policies.

This revised and updated edition of Rudolf Geiger's classic text provides a clear and vivid description of the surface microclimate, its physical basis, and its interactions with the biosphere. The book explains the principles of microclimatology and illustrates how they apply to a wide array of subfields. Those new to the field will find it especially valuable as a guide to understanding and quantifying the vast and ever-increasing literature on the subject. Designed as an introductory text for students in environmental science, this book will also be an essential reference for scientists seeking a clear understanding of the nature and physical basis of the climate near the ground, and its interactions with the biosphere.

Taking our food system back is an act of revolution. Restoring the feminine is an act of sacred responsibility. Returning to the cycles of nature is an act of love. Grounding into the soil is an act of hope. The soil, the fertile ground beneath us, holds the key to the future of our planet and our species—yet few people are aware of the critical role soil health plays in reversing climate change. With Grounded, Dr. Erin Yu-Juin McMorrow takes us on a journey to explore the sacred interconnectedness between our soil and ourselves, seamlessly weaving the science of our broken carbon cycle and the oppression of the divine feminine into a powerful tapestry of hope and resilience. McMorrow is the voice of a generation that carries the future of our planet on their shoulders. “There’s no other group of people to pass this on to,” she writes. “If we want to create a world that we can keep living in, it’s time, and it’s us.” In Grounded, McMorrow guides us through the inner and outer work needed to restore the divine feminine and save our planet. Highlights include: The “brass tacks” of climate change—how everything from biodiversity loss to ocean acidification has roots in the killing of the microscopic life in our soilThe fertile soil is feminine—and the destruction of our earth and the feminine go hand in handSex, birth, life, and death—how our natural cycles parallel the sacred cycles of natureHow to create truly regenerative systems that celebrate the natural world’s infinite diversity, resilience, and abundancePractices to help you start making a difference right now—from personal reflections and meditations to seed saving and compostingFinding hope in the sacred nature of this work—when we do our part, just as with all of nature, spirit fills in the restBecoming grounded—root within to remember that you are of the earth, awaken your divine power, and expand in the world Grounded is both a clarion call and a revolutionary guide for restoring the sacred cycles that sustain all life. “With every step we take toward a more regenerative and abundant future,” McMorrow writes, “we engage in the important work of saving our soil—and our souls.”

Exploring the relationship between Native Americans and the natural world, Biodiversity and Native America questions the widespread view that indigenous peoples had minimal ecological impact in North America. Introducing a variety of perspectives - ethnopharmacological, ethnographic, archaeological, and biological - this volume shows that Native Americans were active managers of natural ecological systems. The book covers groups from the sophisticated agriculturalists of the Mississippi River drainage region to the low-density hunter-gatherers of arid western North America. This book allows readers to develop accurate restoration, management, and conservation models through a thorough knowledge of native peoples’ ecological history and dynamics. It also illustrates how indigenous peoples affected environmental patterns and processes, improving crop diversity and agricultural patterns.

As climate change makes the Arctic a region of key political interest, so questions of sovereignty are once more drawing international attention. The promise of new sources of mineral wealth and energy, and of new transportation routes, has seen countries expand their sovereignty claims. Increasingly, interested parties from both within and beyond the region, including states, indigenous groups, corporate organizations, and NGOs and are pursuing their visions for the Arctic. What form of political organization should prevail? Contesting the Arctic provides a map of potential governance options for the Arctic and addresses and evaluates the ways in which Arctic stakeholders throughout the region are seeking to pursue them.

In the 1990s, researchers in the Arctic noticed that floating summer sea ice had begun receding. This was accompanied by shifts in ocean circulation and unexpected changes in weather patterns throughout the world. The Arctic's perennially frozen ground, known as permafrost, was warming, and treeless tundra was being overtaken by shrubs. What was going on? Brave New Arctic is Mark Serreze's riveting firsthand account of how scientists from around the globe came together to find answers.

With Common Interior Alaska Cryptogams, Gary A. Laursen and Rodney Seppelt offer the first field guide to cryptogams of the Denali National Park and Preserve. Useful to both lay and professional investigators, this fully illustrated compendium covers mushroom fungi, lichenized fungi, lichenicolous fungi, slime molds, mosses, and liverworts. This field guide to commonly seen cryptogams will provide a basis for understanding their vast diversity of taxa, speciation, edibility, relative abundance, and utility, as well as the ecological roles played by these organisms.

"Doug Peacock, as ever, walks point for all of us. Not since Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature has a book of such import been presented to readers. Peacock’s intelligence defies measure. His is a beautiful, feral heart, always robust, relentless with its love and desire for the human race to survive, and be sculpted by the coming hard times: to learn a magnificent humility, even so late in the game. Doug Peacock’s mind is a marvel—there could be no more generous act than the writing of this book. It is a crowning achievement in a long career sent in service of beauty and the dignity of life."—Rick Bass, author of Why I Came West and The Lives of Rocks Our climate is changing fast. The future is uncertain, probably fiery, and likely terrifying. Yet shifting weather patterns have threatened humans before, right here in North America, when people first colonized this continent. About 15,000 years ago, the weather began to warm, melting the huge glaciers of the Late Pleistocene. In this brand new landscape, humans managed to adapt to unfamiliar habitats and dangerous creatures in the midst of a wildly fluctuating climate. What was it like to live with huge pack-hunting lions, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and gigantic short-faced bears, to hunt now extinct horses, camels, and mammoth? Are there lessons for modern people lingering along this ancient trail? The shifting weather patterns of today—what we call "global warming"—will far exceed anything our ancestors previously faced. Doug Peacock's latest narrative explores the full circle of climate change, from the death of the megafauna to the depletion of the ozone, in a deeply personal story that takes readers from Peacock's participation in an archeological dig for early Clovis remains in Livingston, MT, near his home, to the death of the local whitebark pine trees in the same region, as a result of changes in the migration pattern of pine beetles with the warming seasons. Writer and adventurer Doug Peacock has spent the past fifty years wandering the earth's wildest places, studying grizzly bears and advocating for the preservation of wilderness. He is the author of Grizzly Years; Baja; and Walking It Off and co-author of The Essential Grizzly. Peacock was named a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2011 Lannan Fellow.

Drug companies produce chemical substances that can save, extend, or substantially improve the quality of human life.However, even as the companies present themselves publicly as health and environmental stewards, their factories are a significant source of air and water pollution--toxic to people and the environment. In Puerto Rico, the pharmaceutical industry is the backbone of the island's economy: in one small town alone, there are over a dozen drug factories representing five multinationals, the highest concentration per capita of such factories in the world. It is a place where the enforcement of environmental regulations and the public trust they ensure are often violated in the name of economic development.