Given what we know about climate change, should we still be raising and eating cattle? And how do we weigh the cultural and economic value of cattle against their environmental impact? This engaging book brings history, science, economics and popular culture together in a timely discussion about whether current practices can be justified in a period of rapid climate change.

Journalist Gregory Mthembu-Salter first encountered South Africa’s love of cattle during his own lobola negotiations. The book traces his personal journey through kraals, rangelands and feedlots across South Africa to find out more about the national hunger for cattle. He takes a broad sweep – drawing on such diverse sources as politicians involved in land reform, history, braai-side interviews with cattle farmers and abattoir owners, conversations with his mother-in-law, and analysis of cutting-edge science.

Mthembu-Salter suggests that perhaps 'cattle can remain wanted and treasured … more as living assets, kept in modest numbers on land where crops will not thrive, whose beef is eaten rarely – and, when it is, is savoured.'

A revelatory exploration of climate change from the perspective of wild species and natural ecosystems - an homage to the miraculous, vibrant entity that is life on Earth.

The stories we usually tell ourselves about climate change tend to focus on the damage inflicted on human societies by big storms, severe droughts, and rising sea levels. But the most powerful impacts are being and will be felt by the natural world and its myriad species, which are already in the midst of the sixth great extinction. Rising temperatures are fracturing ecosystems that took millions of years to evolve, disrupting the life forms they sustain - and in many cases driving them towards extinction. The natural Eden that humanity inherited is quickly slipping away.

Although we can never really know what a creature thinks or feels, The End of Eden invites the reader to meet wild species on their own terms in a range of ecosystems that span the globe. Combining classic natural history, first-hand reportage, and insights from cutting-edge research, Adam Welz brings us close to creatures like moose in northern Maine, parrots in Puerto Rico, cheetahs in Namibia, and rare fish in Australia as they struggle to survive. The stories are intimate yet expansive and always dramatic.

An exquisitely written and deeply researched exploration of wild species reacting to climate breakdown, The End of Eden offers a radical new kind of environmental journalism that connects humans to nature in a more empathetic way than ever before and galvanizes us to act in defense of the natural world before it's too late.

Carbon City Zero is a collaborative climate action game in which players develop a sustainable city by greening transport, transforming industries, getting citizens on board and showing world leaders how it’s done.

Each player starts with an identical deck, buying additional cards from a shared marketplace to create a more sustainable city. Balancing the need to generate income with reducing carbon, you can follow numerous paths to victory, but collaboration is key. You’ll need to bring together governments, industries and the public. And if you can’t bring carbon levels to zero before it’s too late, everybody loses. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

PLAY AND LEARN: learn about climate action as you play this new board game for all the family

SCREEN-FREE FUN for 2-4 players aged 8 and up

SOMETHING TO TREASURE: this is a quality product made to last, with bespoke illustration and stylish packaging (on FSC stocks)

Capitalism’s addiction to fossil fuels is heating our planet at a pace and scale never before experienced.

Extreme weather patterns, rising sea levels and accelerating feedback loops are a commonplace feature of our lives. The number of environmental refugees is increasing and several island states and low-lying countries are becoming vulnerable. Corporate-induced climate change has set us on an ecocidal path of species extinction. Governments and their international platforms such as the Paris Climate Agreement deliver too little, too late. Most states, including South Africa, continue on their carbon-intensive energy paths, with devastating results. Political leaders across the world are failing to provide systemic solutions to the climate crisis. This is the context in which we must ask ourselves: how can people and class agency change this destructive course of history?

The Climate Crisis investigates ecosocialist alternatives that are emerging. It presents the thinking of leading climate justice activists, campaigners and social movements advancing systemic alternatives and developing bottom-up, just transitions to sustain life. Through a combination of theoretical and empirical work, the authors collectively examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in the current moment.

Most importantly, it explores ways to renew historical socialism with democratic, ecosocialist alternatives to meet current challenges in South Africa and the world.

The Arctic: A Barometer of Global Climate Variability provides a comprehensive source of information on all aspects of the Arctic region. Through thorough research, first-hand accounts and case studies, the book details international arctic research initiatives and native environments, including flora and fauna. Sections explore the impact of climate change, the effect of the Arctic on climate change, the environmental issues facing the region and how it is adapting. It is also a must-read source of information for polar scientists, applicable PhD students, early researchers, environmental scholars, and anyone searching for information on any aspect of the Arctic region. Users will find a great resource that brings together all aspects of Arctic research into one concise book.

In Resilience: The Science of Adaptation to Climate Change leading experts analyze and question ongoing adaptation interventions. Contributions span different disciplinary perspectives, from law to engineering, and cover different regions from Africa to the Pacific. Chapters assess the need for adaptation, highlighting climate change impacts such as sea level rise, increases in temperature, changing hydrological variability, and threats to food security. The book then discusses the state of global legislation and means of tracking progress. It reviews ways to build resilience in a range of contexts- from the Arctic, to small island states, to urban areas, across food and energy systems. Critical tools for adaptation planning are highlighted - from social capital and ethics, to decision support systems, to innovative finance and risk transfer mechanisms. Controversies related to geoengineering and migration are also discussed. This book is an indispensable resource for scientists, practitioners, and policy makers working in climate change adaptation, sustainable development, ecosystem management, and urban planning.

Bringing together ecology, evolutionary moral psychology, and environmental ethics, J. Baird Callicott counters the narrative of blame and despair that prevails in contemporary discussions of climate ethics and offers a fresh, more optimistic approach. Whereas other environmental ethicists limit themselves to what Callicott calls Rational Individualism in discussing the problem of climate change only to conclude that, essentially, there is little hope that anything will be done in the face of its "perfect moral storm" (in Stephen Gardiner's words), Callicott refuses to accept this view. Instead, he encourages us to look to the Earth itself, and consider the crisis on grander spatial and temporal scales, as we have failed to in the past. Callicott supports this theory by exploring and enhancing Aldo Leopold's faint sketch of an Earth ethic in "Some Fundamentals of Conservation in the Southwest," a seldom-studied text from the early days of environmental ethics that was written in 1923 but not published until 1979 after the environmental movement gathered strength.

"Global Change Scenarios of the 21st Century" informs readers of conceivable environmental changes in the next hundred years. Integrated scenarios are used to communicate large amounts of information about different aspects of the global environmental system, together with society's role within this system. Uniquely, the scenarios are generated by an integrated computer model, IMAGE 2.1, which enhances consistency and provides a framework for linking environmental and social aspects of global change.
The book is divided into four parts, the volume begins by describing the model used to generate these scenarios, explaining its current features. This is followed by scenarios of changing climate, energy and food use, land cover, acidification, sea level and many other indicators of global change up to 2100. The long term consequences of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are then explored in a section which uses the concepts of 'safe landing' and 'safe emission corridors' to address the connection between the long-term climate protection and short-term emission reductions. The final sections examines how the complicated and crucial issue of how complex global scenario information can be communicated to policy makers.

In this volume, Stephen M. Gardiner and David A. Weisbach present arguments for and against the relevance of ethics to global climate policy. Gardiner argues that climate change is fundamentally an ethical issue, since it is an early instance of a distinctive challenge to ethical action (the perfect moral storm), and ethical concerns (such as with justice, rights, political legitimacy, community and humanity's relationship to nature) are at the heart of many of the decisions that need to be made. Consequently, climate policy that ignores ethics is at risk of "solving " the wrong problem, perhaps even to the extreme of endorsing forms of climate extortion. This is especially true of policy based on narrow forms of economic self-interest. By contrast, Weisbach argues that existing ethical theories are not well suited to addressing climate change. As applied to climate change, existing ethical theories suffer from internal logical problems and suggest infeasible strategies. Rather than following failed theories or waiting indefinitely for new and better ones, Weisbach argues that central motivation for climate policy is straightforward: it is in their common interest for people and nations to agree to policies that dramatically reduce emissions to prevent terrible harms.

The Arctic Tundra and adjacent Boreal Forest or Taiga support the most cold-adapted flora and fauna on Earth. The evolutionary capacity of both plants and animals to adapt to these thermally limiting conditions has always attracted biological investigation and is a central theme of this book. How the polar biota will adapt to a warmer world is creating significant and renewed interest in this habitat. The Arctic has always been subject to climatic fluctuation and the polar biota has successfully adapted to these changes throughout its evolutionary history. Whether or not climatic warming will allow the Boreal Forest to advance onto the treeless Tundra is one of the most tantalizing questions that can be asked today in relation to terrestrial polar biology. Tundra-Taiga Biology provides a circum-polar perspective of adaptation to low temperatures and short growing seasons, together with a history of climatic variation as it has affected the evolution of terrestrial life in the Tundra and the adjacent forested Taiga. It will appeal to researchers new to the field and to the many students, professional ecologists and conservation practitioners requiring a concise but authoritative overview of the biome. Its accessibility also makes it suitable for undergraduate and graduate students taking courses in tundra, taiga, and arctic ecology.

Climate change will have a bigger impact on humanity than the Internet has had. The last decade's spate of superstorms, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts has accelerated the public discourse on this topic and lent credence to climatologist Lonnie Thomson's 2010 statement that climate change "represents a clear and present danger to civilization." In June 2015, the Pope declared that action on climate change is a moral issue. This book offers the most up-to-date examination of climate change's foundational science, its implications for our future, and the core clean energy solutions. Alongside detailed but highly accessible descriptions of what is causing climate change, this entry in the What Everyone Needs to Know series answers questions about the practical implications of this growing force on our world: * How will climate change impact you and your family in the coming decades? * What are the future implications for owners of coastal property? * Should you plan on retiring in South Florida or the U.S. Southwest or Southern Europe? * What occupations and fields of study will be most in demand in a globally warmed world? * What impact will climate change have on investments and the global economy? As the world struggles to stem climate change and its effects, everyone will become a part of this story of the century. Here is what you need to know.

Water scarcity is the next big climate crisis. Water stress – not just scarcity, but also water-quality issues caused by pollution – is already driving the first waves of climate refugees. Rivers are drying out before they meet the oceans, and ancient lakes are disappearing. Fourteen of the world’s twenty megacities are now experiencing water scarcity or drought conditions. It’s increasingly clear that human mismanagement of water is dangerously unsustainable, for both ecological and human survival. And yet in recent years some key countries have been quietly and very successfully addressing water stress. How are Singapore and Israel, for example – both severely water-stressed countries – not in the same predicament as Chennai or California, but now boast surplus water? What can we learn from them and how can we use this knowledge to turn things around for the wider global community? Do we have to stop eating almonds and asparagus grown in the deserts of California and Peru? Could desalination of seawater be the answer? Or rainwater capture? Are some of the wilder ‘solutions’ – such as the plan to tow icebergs to Cape Town – pure madness, or necessary innovation? Award-winning environmental journalist Tim Smedley will travel the world to meet the experts, the victims, the activists and pioneers, to find out how we can mend the water table that our survival depends upon. His book will take an unblinking look at the current situation and how we got there. And then look to the solutions. The Last Drop promises to offer a fascinating, universally relevant account of the environmental and human factors that have led us to this point, and suggests practical ways in which we might address the crisis, before it’s too late.

From an award-winning science journalist comes Nomad Century, an urgent investigation of environmental migration--the most underreported, seismic consequence of our climate crisis that will force us to change where--and how--we live. "The MOST IMPORTANT BOOK I imagine I'll ever read."--Mary Roach "An IMPORTANT and PROVOCATIVE start to a crucial conversation." --Bill McKibben "We are facing a species emergency. We can survive, but to do so will require a planned and deliberate migration of a kind humanity has never before undertaken. This is the biggest human crisis you've never heard of." Drought-hit regions bleeding those for whom a rural life has become untenable. Coastlines diminishing year on year. Wildfires and hurricanes leaving widening swaths of destruction. The culprit, most of us accept, is climate change, but not enough of us are confronting one of its biggest, and most present, consequences: a total reshaping of the earth's human geography. As Gaia Vince points out early in Nomad Century, global migration has doubled in the past decade, on track to see literal billions displaced in the coming decades. What exactly is happening, Vince asks? And how will this new great migration reshape us all? In this deeply-reported clarion call, Vince draws on a career of environmental reporting and over two years of travel to the front lines of climate migration across the globe, to tell us how the changes already in play will transform our food, our cities, our politics, and much more. Her findings are answers we all need, now more than ever.

Urban Climate Change and Heat Islands: Characterization, Impacts, and Mitigation serves as a go to reference for a foundational understanding of urban-climate drivers and impacts. Through the book's comprehensive chapters, the authors help readers identify problems associated with urban climate change, along with potential solutions. Global case studies are included and presented in a way in which they become globally relevant to any urban or intra-urban environment. The authors call on their extensive experience to present and explore methodologies and approaches to quantifying urban-heat mitigation measures in a clear manner, focusing on heat islands, urban overheating and effects on air quality.

The Global Carbon Cycle and Climate Change: Scaling Ecological Energetics from Organism to the Biosphere, Second Edition examines the global carbon cycle and energy balance of the biosphere, following carbon and energy through increasingly complex levels of metabolism-from cells to ecosystems. Utilizing scientific explanations, analyses of ecosystem functions, extensive references, and cutting-edge examples of energy flow in ecosystems, this is an essential resource to aid in understanding the scientific basis of the role of ecological systems in climate change. Includes new chapters on dynamic properties of the global carbon cycle, climate models and projections, and managing carbon in the global biogeochemical cycle.

Heat Exposure and Human Health in the Context of Climate Change introduces the effects of heat on human health, especially in the context of climate change. The book utilizes case studies in addition to foundational knowledge and theory to demonstrate the epidemiological impact of heat, also presenting solutions for addressing this important public health issue. It is clearly organized to aid in understanding key questions such as why and how heat exposure impacts health, who are most vulnerable to heat exposure, and how to reduce the impacts of heat exposure. Providing guidance on public policy development as well as individual protection, this book is an interdisciplinary resource for researchers and policymakers in both public health and environmental science fields.

Wetlands provide a key service in an ecosystem such as providing resilience against drought and diverse habitats that support biodiversity. Because of their ephemeral character and their small size, however, these vulnerable ecosystems are declining rapidly as climate change continues to surge and human activities expand. Rational management of wet ecosystems need accompanying actions covering research, systematic observation, and more. Wetland Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, and the Impact of Climate Change produces innovative concepts, methodologies, tools, and applications for ecosystem service valuation, wetland biodiversity conservation, fresh water supply, agricultural production, food security, wetland management, and its impact on biodiversity. It assesses the cumulative risk posed to wetland habitats and species by human activities and explores the consequences for the delivery of ecosystem services and biodiversity at local, regional, and global scales, as well as the impacts of climate change on wetland ecosystems and water resources. Covering topics such as geochemistry, invasive species, and sedimentary change, this premier reference source is an indispensable resource for government officials, engineers, environmental managers, environmentalists, students and educators of higher education, researchers, and academicians.

Ecosystems of Resilience Practices: Contributions for Sustainability and Climate Change Adaptation focuses on resilience in action by exploring and providing approaches, perspectives, toolboxes, and theoretical discourses for the improvement and enhancement of territorial and community resilience practices towards sustainability and climate change mitigation/adaptation. The book develops a set of tools and design criteria to support the dissemination of resilience practices. This new toolset will support the expansion and reinforcement of resilience practices and the building of solutions related to climate change. The book is divided into three sections: Section one investigates the contribution this kind of resilience approach could have on sustainable development goals as related to climate change. It also includes other environmental challenges such as ecosystem resilience in the face of climate change. Chapters dedicated to exploring the issues for a renovated governance of territorial transformation processes are included. Section two focuses on the eco-systems of resilience practices characterization, including discourses on international networking of transitions initiatives. Section three presents operative guidelines, instruments, and proposals for the resilience practices "stabilization," "blooming," and "up scaling," aiming at a more effective and consistent contribution of resilience practices in reaching sustainability, adaptation goals, and scenarios at local and global scales.