Central Skagit Library District

"Plastic is everywhere you look. Our computers and children's toys are made out of it, and our water and slices of American cheese are packaged in it. But why is there so much and what is it doing to our bodies? Is it possible to use less plastic and be happier and healthier? In Plastic Purge, author Mike SanClements presents the history and science behind plastics, then teaches you how to cut down on the amount of plastic in your life. As an ecologist,...

At the time when Robinson wrote this book, the largest known source of radioactive contamination of the world's environment was a government-owned nuclear plant called Sellafield, not far from Wordsworth's cottage in the Lakes District; one child in sixty was dying from leukemia in the village closest to the plant. The central question of this eloquently impassioned book is: How can a country that we persist in calling a welfare state consciously...

The world's premier climatologist, Lonnie Thompson has been risking his career and life on the highest and most remote ice caps along the equator, in search of clues to the history of climate change. His most innovative work has taken place on these mountain glaciers, where he collects ice cores that provide detailed information about climate history, reaching back 750,000 years. To gather significant data Thompson has spent more time in the death...

Soil contamination...public lands...surface and groundwater pollution...coastal erosion...global warming. Have we reached the limits of this planet's ability to provide for us? If so, what can we do about it? These vital questions are addressed by Jill Schneiderman in The Earth Around Us, a unique collection of thirty-one essays by a diverse array of today's foremost scientist-writers. Sharing an ability to communicate science in a clear and engaging...

A New York Times New & Noteworthy Book One of the Daily Beast's 5 Essential Books to Read Before the Election A collection of the New Yorker's groundbreaking reporting from the front lines of climate change-including writing from Bill McKibben, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ian Frazier, Kathryn Schulz, and more Just one year after climatologist James Hansen first came before a Senate committee and testified that the Earth was now warmer than it had ever...

For the first time, His Royal Highness Charles, the Prince of Wales, shares his views on how mankind's most pressing modern challenges are rooted in our disharmony with nature. In the vein of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Van Jones' Green Collar Economy, Prince Charles presents the compelling case that solutions to our most dire crises-from climate change to poverty-lie in regaining a balance with the world around us.

Baby boomers enjoyed the most benign period in human history: fifty years of relative peace, cheap energy, plentiful grain supply, and a warming climate due to the highest solar activity for 8,000 years. The party is over-prepare for the twilight of abundance. David Archibald reveals the grim future the world faces on its current trajectory: massive fuel shortages, the bloodiest warfare in human history, a global starvation crisis, and a rapidly...

Three years after Roger Kennedy retired as director of the National Park Service, from his Santa Fe home he watched as the Cerro Grande Fire moved across the Pajarito Plateau and into Los Alamos. Two hundred and thirty-five homes were destroyed, more than 45,000 acres of forest were burned, and the nation's nuclear laboratories were threatened; even before the embers had died a blame game erupted. Kennedy's career as a public servant, which encompasses...

The current volume, New Insights and Perspectives on Conservation Biology is the fruit of several years of painstaking hard work and experience on the field in several countries across the continent of North America over the past decade or so. Environmental conservation and ecological restoration of natural ecosystems .I have been actively involved in several local, regional and international conservation projects as a volunteer field worker and as...

Published for the first time in the United States, The Little Green Handbook is a unique reference work that illustrates the most important global developments facing us today, explains them, and suggests area for positive change. It relates physical trends to social and political repercussions, drawing together evidence from many interrelated fields to explain the science behind the news stories, sound bytes, and cocktail-party banter. Just how serious...