Climate and Capitalism’s editor Ian Angus looks at six new books that expose environmentalism’s false friends, analyse the idea of “environment”, explain renewable energy, trace the history of oceans, expose Monsanto’s Round-Up, and examine British science denial. Inclusion in this list does not indicate agreement with a book’s contents by the author.
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What It Will Take: Rejecting Dead-Ends & False Friends in the Fight for the Earth
By Carol Dansereau
CreateSpace, 2016
To win the environmental fight, we must understand what we’re up against. It is folly to focus on problems like “money in politics” while leaving the system that produces these problems intact. And we must recognise that many of the environmental groups we support are holding us back.
The Environment: A History of the Idea
By Paul Warde, Libby Robin & Sverker Sörlin
John Hopkins University Press, 2018
This account of how people came to conceive and dispute environmental crisis trace the emergence of the concept of the environment from its first appearance after World War II, to the 21st Century, the rise of Earth System Science and the declaration of a new planetary epoch, the Anthropocene.
Renewable Energy: A Primer for the Twenty-First Century
By Bruce Usher
Columbia University Press
A concise yet comprehensive account of the extraordinary growth in wind and solar energy; the trajectory of the transition from fossil fuels to renewables; and the implications for industries, countries, and the climate.
The Oceans: A Deep History
By Eelco J Rohling
Princeton University Press, 2017
An invaluable introduction to the cutting-edge science of paleoceanography. Rohling traces the history of oceans from their first appearance to today, exploring the close interrelationships of the oceans, climate, solid Earth processes, and life.
The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides
By Mitchel Cohen, editor
Simon & Schuster, 2019
Scientists and activists from around the world take a fresh look at the politics underlying the mass use of pesticides and the challenges people around the world face in their continuing campaigns against the purveyors of poison and the governments that enable them.
Denied: The Rise & Fall of Climate Contrarianism
By Richard Black
The Real Press, 2018
For a decade, contrarians controlled Britain’s political and media discourse on energy and climate change. In this look at the history of British climate denial, former BBC science and environment correspondent Richard Black outlines how they and their canonical arguments came to such prominence – and how they lost.