The first hopeful book about climate change, The Future Earth shows readers how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. The basics of climate science are easy. We know it is entirely human-caused. Which means its solutions will be similarly human-led. In The Future Earth, leading climate change advocate and weather-related journalist Eric Holthaus (“the Rebel Nerd of Meteorology”—Rolling Stone) offers a radical vision of our future, specifically how to reverse the short- and long-term effects of climate change over the next three decades. Anchored by world-class reporting, interviews with futurists, climatologists, biologists, economists, and climate change activists, it shows what the world could look like if we implemented radical solutions on the scale of the crises we face. What could happen if we reduced carbon emissions by 50 percent in the next decade? What could living in a city look like in 2030? How could the world operate in 2040, if the proposed Green New Deal created a 100 percent net carbon-free economy in the United States? This is the book for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the current state of our environment. Hopeful and prophetic, The Future Earth invites us to imagine how we can reverse the effects of climate change in our own lifetime and encourages us to enter a deeper relationship with the earth as conscientious stewards and to re-affirm our commitment to one another in our shared humanity.

Paleoclimatologist Curt Stager vividly describes how the decisions we make about the environment in the 21st century will affect the next 100,000 years of life on this planet, and how today's environmental debate is missing the long-term evidence. By considering the Earth's history over millions of years, this book changes our understanding: Most people accept that our planet is warming and that humans played the key role in causing it. We worry about the next few hundred years, yet miss its long-term magnitude. So what will the world look like? Curt Stager draws on geological history to show that the greatest threat to humans will not be global warming, but global cooling. When that hot 'backlash' eventually happens is entirely up to us: We have already put off the next Ice Age, but whether our descendents will see an ice-free Arctic, miles of submerged coasts, or an acidified ocean can still be decided. Whether we continue to pollute or rein ourselves in for the sake of future generations, the world will be vastly different. This lucid book will force climate sceptics, activists, and everyone in between think again about our future earth.

This open access book provides a theoretical framework and case studies on decision science for regional sustainability by integrating the natural and social sciences. The cases discussed include solution-oriented transdisciplinary studies on the environment, disasters, health, governance and human cooperation. Based on these case studies and comprehensive reviews of relevant works, including lessons learned from past failures for predictable surprises and successes in adaptive co-management, the book provides the reader with new perspectives on how we can co-design collaborative projects with various conflicts of interest and how we can transform our society for a sustainable future. The book makes a valuable contribution to the global research initiative Future Earth, promoting transdisciplinary studies to bridge the gap between science and society in knowledge generation processes and supporting efforts to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Compared to other publications on transdisciplinary studies, this book is unique in that evolutionary biology is used as an integrator for various areas related to human decision-making, and approaches social changes as processes of adaptive learning and evolution. Given its scope, the book is highly recommended to all readers seeking an integrated overview of human decision-making in the context of social transformation.

Authoritative reviews on the wide-ranging ramifications of climate change, from an international team of eminent researchers.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction of 2011 title A bold, far-reaching look at how our actions will decide the planet's future for millennia to come. Imagine a planet where North American and Eurasian navies are squaring off over shipping lanes through an acidified, ice-free Arctic. Centuries later, their northern descendants retreat southward as the recovering sea freezes over again. And later still, future nations plan how to avert an approaching Ice Age... by burning what remains of our fossil fuels. These are just a few of the events that are likely to befall Earth and human civilization in the next 100,000 years. And it will be the choices we make in this century that will affect that future more than those of any previous generation. We are living at the dawn of the Age of Humans; the only question is how long that age will last. Few of us have yet asked, "What happens after global warming?" Drawing upon the latest, groundbreaking works of a handful of climate visionaries, Curt Stager's Deep Future helps us look beyond 2100 a.d. to the next hundred millennia of life on Earth.

Discusses ways of conserving energy.

This is a critical time for the space program, and for all of us. Even the significant steps that we have taken since the dawn of the space age in 1957, including orbital flight, the Moon landings, and orbiting space stations, will in retrospect seem to be tiny steps compared to what lies ahead. Migrating into space will challenge us beyond anything we have previously accomplished, and we are destined to face adventures that are both fantastically breathtaking and supremely dangerous. "Beyond Earth" is for everyone interested in humankind's next great adventure -- the human settlement of the Solar System. A unique collection of world-class scholars, scientists, engineers, managers, astronauts, artists, authors, and professors examine the key questions of our unique circumstance at the dawn of a new era in space exploration and development: Why does space matter to us? What can we use it for? How can we get there efficiently? What will ordinary life be like in space? What will our homes be like on the Moon? On Mars? In orbit? Will we play? Will we love? The book does not stop with questions. It goes beyond the dramatic, the superficial, and the overly technical to the prescriptive, literally laying the brick and mortar for our future space faring civilisation. Contributing authors come from both hard and soft sciences; include education and the arts; and ask children, who will be the future space dwellers, for their visions. They document needed research. There are three underlying assumptions driving this book: First, that the human urge for flight, exploration and survival, plus its curiosity about the universe, are deeply embedded in our genes and in our minds; Second, that even if these urges were ignored, the continual improvement of the quality of life for the human race on earth, and perhaps even its ultimate survival, hinge on the successes of human exploration and habitation of space; and, Third that our generation can use the opportunity presented by outwards expansion to design a rewarding and exciting future of collaboration to capitalise on the lessons learned from human history on Earth.