New Releases by Bill McKibben

From the acclaimed environmentalist, a call to harness the power of the sun and rewrite our scientific, economic, and political future. Our climate, and our democracy, are melting down. But Bill McKibben, one of the first to sound the alarm about the climate crisis, insists the moment is also full of possibility. Energy from the sun and wind is suddenly the cheapest power on the planet and growing faster than any energy source in history—if we can keep accelerating the pace, we have a chance. Here Comes the Sun tells the story of the sudden spike in power from the sun and wind—and the desperate fight of the fossil fuel industry and their politicians to hold this new power at bay. From the everyday citizens who installed solar panels equal to a third of Pakistan’s electric grid in a year to the world’s sixth-largest economy—California—nearly halving its use of natural gas in the last two years, Bill McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy. And he shows how solar power is more than just a path out of the climate crisis: it is a chance to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. You can’t hoard solar energy or hold it in reserves—it’s available to all. There’s no guarantee we can make this change in time, but there is a hope—in McKibben’s eyes, our best hope for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.

Esta obra clásica sobre nuestra crisis medioambiental cuenta con una nueva introducción del autor, que repasa tanto los avances como el terreno perdido en la lucha por salvar la Tierra. Este apasionado alegato a favor de un cambio radical y renovador de la vida sigue considerándose hoy una obra pionera en los estudios medioambientales. El argumento de McKibben de que la supervivencia del planeta depende de un cambio filosófico fundamental en nuestra forma de relacionarnos con la naturaleza es más pertinente que nunca. McKibben escribe sobre el cataclismo medioambiental de nuestra Tierra, abordando cuestiones fundamentales como el efecto invernadero, la lluvia ácida y el agotamiento de la capa de ozono. Su nuevo prólogo aborda algunos de los últimos problemas medioambientales que han surgido durante las últimas dos décadas. El libro también incluye un nuevo apéndice de datos y cifras que analiza el progreso del movimiento ecologista. Más que un simple manual de supervivencia o un catálogo catastrofista de predicciones científicas, este clásico y conmovedor lamento sobre la naturaleza es una lectura obligada tanto para los entusiastas del medio natural como para los activistas y los ciudadanos preocupados por el medio ambiente.

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. “This was the most anomalous year (so far) in human history,” guest editor Bill McKibben writes, “the year in which the relationship between people and planet showed its most dramatic signs yet of unraveling.” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 reveal a trying year for our planet—from the Lahaina wildfire tragedy to the lush Amazon jungle slowly turning to savanna—while also celebrating the earth’s beautiful and mysterious ways—from the largest beaver dam on earth to the heroic innovation to prevent birds from crashing into Chicago’s expanse of glass buildings. These essays offer solace in trying times, showing a way for a better future. They are, as McKibben says, “a reminder that this world is still a lovely and deep place, well worth the fighting for.” The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 includes IAN FRAZIER • AMANDA GEFTER • DOUGLAS FOX • SARAH KAPLAN • BEN GOLDFARB • RAYMOND ZHONG • ALEX CUADROS • AND OTHERS

One of the New Yorker''s Best Books of 2022 Bill McKibben—award-winning author, activist, educator—is fiercely curious. “I’m curious about what went so suddenly sour with American patriotism, American faith, and American prosperity.” Like so many of us, McKibben grew up believing—knowing—that the United States was the greatest country on earth. As a teenager, he cheerfully led American Revolution tours in Lexington, Massachusetts. He sang “Kumbaya” at church. And with the remarkable rise of suburbia, he assumed that all Americans would share in the wealth. But fifty years later, he finds himself in an increasingly doubtful nation strained by bleak racial and economic inequality, on a planet whose future is in peril. And he is curious: What the hell happened? In this revelatory cri de coeur, McKibben digs deep into our history (and his own well-meaning but not all-seeing past) and into the latest scholarship on race and inequality in America, on the rise of the religious right, and on our environmental crisis to explain how we got to this point. He finds that he is not without hope. And he wonders if any of that trinity of his youth—The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon—could, or should, be reclaimed in the fight for a fairer future.

From environmentalist and bestselling author Bill McKibben comes a hopeful, inspiring picture book celebrating the power of human cooperation and the beauty of life on Earth, beautifully illustrated by artist Stevie Lewis. When we work together, we humans can do incredible things. We share the responsibility to address climate change and our changing planet. It is critical that we act collectively to protect our beautiful, fragile world. Renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben and the incredibly talented artist Stevie Lewis team up to bring this gorgeous picture book to life. Celebrating the amazing things people can do, it’s an inspiring message of hope.

In twenty short books, Penguin brings you the classics of the environmental movement. An Idea Can Go Extinct is Bill McKibben''s impassioned, groundbreaking account of how, by changing the earth''s entire atmosphere, the weather and the most basic forces around us, ''we are ending nature.'' Over the past 75 years, a new canon has emerged. As life on Earth has become irrevocably altered by humans, visionary thinkers around the world have raised their voices to defend the planet, and affirm our place at the heart of its restoration. Their words have endured through the decades, becoming the classics of a movement. Together, these books show the richness of environmental thought, and point the way to a fairer, saner, greener world.

Im Jahr 1989 warnte Bill McKibben mit seinem Buch »Das Ende der Natur« als einer der ersten vor dem Klimawandel. Sein neuer Aufruf ist umso dringender und weitreichender – die Menschheit ist dabei, nicht weniger als ihr Fortbestehen aufs Spiel zu setzen. Der Klimawandel ist heute, so McKibben, ein Hebel, der unsere Welt von Grund auf verändert. Die konzentrierte wirtschaftliche Macht in den Händen einiger weniger Spieler ist ein weiterer. Genauso die radikalen Konsequenzen der modernen Genetik sowie das Streben der Tech-Mogule nach künstlicher Intelligenz, das nach dem Sinn menschlichen Daseins gar nicht mehr fragt. In »Die taumelnde Welt« tritt Bill McKibben einen großen Schritt zurück, um dieses gesamte »Spiel der Menschheit« zu betrachten: Welchen Lauf nimmt es, wer macht die Regeln, und wie wollen wir es in Zukunft spielen?

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.

Presents an anthology of the best science and nature writing published in the previous year, selected from American periodicals.

“We''ve got a long history of resistance in Vermont and this book is testimony to that fact.” –Bernie Sanders A book that''s also the beginning of a movement, Bill McKibben''s debut novel Radio Free Vermont follows a band of Vermont patriots who decide that their state might be better off as its own republic. As the host of Radio Free Vermont--"underground, underpowered, and underfoot"--seventy-two-year-old Vern Barclay is currently broadcasting from an "undisclosed and double-secret location." With the help of a young computer prodigy named Perry Alterson, Vern uses his radio show to advocate for a simple yet radical idea: an independent Vermont, one where the state secedes from the United States and operates under a free local economy. But for now, he and his radio show must remain untraceable, because in addition to being a lifelong Vermonter and concerned citizen, Vern Barclay is also a fugitive from the law. In Radio Free Vermont, Bill McKibben entertains and expands upon an idea that''s become more popular than ever--seceding from the United States. Along with Vern and Perry, McKibben imagines an eccentric group of activists who carry out their own version of guerilla warfare, which includes dismissing local middle school children early in honor of ''Ethan Allen Day'' and hijacking a Coors Light truck and replacing the stock with local brew. Witty, biting, and terrifyingly timely, Radio Free Vermont is Bill McKibben''s fictional response to the burgeoning resistance movement.

It is said there are 20,000 species of bees, a genus 50 million years old, but in the fertile imagination of the world''s poets, there is no beginning or end to the bee buzz. Virgil wrote of bees, as did Rumi, Shakespeare, Burns, Coleridge, Emerson, Mandelstam, Neruda, Whitman--a lyrical hum heard well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in poems by Yeats, Lawrence, Plath, Mary Oliver, Carol Ann Duffy, Naomi Shihab Nye, and Sherman Alexie, among many others. The title of this book is from Emily Dickinson: To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee, / One clover, and a bee, / And revery. / The revery alone will do / If bees are few. Her conclusion resonates with a terrible poignancy today, as bees are indeed becoming few--hives collapsing, wild species disappearing. Amid this crisis, the poems collected here speak with a quiet urgency of a world lost if bees were to fall silent. If anyone can save the bees, it is entomologist Dr. Marla Spivak and the hive of bee scientists and beekeepers at the Bee Lab at the University of Minnesota. A portion of the author proceeds from this anthology will be donated to support research at the Bee Lab.

This issue of Plough Quarterly explores our relationship with the natural world. Hear from leading scientists, farmers, writers, activists, theologians, and artists who have set their hearts and minds and hands to caring for the earth for generations to come. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, fiction, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus'' message into practice and find common cause with others.

Erv Schroeder''s photographs bear witness to the primordial forces of the earth--the raw power that moved and shifted huge hunks of rock to form natural stone sculptures.

“Highly personal and original . . . McKibben goes beyond Marshall McLuhan’s theory that the medium is the message.” ——The New York Times Imagine watching an entire day’s worth of television on every single channel. Acclaimed environmental writer and culture critic Bill McKibben subjected himself to this sensory overload in an experiment to verify whether we are truly better informed than previous generations. Bombarded with newscasts and fluff pieces, game shows and talk shows, ads and infomercials, televangelist pleas and Brady Bunch episodes, McKibben processed twenty-four hours of programming on all ninety-three Fairfax, Virginia, cable stations. Then, as a counterpoint, he spent a day atop a quiet and remote mountain in the Adirondacks, exploring the unmediated man and making small yet vital discoveries about himself and the world around him. As relevant now as it was when originally written in 1992–and with new material from the author on the impact of the Internet age–this witty and astute book is certain to change the way you look at television and perceive media as a whole. “By turns humorous, wise, and troubling . . . a penetrating critique of technological society.”–Cleveland Plain Dealer “Masterful . . . a unique, bizarre portrait of our life and times.” –Los Angeles Times “Do yourself a favor: Put down the remote and pick up this book.” –Houston Chronicle

“A marvelous writer who has thought deeply about the environment, loves this part of the country, and knows how to be a first-class traveling companion.” —Entertainment Weekly In Wandering Home, one of his most personal books, New York Times–bestselling author Bill McKibben invites readers to join him on a hike from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks. Here he reveals that the motivation for his impassioned environmental activism is not high-minded or abstract, but as tangible as the lakes and forests he explored in his twenties, the same woods where he lives with his family today. Over the course of his journey McKibben meets with old friends and kindred spirits, including activists, writers, organic farmers, a vintner, a beekeeper, and environmental studies students, all in touch with nature and committed to its preservation. For McKibben, there is no better place than these woods to work out a balance between the wild and the cultivated, the individual and the global community, and to discover the answers to the challenges facing our planet today. “A short, lovely chronicle of a long hike, during which McKibben meditatively reflects on the relationship between nature and humanity. Nature writing at its best.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “An enamoring and discerning look at one man’s compiled thoughts and researched knowledge on the Adirondacks as he strolls through its dense forests.” —All Points North “[McKibben] writes with his usual wry, approachable power about the Adirondacks, his chosen home . . . The book could single-handedly spur a rush of tourism to the Adirondack area—it’s that good.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet Bill McKibben is not a person you''d expect to find handcuffed and behind bars, but that''s where he found himself in the summer of 2011 after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years, protesting the Keystone XL pipeline in front of the White House. With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Irene scouring the Atlantic, McKibben recognized that action was needed if solutions were to be found. Some of those would come at the local level, where McKibben joins forces with a Vermont beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil-fuel industry as a whole. Oil and Honey is McKibben''s account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight—from the center of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small-scale local answers to climate change. With empathy and passion he makes the case for a renewed commitment on both levels of the fight to stop global warming, telling the story of raising one year''s honey crop and building a social movement that''s still cresting.

Van Jones, Al Gore, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, and other essential voices on global warming, from its 19th-century discovery to the present, in a volume edited by Bill McKibben, our most widely respected environmental writer With the rise of extreme weather events worldwide--witness the devastation wrought by Hurricanes Sandy, Irene, and Katrina, and the sustained drought across the American West--global warming has become increasingly difficult to deny. What is happening to our planet? And what can we do about it? The Global Warming Reader provides more than thirty-five answers to these burning questions, from more than one hundred years of engagement with the topic. Here is Elizabeth Kolbert''s groundbreaking essay "The Darkening Sea," Michael Crichton''s skeptical view of climate change, George Monbiot''s biting indictment of those who are really using up the planet''s resources, NASA scientist James Hansen''s testimony before the U.S. Congress, and clarion calls for action by Al Gore, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Van Jones, and many others. The Global Warming Reader is a comprehensive resource, expertly edited by someone who lives and breathes this defining issue of our time.

Traditional Chinese edition of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Our planet is the only one we have, but it is no longer the big blue, but the big polluted. If we continue to turn a blind eye to this problem, it will catch up with us sooner rather than later. The book substantiate the conclusions through facts and figures on agriculture, weather, natural resources... and behooves humans to take immediate actions to restore our planet. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Bill McKibben has written his first book about Lewis, a boy who lives on the coast of Maine near a lighthouse. Enjoy the tale of Lewis'' exciting adventure as he races to save a ship on a stormy night. With just enough suspense for young readers, this fun read-a-loud book is illustrated with lively art by Robert Logan.

Powerful, impassioned essays on living and being in the world, from the bestselling author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy For a generation, Bill McKibben has been among America''s most impassioned and beloved writers on our relationship to our world and our environment. His groundbreaking book on climate change, The End of Nature, is considered "as important as Rachel Carson''s classic Silent Spring"* and Deep Economy, his "deeply thoughtful and mind-expanding"** exploration of globalization, helped awaken and fuel a movement to restore local economies. Now, for the first time, the best of McKibben''s essays—fiery, magical, and infused with his uniquely soulful investigations of modern life—are collected in a single volume, The Bill McKibben Reader. Whether meditating on today''s golden age in radio, the natural place of biting black flies in our lives, or the patriotism of a grandmother fighting to get corporate money out of politics, McKibben inspires us to become better caretakers of the Earth—and of one another. *The Plain Dealer (Cleveland ) **Michael Pollan

Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to stopping climate change, the world''s greatest threat Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change; the British government''s report on global warming estimates that the financial impact will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars—combined. Bill McKibben, the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it''s no longer time to debate global warming, it''s time to fight it. Drawing on the experience of Step It Up, a national day of rallies held on April 14, 2007, McKibben and the Step It Up team of organizers provide the facts of what must change to save the climate and show how to build the fight in your community, church, or college. They describe how to launch online grassroots campaigns, generate persuasive political pressure, plan high-profile events that will draw media attention, and other effective actions. Fight Global Warming Now offers an essential blueprint for a mighty new movement against the most urgent challenge facing us today.

Contending that more is not better for consumers, bestselling author McKibben offers a realistic, if challenging, scenario for a hopeful future. For those who wonder if there isn''t more to life than buying, he provides insight on individual responsibility as well as global awareness.

The twentieth century brought technological advances that led to improved quality of life for millions. But technology also brought devastation at Chernobyl, Bhopal, Minamata, Love Canal, and other places throughout the world now synonymous with the dark side of technology and human action. Vulnerable on this Earth is the first comprehensive book to explore the causes and consequences of fifteen major manmade environmental disasters in the twentieth century. Author Robert Emmet Hernan tells the story of toxic materials dumped into the sea, buried on land, and discharged into the air; of polluters recklessly advancing their own financial interests and ignoring dangers to others; and above all, of the determination and dignity of ordinary people who heroically fought for justice and change. Â From the preface by Bill McKibben: "In the years to come, the line that Hernan draws between natural and environmental disasters will blur. . . . What will remain the same, however, is human vulnerability. That vulnerability endangers us, of course-but it is closely related to the love, the shared concern, that might save us yet." Â Robert Emmet Hernan is an assistant attorney general in the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Department of Law and has served as trial counsel in numerous toxic waste cases, including the Love Canal case. Â Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature and Wandering Home . A prolific writer on environmental issues, McKibben is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

"In this collaborative project, photographer Chris Jordan and writers Bill McKibben and Susan Zakin combine their perspectives on the causes and consequences of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. Victoria Sloan Jordan''s poems touch the emotional terrain with a spareness that echoes the austere visual landscape. Taken together, these four viewpoints bear witness to the profound tragedy and raise challenging questions about the cultural conditions that contributed to its unprecedented severity."--BOOK JACKET.