New Books in Environmental Studies

Florentine Koppenborg’s Japan’s Nuclear Disaster and the Politics of Safety Governance (Cornell UP, 2023) begins with the understated observation that the triple disaster of March 2011 “exposed severe deficiencies in Japan’s nuclear safety governance.” This is the starting point for the rather curious story of the regulatory reforms taken up in the wake of the Fukushima disaster and how they creat...

Parking, quite literally, has a death grip on America: each year a handful of Americans are tragically killed by their fellow citizens over parking spots. But even when we don't resort to violence, we routinely do ridiculous things for parking, contorting our professional, social, and financial lives to get a spot. Indeed, in the century since the advent of the car, we have deformed--and in some c...

From whiskey in the American Revolution to Spam in WWII, food reveals a great deal about the society in which it exists. Selecting 15 foods that represent key moments in the history of the United States, this book takes readers from before European colonization to the present, narrating major turning points along the way, with food as a guide. US History in 15 Foods (Bloomsbury, 2023) takes everyd...

Fuji: A Mountain in the Making (Princeton UP, 2025) is A panoramic biography of Japan's iconic mountain from the Ice Age to the present Mount Fuji is everywhere recognized as a wonder of nature and enduring symbol of Japan. Yet behind the picture-postcard image is a history filled with conflict and upheaval. Violent eruptions across the centuries wrought havoc and instilled fear. Long an object of...

This episode explores what China’s subnational climate experiments tell us about the possibilities and limits of climate leadership in an era of intensified geopolitics. We discuss how China’s domestic governance dynamics matter for international climate cooperation and competition, especially as Chinese actors become central in the global low-carbon transition. Thus, we turn our attention away fr...

Clean energy won’t save us from the effects of climate change. Amid corporate Net Zero campaigns, the politics of the Green New Deal, and the calls to abandon fossil fuels for renewable technology — or vice versa — lies a troubling truth: No clean technological solutions can solve the problem of human-induced climate change. To find a credible path to a sustainable future, we must set aside hopes...

For the members of a Northern California tribe, salmon are the lifeblood of the people—a vital source of food, income, and cultural identity. When a catastrophic fish kill devastates the river, Amy Bowers Cordalis is propelled into action, reigniting her family’s 170-year battle against the U.S. government. In a moving and engrossing blend of memoir and history, Bowers Cordalis propels readers thr...

Conflicts over water are human-caused events with socio-political and economic causes. From Brazil's Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (MAB) to environmental activists in Pittsburgh, people are coming together to fight for control of their water. In Global Solidarities against water grabbing: Without water, we have nothing, Caitlin Schroerer examines how movements are communicating and organiz...

This episode features a conversation with the inspiring Dr. Veronica House, whose book Local Organic: Food Rhetorics and Community Writing for Impact (Utah State University Press, 2025) explores how writing takes shape within community networks. House brings a generous scholarly voice to questions of writing, community partnership, and meaningful collaboration, and this episode offers a chance to...

From canoes on the beach at Dzidzilalich to steamships and piers, Seattle's waterfront was the center of the city's economy and culture for generations. Its tumultuous history reflects a broader story of immigration, labor battles, and technological change. The 2001 Nisqually Earthquake brought fresh urgency and opportunity to remake this contested space, sparking intense debates over history pres...

A radical history of England, Contested Commons: A History of Protest and Public Space in England (Reaktion, 2025) by Dr. Katrina Navickas is a gripping overview of increasingly restrictive policing and legislation against protest in public spaces. It tells the long history of contests over Trafalgar Square, Hyde Park, Cable Street and Kinder Scout, as well as sites in towns and rural areas across...

What is the role of the state in supporting transitions and deeper transformations towards a more sustainable world?  Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. The role of the state in supporting shifts towards a more sustainable society is receiving increasing academic and policy attention from interest in green (new) deals to planet politics through to more crit...

The Great Wave is perhaps the most famous piece of Japanese artwork: a roaring blue wave and three boats on the ocean. And far in the background is Mt. Fuji. And that’s actually what Hokusai’s famous woodprint is about: Mt. Fuji, volcano and Japan’s tallest mountain. Andrew Bernstein tells the story of Mt. Fuji–from its geographic origins as a violent volcano through to its present day status as J...

As the world moves with increasing urgency to mitigate climate change and catalyze energy transitions to net zero, understanding the governance mechanisms that will unlock barriers to energy transitions is of critical importance. Governing Energy Transitions: A Study of Regime Complex Effectiveness on Geothermal Development in Indonesia and the Philippines (Cambridge UP, 2025) by Dr. Kathryn Chelm...

When the sun sets, things start to get interesting among wild animals. Wherever we live, whether in the city or suburbs or country, darkness conjures a hidden world of wildlife that most of us rarely glimpse. Foxes, wolves, and bears prowl while skunks, opossums, and porcupines lurk; fireflies send flashing signals to potential mates; raccoons rummage for food; owls and bats fly overhead. Wildlife...

In Embodied Ecology: Yoga and the Environment (Mandala Publishing, 2025), Hindu Studies scholar Christopher Key Chapple explores how Hindu and Yoga traditions can inform contemporary discourse about the problems of environmental degradation both in India and globally. What do Hinduism and Yoga philosophy have to say about ecology and the environment? Christopher Key Chapple provides an in-depth a...

Silt Sand Slurry: Dredging, Sediment, and the Worlds We Are Making is a visually rich investigation into where, why, and how sediment is central to the future of America's coasts. It was written by Rob Homes, Brett Milligan, and Gena Wirth, with contributions by Sean Burkholder, Brian Davis, and Justine Holzman and published by Applied Research + Design Publishing in 2023. Sediment is an unseen in...

To think through soil is to engage with some of the most critical issues of our time. In addition to its agricultural role in feeding eight billion people, soil has become the primary agent of carbon storage in global climate models, and it is crucial for biodiversity, flood control, and freshwater resources. Perhaps no other material is asked to do so much for the human environment, and yet our b...

"The Coast has been battered for years by decisions made by those who don’t live there and don’t have any connection to the place. It started early." Based on his investigative Newsroom series, Aaron Smale’s Tairāwhiti: Pine, Profit and the Cyclone (Bridget Williams, 2024) goes deep into the region’s struggle with colonial legacies and environmental mismanagement. Through personal stories, intervi...

In 1975 workers at Life Science Products, a small makeshift pesticide factory in Hopewell, Virginia, became ill after exposure to Kepone, the brand name for the pesticide chlordecone. They made the poison under contract for a much larger Hopewell company, Allied Chemical. Life Science workers had been breathing in the dust for more than a year. Ingestion of the chemical made their bodies seize and...

What good is aesthetics in a time of ecological crisis? Toward a Premodern Posthumanism: Anarchic Ontologies of Earthly Life in Early Modern France (Northwestern UP, 2025) shows that philosophical aesthetics contains unheeded potentialities for challenging the ontological subjection of nature to the human subject. Drawing on deconstructive, ecological, and biopolitical thought, Chad Córdova uncove...

It’s no secret that the Paris Agreement and voluntary efforts to address climate change are failing. Governments have spent three decades crafting international rules to manage the climate crisis yet have made little progress on decarbonization. In Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them (Princeton UP, 2025), Jessica Green explains why this is unsurpr...

Hailed in the New York Times as "a naturalist who can unfurl a sentence with the breathless ease of a master angler," Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? (W.W. Norton, 2025) is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as su...

What if wilderness is bad for wildlife? This question motivates the philosophical investigation in Wilderness, Morality, and Value (Lexington Books, 2022). Environmentalists aim to protect wilderness, and for good reasons, but wilderness entails unremittent, incalculable suffering for its non-human habitants. Given that it will become increasingly possible to augment nature in ways that ameliorate...

In Breathing Aesthetics (Duke University Press (2022), Jean-Thomas Tremblay argues that difficult breathing indexes the uneven distribution of risk in a contemporary era marked by the increasing contamination, weaponization, and monetization of air. Tremblay shows how biopolitical and necropolitical forces tied to the continuation of extractive capitalism, imperialism, and structural racism are em...