Although global in scale, the impact of climate change will be felt at the local level. Refocusing our attention away from the ice shelves disintegrating in the Antarctic, the flooding of Pacific islands, and carbon inventories measured in billions of...

Acid rain has changed the face of the Adirondacks, created political tensions between the Northeast and the Midwest, and served as both a harbinger of global climate change and a "fire drill" for public- and private-sector responses to environmental crises. The history of acid rain research is a striking case in which a large-scale and long-term environmental problem was addressed in part through scientifically motivated changes in public policy. In the 1970s, acid rain was viewed as a simple problem that was limited in scope and characterized by "dead," fishless lakes. Scientists now have broader insights into the processes by which acid rain sets off a cascade of adverse effects in ecosystems as its components move through air, soil, vegetation, and surface waters. Written and designed to appeal to both scientists and lay readers, this book is a landmark example of scientific communication that provides a comprehensive scientific history of the phenomenon, from its discovery to the full understanding of the scope of its effects and the ultimate responses that have mitigated some of the damage to the region's lakes and forests. This book is published in association with the Adirondack Lakes Survey Corporation with the support of the Wildlife Conservation Society, United States Environmental Protection Agency, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

A Wild Idea shares the complete story of the difficult birth of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). The Adirondack region of New York's rural North Country forms the nation's largest State Park, with a territory as large as Vermont. Planning experts view the APA as a triumph of sustainability that balances human activity with the preservation of wild ecosystems. The truth isn't as pretty. The story of the APA, told here for the first time, is a complex, troubled tale of political dueling and communities pushed to the brink of violence. The North Country's environmental movement started among a small group of hunters and hikers, rose on a huge wave of public concern about pollution that crested in the early 1970s, and overcame multiple obstacles to "save" the Adirondacks. Edmondson shows how the movement's leaders persuaded a powerful Governor to recruit planners, naturalists, and advisors and assign a task that had never been attempted before. The team and the politicians who supported them worked around the clock to draft two visionary land-use plans and turn them into law. But they also made mistakes, and their strict regulations were met with determined opposition from local landowners who insisted that private property is private. A Wild Idea is based on in-depth interviews with five dozen insiders who are central to the story. Their observations contain many surprising and shocking revelations. This is a rich, exciting narrative about state power and how it was imposed on rural residents. It shows how the Adirondacks were "saved," and also why that campaign sparked a passionate rebellion.

A detailed geographic overview of the largest protected area in the contiguous United States and the largest region of protected temperate forests in the world spotlights climate, natural development, recreational growth, pollution, and many other aspects of the Adirondack Park in a reference that features 450 full-color maps, as well as 250 figures, graphs, tables, charts, and scientific drawings. Original.

The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes. Bill McKibben begins his journey atop Vermont’s Mt. Abraham, with a stunning view to the west that introduces us to the broad Champlain Valley of Vermont, the expanse of Lake Champlain, and behind it the towering wall of the Adirondacks. “In my experience,” McKibben tells us, “the world contains no finer blend of soil and rock and water and forest than that found in this scene laid out before me—a few just as fine, perhaps, but none finer. And no place where the essential human skills—cooperation, husbandry, restraint—offer more possibility for competent and graceful inhabitation, for working out the answers that the planet is posing in this age of ecological pinch and social fray.” The region he traverses offers a fine contrast between diverse forms of human habitation and pure wilderness. On the Vermont side, he visits with old friends who are trying to sustain traditional ways of living on the land and to invent new ones, from wineries to biodiesel. After crossing the lake in a rowboat, he backpacks south for ten days through the vast Adirondack woods. As he walks, he contemplates the questions that he first began to raise in his groundbreaking meditation on climate change, The End of Nature: What constitutes the natural? How much human intervention can a place stand before it loses its essence? What does it mean for a place to be truly wild? Wandering Home is a wise and hopeful book that enables us to better understand these questions and our place in the natural world. It also represents some of the best nature writing McKibben has ever done.

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.