Search results for [Fire ecology] at Tsuga Consortium

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The fishermen and the dragon : fear, greed, and a fight for justice on the gulf coast / by Johnson, Kirk W.,author.;

Includes bibliographical references and index."A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster--a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement, and one woman's relentless battle for environmental justice. By the late 1970s, the fishermen of the Texas Gulf Coast were struggling. The bays that had sustained generations of shrimpers and crabbers before them were being poisoned by nearby petrochemical plants, oil spills, pesticides, and concrete. But as their nets came up light, the white shrimpers could only see one culprit: the small but growing number of newly resettled Vietnamese refugees who had recently started fishing. Turf was claimed. Guns were flashed. Threats were made. After a white crabber was killed by a young Vietnamese refugee in self-defense, the situation became a tinderbox primed to explode, and the Grand Dragon of the Texas Knights of the Ku Klux Klan saw an opportunity to stoke the fishermen's rage and prejudices. At a massive Klan rally near Galveston Bay one night in 1981, he strode over to an old boat graffitied with the words U.S.S. VIET CONG, torch in hand, and issued a ninety-day deadline for the refugees to leave or else "it's going to be a helluva lot more violent than Vietnam!" The white fishermen roared as the boat burned, convinced that if they could drive these newcomers from the coast, everything would return to normal. A shocking campaign of violence ensued, marked by burning crosses, conspiracy theories, death threats, torched boats, and heavily armed Klansmen patrolling Galveston Bay. The Vietnamese were on the brink of fleeing, until a charismatic leader in their community, a highly decorated colonel, convinced them to stand their ground by entrusting their fate with the Constitution. Drawing upon a trove of never-before-published material, including FBI and ATF records, unprecedented access to case files, and scores of firsthand interviews with Klansmen, shrimpers, law enforcement, environmental activists, lawyers, perpetrators and victims, Johnson uncovers secrets and secures confessions to crimes that went unsolved for more than forty years. This explosive investigation of a forgotten story, years in the making, ultimately leads Johnson to the doorstep of the one woman who could see clearly enough to recognize the true threat to the bays--and who now represents the fishermen's last hope"--

Subjects: Ku Klux Klan (1915- ); Fisheries; Refugees; Vietnamese;

Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1

unAPI

How to be a climate optimist : blueprints for a better world / by Turner, Chris,1973-author.;

Includes bibliographical references and index."From the National Business Book Award winner and GG finalist, a very different book about facing the climate crisis, and what awaits us on the other side. Chris Turner has reported from the places where the sustainable future first emerged--from green islands in Denmark and green office parks in southern India, to solar panel factories in California and idealistic intentional communities from Scotland to New Mexico. Here, he condenses the first quarter century of the global energy transition into bite-sized chunks of optimistic reflection and reportage, telling a story of a planet in peril and a global effort already beginning to save it. This is a book that moves past the despair and futile anger over ecological collapse and harnesses that passion toward the project of building a twenty-first century quality of life that surpasses the twentieth-century version in every way. How to Be a Climate Optimist overflows with optimism in a moment of great panic, upheaval and uncertainty over a world on fire."--

Subjects: Climate change mitigation.; Sustainability.; Sustainable living.;

Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1

unAPI

We have never lived on Earth : stories / by Van Schaik, Kasia,author.;

Includes bibliographical references."'Love in the age of microplastics.' Kasia Van Schaik's debut story collection follows the journey of Charlotte Ferrier, a child of divorce raised by a single mother in a small town in British Columbia after moving from South Africa. The stories traverse the most intimate, violent, and transforming moments of female experience in a world threatened by ecological crisis. Charlotte navigates relationships-- with lovers, parents, friends, and environments-- as they form and fray. Mother and daughter wait out the end of a bad year in a Mexican hotel; a friendship is tested as forest fires demolish Charlotte's town; a childhood friend disappears while travelling through Europe; and a girl on the beach examines the memories of dying jellyfish. Each story asks: how do we find connection in a world shaped by isolation? How do we accept the new? Written in startling, poetic prose, We Have Never Lived On Earth captures the feelings and experiences of being a woman: physical and psychological threat, creativity, disappointment, objectification, and desire. Calling to mind Alice Munro's precocious Del Jordan and Rachel Cusk's Faye, these powerful portraits of female interiority balance nostalgia, fear, and hope for the future as they tell of the struggle to understand what it means to live on earth."--Provided by publisher.

Subjects: Short stories.; Linked stories.; Psychological fiction.; Children of single parents; South Africans; Women;

Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1

unAPI

The genius of trees : how they mastered the elements and shaped the world / by Rix, Harriet,author.;

Includes bibliographical references and index."A mind-expanding exploration of how trees learned to shape our world by manipulating the elements, other species, and even humankind, possessing agency beyond anything we might have imagined. For a supposedly stationary life form, trees have demonstrated an astonishing mastery over the environment around them. They've been using fire since prehistoric times. Some tree species have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure their fruits reach large primates, who can spread their seeds over vast distances, while poisoning smaller and less useful mammals. Others can split solid rock and create fertile ground in barren landscapes, effectively building entire ecosystems from scratch. In The Genius of Trees, tree scientist Harriet Rix reveals the inventive ways trees sculpt their environment and explains the science of how they achieve these incredible feats. Taking us on an awe-inspiring journey through deep history and across the globe, Rix restores trees to their rightful position not as victims of our negligence, but as ingenious, stunningly inventive agents in a grand ecological narrative. Trees manipulate fundamental elements, other species, and even humankind to achieve their ends, as seen with oaks in Devon, UK, shaping ecosystems through root networks and fungi, those in Amedi, Iraq that can change sex as they get to a certain age, the laurel rainforests of the Canary Islands regulating water cycles, and metasequoias in California influencing microclimates. A recent big surprise has shown that trees have an even greater role in preventing global warming than we thought: trees, which were thought to produce methane, actually consume it. We share one world with trees and one need for survival. This eye-opening journey into the inner lives of nature's most powerful plant is a profoundly new and original way of understanding both the miracles trees perform and the glories of our natural world"--

Subjects: Trees; Trees; Trees;

Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1

unAPI

Red pockets : a tale of inheritance, ghosts, and the future / by Mah, Alice,author.;

Includes bibliographical references."A poignant personal narrative about family, cultural history, and ecology, and a quest to understand what we owe our ancestors and our descendants from an unforgettable new voice. "Part of me knew what the hungry ghosts wanted all along, what they still want. It is not vengeance. No, they want something else, but we refuse to listen. They want us to face up to our broken obligations." Every spring during the Qingming Festival, people return to their home villages in China to sweep the tombs of their ancestors. They make offerings of food and incense to prevent their ancestors from becoming hungry ghosts that could cause misfortune, illnesses and crop failures. Yet for the past century, the tombs of many overseas Chinese have been left unattended because of the ruptures of war and revolution. Following a record year of wildfires, Alice Mah returns to her family's rice village in South China, ninety years after her grandfather's last visit and fifty years after her last relative died in the village. While she finds clan members who still remember her family, there are no tombs left to sweep. Instead, there are incalculable clan debts to be paid. In Red Pockets, Mah chronicles her journey from the rice villages of South China to her home in post-industrial England, through the Chinatowns of Western Canada where she grew up, to the isles and industry of Scotland where she now lives. As years pass and fires rage on, she becomes increasingly troubled by her ancestors' neglected graves. Her research on pollution gives way to growing eco-anxiety, culminating in a crisis of spiritual belief. A haunting blend of memoir, cultural history and environmental exploration, Red Pockets confronts the hungry ghosts of our neglected ancestors, while searching for an acceptable offering. What do we owe to past and future generations? What do we owe to the places that we inhabit?"--

Subjects: Autobiographies.; Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Mah, Alice.; Mah, Alice; Mah, Alice; Chinese diaspora.; Chinese; Chinese; Intergenerational relations.; Chinese Canadians; Chinese Canadians;

Available copies: 0 / Total copies: 1

unAPI

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