United States
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Many accounts of climate change depict disasters striking faraway places: melting ice caps, fearsome hurricanes, all-consuming fires. How can seeing the consequences of human impacts up close help us grasp how global warming affects us and our neighbours? This book is a travelogue that spotlights what a changing climate looks like on the local level – for wherever local happens to be.
Michael M. Gunter, Jr. takes readers around the United States to bear witness to the many faces of the climate crisis. He argues that conscientious travel broadens understanding of climate change and makes its dangers concrete and immediate. Vivid vignettes explore the consequences for people and communities: sea level rise in Virginia, floods sweeping inland in Tennessee, Maine lobsters migrating away from American territorial waters, and imperilled ecosystems in national parks, from Alaskan permafrost to the Florida Keys. But Gunter finds inspiring initiatives to mitigate and adapt to these threats, including wind turbines in a tiny Texas town, green building construction in Kansas, and walkable urbanism in Portland, Oregon. These projects are already making a difference – and they underscore the importance of local action.
Drawing on interviews with government officials, industry leaders, and alternative energy activists, Climate Travels emphasizes direct personal experience and the centrality of environmental justice. Showing how travel can help bring the reality of climate change home, it offers readers a hopeful message about how to take action on the local level themselves.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: This Land Is Your Land
Part I. See It Yourself: Threats to the Home Front
1. Our Rising Seas
2. Flooding in the Forecast
3. Drought and Wildfire
4. More Extreme Weather
5. The Melt Is On
6. Changing Habitats and Species Diversity Loss
7. Ocean Trouble
8. Heat and Health
Part II. Do It Yourself: Action Making a Difference
9. Here Comes the Sun
10. Living with Less
11. The Winds Are Changing
12. Building (and Rebuilding) Green
13. Additional Alternative Energies
14. Rethinking Our Cities
15. Living with Change
Conclusion: Think Local, Act Local
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Michael M. Gunter, Jr. is a Cornell Distinguished Faculty Member and Arthur Vining Davis Fellow at Rollins College. His books include Building the Next Ark: How NGOs Work to Protect Biodiversity (2004) and Tales of an Ecotourist: What Travel to Wild Places Can Teach Us About Climate Change (2018).
"There is both urgency and agency in addressing our climate crisis. Read Climate Travels by Mike Gunter to understand why. Gunter takes us on a journey around the United States where we see both the dire threats Americans face and the rays of light that illuminate a path forward. Read this book and feel empowered to make a difference."
– Michael E. Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The New Climate War
"Gunter shows us in striking detail the impacts of climate change on neighborhoods, cities, and towns across the United States and then contrasts those images with stories of what communities and individuals are doing to ameliorate those impacts. This book should be read by the skeptical, the ambivalent, and those looking to enhance their efforts to deal with climate change."
– Eileen Claussen, founder of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
"Gunter's work is thoroughly grounded in science and policy combined with the appealing sense of a conversation. I really enjoyed reading Climate Travels, traveling to these different locales in such engaging and well-informed company."
– James Barilla, author of My Backyard Jungle and Naturebot
"This solid offering from Gunter [...] makes for an urgent overview of the ways climate change is reshaping the U.S."
– Publishers Weekly
"Gunter poses and answers three questions: where is climate change impacting localities around the United States, how bad is it, and what can be done about it? He addresses these existentially profound matters with ease in Climate Travels, offering a well-documented, up-to-date status report."
– Mark Hineline, author of Ground Truth: A Guide to Tracking Climate Change at Home
