"Authors explore the meaning and impact of Earth Day from 1970 to 2025."
"From the seeds planted by the first Earth Day celebrated over 50 years ago, an astonishing variety of environmental shoots have sprouted and spread. As a result, an eclectic mix of titles is required to celebrate Earth Month in 2025.
This month’s bookshelf offers four different but related takes on the environmental holiday.
The first take updates readers on the top priorities of the first Earth Day: clean air, clean water, and clean, as in litter-free, land. With cleaner air, New York Times columnist Carl Zimmer observes, it’s easier to detect and survey our “living atmosphere.” The legacy and future endurance of the Clean Water Act of 1972 is the focus of “Waters of the United States.” And “Waste Wars” tracks the now “globalized business of garbage.”
The next three titles examine our proximate relationships with nature: the everyday nature “Close to Home,” the protected nature of our national parks and wilderness areas, including “A Place Called Yellowstone,” and the extreme nature we find at the “Ends of the Earth.”"
Michael Svoboda reports for Yale Climate Connections April 24, 2025.
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