This post originally appeared on John Fleck's blog and is reposted with permission. 

There’s no way to pin down the moment I started working on my book Water is For Fighting Over, coming from Island Press this fall. It happened in fits and starts that extend back in one form or another for more than a decade. But the first time I really went all in was in the spring of 2010, when I made a trip down to Yuma, Arizona, and then up the Colorado River over several days to Las Vegas. It was the first time I went beyond just saying I was working on a book and actually spent money on fast food and cheap motels.

There was still sunlight left when I dumped my stuff at the motel, so I did what I always do, wherever I go. I went down to the river. To understand a community, I have found, you can always start with its water. Below and to the right of where this old railroad bridge used to cross the Colorado, the good folks of Yuma have built a fine city park, and on that April Sunday it was hopping. I got the last space in the parking lot, most every picnic table was in use, the barbecue grills were fired up, there were inner tubers in the river.

I asked the first person I ran into whether there was a community festival or something going on. Why all the people? No festival, she told me. Just a nice Sunday at the river.

At that moment I bonded with Yuma, a community that in many ways for me captures the 21st century Colorado River. It’s a desert farm town, with all the dry and hot and poor that goes along with that. But more than any town as you head up the Colorado River until perhaps Moab in Utah, Yuma has embraced its river. Most of the West we built around the Colorado River has required moving water out of the Colorado River and using it elsewhere. And in fact Yuma does that too. Most of the Yuma County ag water is diverted 20 miles upriver at Imperial Dam. The network of canals that brings the water down is a marvel all its own. But Yuma emphatically remembers that it’s a river town.

But Yuma emphatically remembers that it’s a river town. Last year I was there again on Easter, pulled in at dusk to the Hilton Garden Inn overlooking the park, and it was the same scene. The light was fading (it was darker than this picture looks, thank you Adobe photo modification products), but the people were still out at their river.

This is part of what motivates the project that my book turned into. I started the effort with a dismissive bias against desert agriculture. Does it make sense to grow alfalfa in the desert? By many measures, the water is more valuable in other uses. The economic benefits of urban water use dwarf those of desert agriculture, while at the same time environmental values press in from the other direction. But I’m unwilling to tell these folks, “Sorry, not enough water, we need it elsewhere.” I believe there is an alternative.

In the book I document three basic trends:

• farm communities like Yuma, growing their agricultural economies while using less water;
• cities like Los Angeles and Las Vegas, growing their economies while using less water;
• the growth of institutions needed to capitalize on those trends and develop the next level of water allocation and sharing rules to thread the needle left us by drought and climate change.

There’s a fourth trend that’s not so clear, but about which I choose to be optimistic – a shift toward returning some water for the environment. In the book, I lay out an argument for how the institutions of that third bullet can leverage the first two. I am optimistic. I think we can do this.

I sent off the final copy-edited version of the book earlier this month to the fine folks here at Island Press. There’s still one more wave of editing to come, proofing galleys later this spring. On the shelves by September. Dying to share it with y’all. Soon.

This post originally appeared on John Fleck's blog and is reposted with permission.

A student in one of our University of New Mexico Water Resources Program classes asked last week what the magic trick was to finding water data. We’d asked the students to do some really challenging modeling of the flow of water through New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande watersheds, and one of the biggest difficulties was finding usable data to plug into their models. My faculty colleague who’s helping teach the class (and who is one of the great data wizards of the Middle Rio Grande) didn’t have a good answer. Like all of us, he’s collected spreadsheets and bookmarks over the years that point in the right direction, but each question leads to a new data need. Water data is hard. Often it’s not collected at all, and when it is, it’s not standardized and connected up in ways that might make it accessible.

The result is that important policy questions – how might climate change impact agricultural acreage, or the need for groundwater pumping? what role might direct potable reuse of wastewater play? our students are smart, these are the kind of questions that interest them – are very hard to ask in any sort of a quantitative way.

My experience working with Western water data thus leaves me enormously sympathetic to the argument Charles Fishman made recently in the New York Times about the need for better US water data: 

Water may be the most important item in our lives, our economy and our landscape about which we know the least. We not only don’t tabulate our water use every hour or every day, we don’t do it every month, or even every year.

If you’re willing to put in the work, the problem can be tractable. On my hard drive is a precious collection of spreadsheets I collected over the last few years while working on my upcoming Island Press book Water is for Fighting Over – some provided by patient and helpful (and transparent! yay government sunshine!) water agency officials across the West, many built myself from old paper documents accumulated over the years. When a water district manager claims a reduction in summer irrigation, I now know where to go for the monthly totals through time to check it out. (Looking at you, Yuma County Water Users Association. And yes, the claim checked out.) But the current state of the data does not make this easy, and there are many, many geographies and categories of water use for which the data do not exist at all.

And even when the data does exist, it’s been collected in a particular way to meet a particular need, and comparisons across regions and water agencies trying to do the sort of apples-to-apples analysis that good regional<->national water policy requires is nigh impossible.

So yes, I’m in agreement with Charles – those of us trying to improve our nation’s water policies need better data to work with.

But I as I sit here in the midst of putting together a lecture for the students next week on the role of science in politics and policymaking, I am less clear than Charles about the direction the data<->policy arrows run.

Researching my upcoming Island Press book Water is for Fighting Over, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the places and the ways in which water governance has succeeded. My favorite example, which I spend a lot of time on in the book, is the West Basin regional aquifer in Southern California, south and west of downtown Los Angeles. (Here is the 628-page pdf of Elinor Ostrom’s PhD thesis on West Basin. Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait. It’s delightful.) There, the evolution of water governance and the provision of good water data went hand in hand. The evolving governance clarifies the need for data, and then better data feeds back into the evolution of better governance.

Simply collecting and providing good data runs the risk of what David Cash et al. call “the loading dock problem“, where science (in this case data) is collected by the sciencers and then handed to the policyers. This, they argue, is less useful than a two-way process in which those who would use the data help define the data that they need, and take ownership of and confidence in the results. What happened in West Basin very much involved the sort of “coproduction” of science Cash and colleagues describe.

Thus I am of a mixed mind about the usefulness of what Charles asks for:

Congress and President Obama should pass updated legislation creating inside the United States Geological Survey a vigorous water data agency with the explicit charge to gather and quickly release water data of every kind — what utilities provide, what fracking companies and strawberry growers use, what comes from rivers and reservoirs, the state of aquifers.

I fear that such a national effort, much as it might simplify my desire to have a better handle on the water consumed by the Colorado River Basin’s alfalfa farmers, is insufficient to spark the revolution Charles hopes for. So maybe call this “necessary but not sufficient”?

Every year, thousands of publishing professionals, booksellers, librarians, readers, authors, and unabashed book enthusiasts gather for Book Expo America. It’s an opportunity to learn about new books and trends in publishing, to gather as many galleys as you can fit in your luggage, and for me, to sell Island Press books.

For an Island Press book to arrive on the shelves of your favorite indie bookstore, we rely on our sales representative groups. Our reps have the enviable job of traveling to different independent bookstores in their regions and telling them about the upcoming books from a variety of publishers. BEA was a chance for me to meet with many of our rep groups and pitch our books.

Of course, a discussion about Island Press books is never just about books. While I started off with my description of Water is For Fighting Over to our California and Southwest reps, we ended with a discussion of successes they’ve seen personally in water conservation in their communities. And of course, many discussions of Baylen Linnekin’s Biting the Hands That Feed Us ended with everyone sharing personal stories of contradictions they’ve experienced in the food system. We ranged from high level discussions of climate change and policy to fun stories about using bike share.

It was especially gratifying to hear feedback from the people who are often on the ground selling our books. One rep said, “It’s such a joy to sell your books—they’re real books. They matter.”

There was a weird moment this afternoon when I was writing something and needed to dig out a reference from my book. (I do this a lot. It’s all there, the book has a lot of footnotes.) For a split second I started to follow the usual path on my hard drive to the final page proofs…. Click…. Pause….

Walk into living room, grab book off table, thumb through it. Yes, there it is, page 6, in the introduction.

I’ve been walking by the stack of books all weekend, reaching out and touching them, sometimes opening one up and reading a page.

During the flurry of attention around the release of Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates at one point described the moment of terror when he was in the midst of the hard part of writing, when he realized the risk of abject public failure. To write a book is a deeply arrogant, deeply public act: “Please pay a substantial sum of money for what I have to sayand spend hours reading it.” To fail at this is to fail in a very public way. I’m no Ta-Nehisi Coates, so my terror was of a different scale entirely, but it was no less real.

So I pick it up and I read a page and I’m pretty happy, and also relieved. It came out OK.

Water is for Fighting Over and Other Myths about Water in the West is available for pre-order, on the bookshelves at your favorite local bookstore Sept. 1.

On its centennial, there is no question in my mind about the central role of the U.S. National Park Service in my life’s trajectory.

Growing up in Southern California the child of teachers, I spent summers with our family on classic 1960s car camping vacations, traveling the West. Early and often, the trips included Grand Canyon National Park. One of my earliest boyhood memories is wandering the view spots at the south rim, hunting the fragmentary vistas where you can actually see the brown ribbon of the Colorado River at the canyon’s bottom. They were snippets full of mystery and longing, a tiny thing amidst this vastness. One must be careful about the fallacy, post hoc ergo propter hoc - after this therefore because of this. But I believe today with confidence that those moments spent as a kid on family vacations, repeated so many times, mattered to me completely.

The park sparked a curiosity and started a life of work spent trying to understand that river - what it means to our landscape here in the western United States, and what it means to our culture and way of life. The path between there and my life today is twisted, but my book Water is for Fighting Over: and Other Myths about Water in the West is very much the product of a life spent pursuing that curiosity sparked in a little boy standing at a National Park canyon view spot.

Perhaps this experience might have happened absent the creation of the institution of the National Park Service? It is hard to know, but I know that I am now what I am because of those questions planted half a century ago when a little boy stood on a Park Service lookout point peering down into the great unknown.

After covering the environment and specifically water issues in the West, why write a book about the topic? What surprised you?

There’s a narrative of doom in the non-fiction literature of the West—a narrative most famously laid out by the great Marc Reisner in his classic Cadillac Desert. The story is that our unwillingness to come to terms with the overbuilt farms and cities of the arid Southwest would, in the words of one author I quote in the book, “catalyze an apocalyptic collapse of Western society.” For many years I was a part of this narrative tradition, writing newspaper stories about dwindling snowpacks and dropping reservoirs as climate change dried up the West. But even as conditions worsened over the last decade, I found a remarkable adaptive capacity as communities learned to not only survive but to thrive with less water. I found stories of farmers switching crops and fallowing land to do more with less water. I found cities tearing out lawns and installing new low-flow fixtures. As the water supply shrank, I realized that when people have less water, they use less water.

You write in the book that you want to dispel myths about water in the West. How did thesemyths come about? Why do they matter?  How do they actually affect the way we manage water?

In the book, I quote geographer Daniel Grant, who writes about a “genre of apocalyptic prophecy” in American writing about water and drought. Those stories of a “human misalignment with nature,” and of punishment for that sin, resonate with the dominant narrative about life in the arid West. But I’ve seen a different story. Standing in the dry bed of the Colorado River down the hill from the Mexican city of San Luis in the spring of 2014, it was hard not to be hopeful. There, residents of the community gathered to watch a pulse of water arrive, an experiment in international cooperation to return water to an ecosystem and communities left dry by water use upstream in the United States. Seeing water users come together in the midst of a drought to share that water was a life-changing moment of hope. The myths of conflict and apocalyptic doom stand in the way of our ability to learn from and embrace those moments of hope.

News about water in the West seems to be pretty dire but you are hopeful in the book. What gives you that hope?

The story of the arrival of water in the dry bed of the Colorado River at the San Luis Bridge in the spring of 2014 is just a small part of a much larger story that gets lost in the rhetoric over our water troubles. In my home town of Albuquerque, per capita water use has been cut in half since the mid-1990s. We now have more people, using less water. In the midst of a persistent drought across much of the 21^st century, our aquifer is actually rising. In Las Vegas, water use peaked in 2002, and has dropped by 33 percent, even as the city’s population has grown by 600,000. In Imperial Valley, the largest farming region of the Colorado River Basin, water use has declined by more than 20 percent since the early 2000s, while agricultural productivity has risen. Over and over, communities find that when they have less water they use less water, and not only survive but thrive. Seeing that adaptive capacity provides hope for the difficult times ahead.

You detail many good news stories about water in the West in the book. Why aren’t these stories more well-known? Is there one example that stands out for you?

Journalism’s norms are geared toward finding problems, pointing fingers of blame, a watchdog culture that grew out of the Watergate era. During California’s deep drought of the last five years, we saw story after story in national and international media about the little community of East Porterville, where residents’ wells ran dry. Yet the fact that reporters looking for a story of doom kept returning to this one town suggested something important – most communities weren’t running out of water. A community not running out of water is a much harder story to tell.

In the fight for readers’ attention, the extraordinary trumps the ordinary. Yet if we are to really understand our water problems, and what their solutions might look like, those “ordinary” stories of communities not running out of water matter. In the book, I tell the story of Las Vegas, an extraordinary city in the desert that, framed in the apocalyptic narrative, seems doomed. Yet over the last two decades, Las Vegas built a remarkable level of resilience into its water management – dramatically reducing its water use, storing years’ worth of excess supplies underground, building new infrastructure to ensure that it could still get water from Lake Mead even as drought and climate change shrink the great reservoir. Las Vegas has more to do – no doubt it is only part of the way down the conservation path it needs to travel. But it has demonstrated the adaptive capacity to respond to the risks it faces and ensure its future.

In your experience, what is the key to more sustainable water use in the West?

It sounds hokey, but we need to learn to get along rather than fighting over water. In the book, I tell the story of environmentalist Jennifer Pitt and Arizona water manager Sid Wilson. They were enemies until they ended up on a float trip together on the Colorado River.  By the end of the trip, a bond had developed that led to a series of agreements that brought water managers and environmentalists together to try to find ways to meet the needs of both, laying the foundations for what eventually brought the river flowing back through San Luis a decade later. We need to recognize that we all can get by with less water, that we don’t need to fight to preserve our current share of a shrinking supply. We can’t all go on river trips together (much as we might all benefit), but we need to recognize that to build the complicated sharing arrangements needed in our transition to a collaborative, cooperative water management future, we need to invest in the human infrastructure – the networks of governance needed to make the deals to share our water in the future rather than fight over it. This is one of the key insights of Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel laureate whose work on water sharing lays the foundation for much of what I write.

What do you hope people take away from your book?

Most importantly, a sense of hope about our ability to overcome the challenges Marc Reisner so ably laid out in Cadillac Desert. But actually overcoming these challenges takes more than hope, which is why the stories of what success can look like – how Las Vegas cut its water use, how Jennifer Pitt and Sid Wilson found a way to provide water to cities and the environment, how the lettuce farmers of Yuma found a way to use less water while providing us a growing bounty of winter vegetables – are so important. We need to know that it is possible, and we also need to see examples of how it can be done. That is what I hope this book provides.

In a year when headlines are dominated by drought and news of Lake Mead water levels falling to historic lows, John Fleck's Water is for Fighting Over offers a refreshingly hopeful perspective about the state of the Colorado River and our ability to do more with less water. In his two decades of reporting on water in the Southwest, longtime journalist Fleck argues that rather than fighting over water, he has seen stories of successful compromise. His book delives into a deep history of water in the West and shares the stories of unique individuals who save and conserve water, wildlife, agriculture, and even lawns and fountains. Throughout, he shows that even in the depths of the worst drought, positive solution stories can still be found. Check out Chapter 2 from the book below and find out why the Albuquerque Journal says these stories "have turned the water crisis narrative on its head."

In honor of the first presidential debate tonight beteween Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, we asked Island Press authors: "If you were advisor to the president, what would your top priority be and why?" Check out their answers, in their own words, below. 

I'd urge the President to act on every possible opportunity to reduce the influence of money in the political process, because until that happens it will be increasingly difficult to make progress on anything else. 
-Dan Fagin, Toms River

Maintaining and extending the collaborative relationship with the Republic of Mexico over the shared waters of the Colorado River should be a sustained priority. The 2012 agreement known as "Minute 319", signed in 2012, included important water sharing provisions and for the first time allowed water to be returned to the desiccated Colorado River for the environment and the communities of Mexico. The deal was an important milestone, but it was only a temporary agreement. We need permanent solutions to the overuse of the Colorado River, and sustaining our partnership with Mexico is a critical piece.
-John Fleck, Water is for Fighting Over

1) Ending farm subsidies and other protection/promotion of food crops.
2) Embracing GMO neutrality. 
3) Ending federal support for state unpasteurized (raw) milk bans.
4) Reining in the FDA.
5) Ending the federal ban on sales of locally slaughtered meat. 
6) Ending federal policies that promote food waste. 
7) Improving food safety and choice by requiring good outcomes, rather than mandating specific processes.
8) Ending the federal ban on distilling spirits at home.
9) Deregulating the cultivation of hemp.
-Baylen Linnekin, Biting the Hands that Feed Us
For more elaboration on these bullets, see Linnekin’s full article on Reason.

My advice to a presidential candidate would be to recall the words of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, “The good thing about science is that its true whether or not you believe in it.” Natural forces are at work that will have adverse consequences, many of which are diametrically opposed to our national interests. Global climate change, the spread of vector borne diseases, and the rampant overuse of nonrenewable and renewable resources are just three such forces currently in play. The decisions that you make during your tenure will be pivotal relative to the health and well-being of our citizens, as well as the citizens of the world.  Recognize the fact that you are governing, just as Lincoln did, during a period of history that will resonate for centuries to come. Make wise environmental decisions even if they are not necessarily politically advantageous. Our futures depend upon it.   
-Alan Kolok, Modern Poisons

“I would urge the President to take strong action to pass climate change legislation in Congress. The form that climate change legislation would take would depend on the politics, but it is imperative that the U.S. begins to lead the world to action on climate change. Climate change isn’t even my own professional issue of focus (I would love to talk to the President about how to make our cities more resilient, green, and livable), but it seems to me clearly the crisis issue. Every major scientific study that is coming out is pointing toward serious consequences of climate change, happening now. Rather than thinking about climate change that will impact my kids’ lives, I am realizing it will deeply impact my own as well.”
-Rob McDonald, Conservation for Cities

If I had a chance to sit face-to-face with the winning candidate, my advice would be something like: Think about the welfare of our grandchildren when you make decisions on energy and environmental issues. Consider not just the short-term impacts but the long-term consequences of sea-level rise, extreme weather events, droughts, and loss of agricultural land. Set an example for reducing carbon emissions based on energy efficiency and renewable energy that can serve as a model for developing countries. Listen to our climate scientists and heed their warnings. Trust their advice on global warming in the same way you trust the advice of your physician with regard to your personal health.  
-Charles Eley, Design Professional’s Guide to Zero Net Energy Buildings

I would push for the next President to try again (yes, again!) to work on bipartisan climate action, perhaps with a revenue-neutral carbon tax like the Initiative 732 campaign that I’m a part of in Washington State. We’re proud to have endorsements from three Republicans in the state legislature as well as from a bunch of Democrats. The short-sighted opposition from some left-wing groups (including some mainstream “environmental” groups) highlights the risk of making climate change a partisan wedge issue for electing Democrats instead of an existential issue for all Americans. We need to try harder to build a big tent for lasting climate action, and that’s one one reason I’m so fond of the quote at the end of this NYT story (about the failed attempt by enviros to win control of the Washington State legislature for the Democrats in Nov 2014): “The most important thing is to normalize this issue [climate change] with Republicans,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist. “Anything that makes it more partisan makes it less likely that there will be legislation, until such time as Democrats take over the world. Which according to my watch, will not be happening anytime soon.” 
-Yoram Bauman, Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change

I would urge the President to reassert cross-departmental efforts such as the Partnership for Sustainable Communities to further empower local governments and constituents to meet ongoing challenges of urban development, because those challenges of land use, transportation, affordability will not be entirely met by private market solutions. I would also advise that the new administration investigate further centralizing resources relevant to urban areas, and evaluate (as was once proposed by Richard Florida) a new cabinet-level position focused on cities and rapidly urbanizing areas. Finally, I would suggest to the President that the federal government should lead by example by illustrating methods to elevate civic dialogue, including program development and funding to encourage individuals to obtain firsthand knowledge of the cities around them through careful observation and input into urban political and regulatory processes.
-Charles Wolfe, Seeing the Better City

Challenging as this will be even to try, much less accomplish, the next President should work to return a spirit of compromise and cooperation to the American political conversation. On the current course, no real progress toward environmental or social sustainability is possible. The impacts of climate change and demographic pressure are now becoming obvious to people of all political persuasions. Growing awareness may eventually offer room for fresh policy ideas: a carbon tax with proceeds turned into dividends and a universal basic income for all citizens, access for all to comprehensive sexuality education and reproductive health services, and humane and sustainable migration law.
-Robert Engelman, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want

As much as climate change will affect the United States, we likely have the capacity to adapt more effectively than most other countries—at least in terms of human welfare. At the same time, US demand for foreign goods and services is not going away; I, for one, don’t care what you say about the damn environment—I’m having my morning cup of tea or coffee come hell or high water (the latter an increasingly distinct possibility). If my personal recalcitrance is at all reflective of our national attitude, we nonetheless ought to be striving for a broadly-defined international stance that fully and coherently accounts for climate change. Specifically, in a world where the actions of our friends and our enemies will be increasingly defined by surging resource constraints (as well as “releases”—think Arctic oil…), our next President should focus on integrating foreign aid, fair trade, free trade, and military/security policy in a way that anticipates the incoming tsunami of threats—and opportunities—posed by climate chaos. 
-Charles Chester, Climate and Conservation

In general terms, I believe the wealth of the nation lies in two areas: natural resources and human resources. As a matter of national defense priority, these areas require policy attention at the national level. Attending to these issues requires commitment and collaboration among all political, ethnic, religious and socio-economic affiliations—it is time for the adults to take charge. In particular, it will be necessary to harness their combined strengths in a public and private partnership initiative. An outline of my top priorities topics includes the following:

Natural Resources/Climate Change:

• Clean energy and carbon reduction
• Ecosystem and land management
• Coastal and interior infrastructure protection
• Water resources
• Agriculture

Human Resources:

• Science and technology
• Public primary and secondary education

Public health

• Immigration reform
• Terrorism
• Social equity and income equality

-Michael Murphy, Landscape Architecture Theory, Second Edition

You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read Glenn Beck’s recent commentary in the New York Times.  “The only way for our society to work is for each of us to respect the views of others, and even try to understand and empathize with one another,” he wrote. He took the words right out of my mouth. And so, Glenn and I urge the next President to do exactly that, reach across the aisle, connect with the great diversity of people and views in this country, and with respect and empathy seek to understand.
-Lucy Moore, Common Ground on Hostile Turf

Given the evident impact of rampant development pressures and climate change on our nation’s wildlife populations and diverse ecosystems, I urge the next President to endorse and promote a strong federal leadership role in collaborative landscape-scale planning efforts among federal, state, tribal, and private landowners in order to ensure our natural heritage is conserved for present and future generations.
-Robert Keiter, To Conserve Unimpaired

Dear Future POTUS,
The U.S. must be consumed with the urgent goal of retooling the energy infrastructure of our country and the world. Cooperatively mobilizing with other nations, our government—we, the people—must immediately, using all just and complementary means at our disposal—e.g., directives, incentives, and disincentives—close down fossil fuel operations and facilitate replacing coal, oil, and gas dependencies with cradle-to-cradle manufacture and ecologically and socially sensitive installation of ready, climate-responsible technologies, including locally scaled wind turbines, geothermal plants, and solar panels.

No less urgently, as a globally-responsible facilitator, the U.S.—members of all administrative branches together with the citizenry who have chosen them—must, with forthright honesty and transparency, support a matured narrative of progress that is alluring across political spectrums. This story must redefine power to integrate economic prosperity with other commonly held values—such as equality, justice, democratic liberty, and skillful love for land that interpenetrates with human health and flourishing. It must recall people to ourselves and each other not as mere individual consumers, but as diverse, empowered, capably caring members—across generations—of families, neighborhoods, and of the whole ecosphere of interdependencies—bedrock to sunlight—the source of Earth’s life.
Sincerely,
Julianne Lutz Warren, Plain member of the U.S. and Earth, and author of Aldo Leopold’s Odyssey, Tenth Anniversary Edition

This blog originally appeared on John Fleck's blog and is reposted here with permission. 

I’d like to tell a Vin Scully story.

Growing up in Southern California in the 1960s, radio was a backdrop to our lives. It was the AM radio era, and KFI 640 was often on in the house, whatever they were playing. I loved radio. I would listen to whatever, fascinated by the magic.

For a time, I even listened to hockey. I had never seen a hockey game. I had no earthly idea where the blue line was or what what “icing the puck” meant. I would construct these elaborate images in my mind to match the frenzied voices on the radio.

So I listened to baseball, not as a baseball fan, but as a child mesmerized by the magic of a distant communicator telling stories. During that time, Scully and his broadcast partner Jerry Doggett would swap innings, each solo in the booth. As a youngster, there was no distinction in my mind between the two, but eventually from the background emerged Scully the storyteller.

There’s an easygoing way to his stories, a fun bit of business he’s telling a friend over the backdrop of a lazy summer afternoon at the ballpark, a circling parallel narrative that never got in the way of the day’s game, but rather filled in around it.

There was a period, memory is hazy but I’m guessing it was the early 1970s, when one of the local TV stations, KTTV Channel 11, would carry the Saturday road games, and Scully and Doggett would also do the TV play-by-play – one on TV, the other on the radio simultaneously, then switching. By that time I’d become a huge Scully fan, so I’d switch the sound and get Vin Scully for the whole game – half his TV call, the other half his radio call. I loved those Saturdays.

Continue reading the full post here.

This holiday season, give the gift of an Island Press book. With a catalog of more than 1,000 books, we guarantee there's something for everyone on your shopping list. Check out our list of staff selections, and share your own ideas in the comments below. 

For the OUTDOORSPERSON in your life:

Water is for Fighting Over...and Other Myths about Water in the West by John Fleck
Anyone who has ever rafted down the Colorado, spent a starlit night on its banks, or even drank from a faucet in the western US needs Water is for Fighting Over. Longtime journalist John Fleck will give the outdoors lover in your life a new appreciation for this amazing river and the people who work to conserve it. This book is a gift of hope for the New Year.

Satellites in the High Country: Searching for the Wild in the Age of Man by Jason Mark
Do you constantly find your friend waxing poetic about their camping tales and their intimate connection to the peaceful, yet mysterious powers of nature? Sounds like they will relate to Jason Mark’s tales of his expeditions across a multitude of American landscapes, as told in Satellites in the High Country. More than a collection of stories, this narrative demonstrates the power of nature’s wildness and explores what the concept of wild has come to mean in this Human Age.

What Should a Clever Moose Eat?: Natural History, Ecology, and the North Woods by John Pastor
Is the outdoorsperson in your life all dressed up in boots, parka, and backpack with nowhere to go? Looking for meaning in another titanium French press coffeemaker for the camp stove? What Should a Clever Moose Eat leaves the technogadgets behind and reminds us that all we really need to bring to the woods when we venture out is a curious mind and the ability to ask a good question about the natural world around us. Such as, why do leaves die? What do pine cones have to do with the shape of a bird’s beak? And, how are blowflies important to skunk cabbage? A few quality hours among its pages will equip your outdoor enthusiast to venture forth and view nature with new appreciation, whether in the North Woods with ecologist John Pastor or a natural ecosystem closer to home.

Also consider: River Notes by Wade Davis, Naturalist by E.O. Wilson

For the CLIMATE DENIER in your life:

Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change by Yoram Bauman
This holiday season, give your favorite climate-denier a passive aggressive “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” with The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change featuring self –described Stand-up Economist Yoram Bauman and award-winning illustrator Grady Klein. Give the gift of fun, entertaining basic understanding of what is, undeniably and not up for subjective debate, scientific fact!

Also consider: Heatstroke by Anthony Barnosky, Straight Up by Joseph Romm

For the HEALTH NUT in your life:

Unnatural Selection: How We Are Changing Life, Gene by Gene by Emily Monosson
Give the health nut in your life the gift of understanding with Unnatural Selection. Your friends and family will discover how chemicals are changing life on earth and how we can protect it. Plus, they’ll read fascinating stories about the search for a universal vaccine, the attack of relentless bedbugs, and a miracle cancer drug that saved a young father’s life.

Also consider: Toms River by Dan Fagin, Roads Were Not Built for Cars by Carlton Reid, 

For the ADVOCATE in your life:

Prospects for Resilience: Insights from New York City's Jamaica Bay by Sanderson, et. al
Need an antidote to the doom and gloom? Stressed-out environmental advocates will appreciate Prospects for Resilience: Insights from New York City's Jamaica Bay. It’s a deep dive into one of the most important questions of our time: how can we create cities where people and nature  thrive together? Prospects for Resilience showcases successful efforts to restore New York’s much abused Jamaica Bay, but its lessons apply to any communities seeking to become more resilient in a turbulent world.

Ecological Economics by Josh Farley and Herman Daly
Blow the mind of the advocate in your life with a copy of Ecological Economics by the godfather of ecological economics, Herman Daly, and Josh Farley. In plain, and sometimes humorous English, they’ll come to understand how our current economic system does not play by the same laws that govern nearly every other system known to humankind—that is, the laws of thermodynamics. Given recent financial and political events, there’s a message of hope within the book as it lays out specific policy and social change frameworks.

Also consider: Tactical Urbanism by Mike Lydon, Cooler Smarter by The Union of Concerned Scientists

For the CRAZY CAT PERSON in your life:

An Indomitable Beast: The Remarkable Journey of the Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz
The cat lovers in your life will lose themselves in An Indomitable Beast, an illuminating story about the journey of the jaguar. This is the perfect book for any of your feline loving friends, whether they want to pursue adventure with the big cats of the wild, or stay home with a book and cup of tea.

Also consider: The Carnivore Way by Cristina Eisenberg, Jaguar by Alan Rabinowitz 

For the GARDENER in your life:

Wild by Design: Strategies for Creating Life-Enhancing Landscapes by Margie Ruddick
Give your favorite gardener an antidote to the winter blues. The lush photographs of Wild by Design, and inspirational advice on cultivating landscapes in tune with nature, transport readers to spectacular parks, gardens, and far-flung forests. This book is guaranteed to be well-thumbed and underlined by the time spring planting season arrives!

Also consider: Brilliant Green by Stefano Mancuso, Principles of Ecological Landscape Design, Travis Beck

For the STUBBORN RELATIVE in your life:

Common Ground on Hostile Turf: Stories from an Environmental Mediator by Lucy Moore
For the person keeping the peace in your family this holiday season, the perfect gift is Common Ground on Hostile Turf, an inspiring how to guide demonstrating it is possible to bring vastly different views together. This book gives lessons learned on setting down at the table with the most diverse set of players and the journey they take to find common grounds and results. If your holiday dinner needs some mediation, look to the advice of author Lucy Moore.

Also consider: Communication Skills for Conservation Professionals by Susan Jacobson, Communicating Nature by Julia Corbett

For the HISTORY BUFF in your life: 

The Past and Future City: How Historic Preservation is Reviving America's Communities by Stephanie Meeks with Kevin C. Murphy
When it comes to the the future of our cities, the secret to urban revival lies in our past. Tickle the fancy of your favorite history buff by sharing The Past and Future City, which takes readers on a journey through our country's historic spaces to explain why preservation is important for all communities. With passion and expert insight, this book shows how historic spaces explain our past and serve as the foundation of our future.

Also consider: The Forgotten Founders by Stewart Udall, Aldo Leopold's Odyssey, Tenth Anniversary Edition by Julianne Lutz Warren

For the BUSINESS PERSON in your life:

Nature's Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature by Mark Tercek
For the aspiring CEO in your life who drools at phrases like "rates of return" and "investment," share the gift of Nature's Fortune, an essential guide to the world's economic (and environmental) well-being.

Also consider: Corporation 2020 by Pavan Sukhdev, Resilient by Design by Joseph Fiksel

The last decade has seen a remarkable shift to the better in the relationship between the United States and Mexico over their shared water resources. But that positive turn is now under threat as the change in U.S. administration imposes an unexpected “reset” in the relationship between the two nations.

The positive shift was most noticeable in the spring of 2014, when the governments of the two nations collaborated on an unprecedented international experiment – the release of water down a normally dry stretch of the Colorado River’s channel that serves for 20 miles as the border between the two nations. Birds followed the water, vegetation sprouted, and the communities bordering the river celebrated the water’s return.

The Colorado River, which flows through seven U.S. states and two in Mexico, is a critical resource for natural and human systems across arid southwestern North America. It has seen more than its share of conflict and struggle, but in recent decades, it has been the site of a burgeoning spirit of cooperation over the collective management of a shared common pool resource. That has been especially significant in recent years as the river crosses the international border between the United States and Mexico.

The 2014 environmental pulse flow, celebrated internationally, was the most visible piece of a fundamental restructuring of the two nations’ approach to sharing the waters of the Colorado. It was a far cry from the early 1960s, when the United States delivered Colorado River water to its downstream neighbors in Mexico so contaminated that it killed crops and was unsuitable for municipal use. The U.S. government’s argument was boldly cynical – a 1944 treaty guaranteed that we share water with our Mexico, but the treaty said nothing about the water’s quality.

The difference between that international crisis and the first decades of the 21^st century is striking. In the spring of 2010, when an earthquake damaged Mexican irrigation canals, the United States agreed to store unused Mexican water in the U.S. reservoir at Lake Mead. Conflict over the river had given way to a recognition of the mutual benefits of collaboration around the water system we share.

An important new agreement to expand the collaborative framework between the two countries has been in negotiation for several years, but it was not completed in time for the outgoing Obama administration to sign it before leaving office. The agreement offers crucial benefits to both sides. Mexico, with no big reservoirs of its own, gets the right to continue storing its water in Lake Mead. That helps US water users by keeping Lake Mead from dropping to dangerously low levels that could trigger a shortage that would hit Arizona, Nevada, and possibly California. Both countries agree to share shortages when drought and climate change sap the Colorado River’s supplies. The agreement has widespread support in the United States among the states, three red and four blue, that make up the Colorado River Basin. Water managers on both sides of the border have embraced the deal.

The risk now is that broader conflict between the two countries over things like trade and a border wall could complicate this important agreement. As former Assistant Secretary of the Interior Anne Castle, who worked on US-Mexico Colorado River negotiations, told Greenwire, “There seems to be a demonizing of Mexico in general that is becoming more difficult to overcome.”

The demonization of our neighbor is unfortunate for many reasons, but it would be especially unfortunate if this agreement, so important for communities on both sides of the border, suffers in the process.

The environment is facing tough times in a Trump presidency. Within an hour of his inaguration, all mentions of climate change were removed from the White House website. Since then, key environmental regulations have been slashed, and a bill has been introduced calling for the abolishment of the EPA. So what's an environmentalist to do? Below, Island Press authors share their advice for agitating for action on climate change and continuing to push an environmental agenda forward in the face of an unsupportive administration. 

Don't freak out. OK, maybe freaking out is in order. But do it judiciously. There are many gaps between administration pronouncements and actual policy. Do not react to every executive order, press release, or tweet. Find the connections between administration statements and real policies. For whatever issue you care about, there's a group - environmental, immigrants rights, etc. - that's been working on it for years. Find them, look to them for guidance, volunteer or give them money. Get involved.
-John Fleck, Water is for Fighting Over...and Other Myths about Water in the West

The threats facing big cats and their landscapes remain unchanged in light of the recent U.S. presidential election, but the urgency with which we need to protect them remains. There are many meaningful ways to take action on this front, whether it’s by supporting nonprofits like Panthera or purchasing goods from companies committed to using resources sustainably.  Everyone should follow organizations whose missions speak to them and whose actions are in sync with their words.  Share their work and start conversations about why and how animals and their landscapes are so important to the health of our planet and ultimately ourselves as well.
-Alan Rabinowitz, An Indomitable Beast and CEO of Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization

In my book, I describe how food waste contributes dramatically to climate change, noting that food waste is the world’s third-leading contributor of atmospheric greenhouse gases, which trails only two whole countries—China and the United States—in that category. I also describe how government regulations promote food waste and, hence, climate change. The USDA's National School Lunch Program and food-grading standards both promote massive amounts of food waste, and should be overhauled and/or eliminated. Even if our unhinged president does nothing about either of these issues, regular people can vote with their forks by, for example, purchasing ungraded produce at farmers markets and packing a school lunch for their child (and a second lunch for a student in need).
-Baylen Linnekin, Biting the Hands that Feed Us

One would think the great coniferous forests of the Northwest could withstand just about anything nature had to throw at them. In truth, however, these forests have been drastically changed by human activities.  Increasingly unusual temperature and rainfall patterns are ratcheting up the threat level. A person would surely be excused for thinking that a one degree Celsius rise in average temperature would have no effect on these magnificent trees and the animals they harbor, but consider that such a small temperature increase would raise the lower edge of the snowpack by about 500 feet. That’s a lot of water no longer contributing to spring and summer runoff when plants and animals are most thirsty. Such a temperature increase would also cause the vegetation to transpire a lot more water, drying out the soils and shrinking the creeks and waterways. Forests that have dried out too much are more susceptible to widespread pest and disease infestations as well as to fire.

All is not lost, however; there are ways to deal with climate effects. Probably the most straightforward of these is to maintain a diverse forest with a variety of tree species, tree ages, and vegetation layers. Openings in the forest canopy can help to support a healthy shrub layer. Vegetation around streams helps to cool them so they can support cold-water fish, such as salmon. Forest restoration efforts following fires or other disturbances can help. Planting diverse native species and perhaps using seed or stock from an area where temperatures are more similar to those predicted over next several decades can help these forests to be resilient to climate change and other disturbances that come with changing climate. Replacing small culverts with larger ones that are carefully set can accommodate spring floods while helping fish to navigate upstream when water flows are reduced.   

People concerned about the future of these forests can get involved in local forest planning. Speaking up for the forests, and providing a voice for their future and that of the communities that rely on them, is a great way to roll up your sleeves and make a difference.
-Bea Van Horne, People, Forests, and Change

1.) Get involved locally.  There are environment, climate change issues that are impacting your community. Get involved on the local, grassroots level.
2.) Don’t get discouraged.  Get informed, know the facts (and yes, there is such a thing as factual information) and don’t lose your resolve. 
-Alan Kolok, Modern Poisons

There are ample opportunities for everyone to get involved with local planning to address climate change. Tools you can use to make your communities or natural areas more resilient and resistant to climate change include: 1) retaining and restoring moist areas – such as by keeping downed wood and ephemeral wetlands, installing riparian buffer zones, and paying attention to shading including hill-shading which naturally increases moisture potential; and 2) a mixed approach to natural-area management can increase both habitat heterogeneity at larger spatial scales and consequently species diversity, and then think about linking those habitats together across larger areas with corridors to reduce fragmentation.
-Dede Olson, People, Forests and Change

As the federal government proceeds to put its head further into the sand on climate change, the action will increasingly shift to local policy.  Cities can’t solve the problem through regulation—their jurisdictions are too limited.  But they can help through purchasing policies, utility pricing and transportation planning. Think globally/act locally suddenly takes on more significance than ever.
-Grady Gammage,  The Future of the Suburban City

You can’t stop human-caused climate change on your own, but you can slow it down a bit. And you can do it with a president in the White House who’s working to uncork new gushers of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Slowing climate change begins with personal behavior, since all human beings contribute heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. For those thinking about having children, it’s worth pondering that managing greenhouse gas emissions will be a challenge for as long as we’re on the planet. That’s a good argument for having a small family—or foregoing childbearing if ambivalent about becoming a parent. A smaller world population will have an easier time keeping emissions low and adapting to the massive changes on the way. In our own lives, without withdrawing from the world, we can walk our talk in eschewing emissions-intensive actions that are inefficient, frivolous, or do little or nothing for anyone’s joy or quality of life.

Without major policy change, behavior change falls way short of game change, and it’s game changing that the world desperately needs. For that, nothing short of expressing our views as often as we can manage—in letters to legislators and newspapers, in petition signatures, in responses to pollsters, in marching in protests, even in organizing communities—is likely to make enough difference to notice. A rising tax on carbon is essential, and while we can differ on the details of how to do that (ideally returning most or all revenue generated to citizens), nothing we attempt will turn the corner on climate change until the price of fossil fuels rises.

We can think about connections, too—climate change relates to the food we eat, the appliances we use, the electricity and water we pay for. Policies that are local and statewide as well as national can make a difference with these.

Finally, we can support women’s reproductive rights—the theme of the marches that went global on the second day of Trump’s presidency. Unintended pregnancy undermines women’s capacity to contribute productively to society, including to slowing climate change, and it takes us further from a future of sustainable human populations more likely to manage emissions and climate change safely.
-Robert Engelman, More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want

What can we do to ensure that sound science continues to inform how we address climate change? We can urge the president to hire a national science advisor and other scientists with appropriate credentials in ecology and engineering to fill key posts in his administration. As members of a democratic society, we can support freedom of scientific inquiry and diversity in science. Specifically, we can comment publicly on proposed policies that affect the environment and vote accordingly. On a personal level, we can get directly involved in supporting science that informs climate policy by participating in science via citizen science. A variety of organizations enable public participation in science such as Earthwatch Institute. Whatever our approach, putting science into action represents our best hope to address climate change.
-Cristina Eisenberg, The Carnivore Way

1) Do that which only you can do and at least some of what everyone must do. 
2) Don’t compete: Discern ways that your actions complement others’ actions toward the goods of health and justice.
3) Resist tyranny. Speak out, especially when someone tells you not to.
4) Have each others’ backs.
5) Recognize that not all hopes are equally worthy, and that skillful love requires intimate knowledge.
-Julianne Warren, Aldo Leopold's Odyssey, Tenth Anniversary Edition

Summer is here! Whether that means slathering on the sunscreen or seeking refuge from the heat in an air conditioned room, this season means one thing for all bookworms: summer reading lists. To help get yours started, our staff have shared their favorite Island Press books, past and present. Check out our recommendations, and share your favorite Island Press summer read in the comments below. 
 

1.) Nature's Allies by Larry A. Nielsen
 

In Nature's Allies, Larry Nielson shares eight riveting biographies of great conservationists. His profiles show how these diverse leaders—including a Native American who was arrested more than 50 times and the first African woman and environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize—brought about extraordinary change for the environment. These stories are powerful, engaging reads for anyone who wants to be inspired to make a difference. But you don't have to take Island Press' word for it...Nature's Allies was also recently recommended as a New York Public Library staff pick. 
 

2.) River Notes by Wade Davis
 

In this remarkable blend of history, science, and personal observation, acclaimed author Wade Davis tells the story of America’s Nile, how it once flowed freely and how human intervention has left it near exhaustion. A beautifully told story of historical adventue and natural beauty, River Notes is a fascinating journey down the river and through mankind's complicated and destructive relationship with one of its greatest natural resources. Kyler Geoffroy, Online Marketing Manager of the Urban Resilience Project, says this book is the perfect summer read because "we need to stop and appreciate America’s most iconic waterway now more than ever."
 

3.) Bike Boom by Carlton Reid
 

As Vice President and Executive Editor Heather Boyer says, "there's no better time than summer to think about how to maintain the increase in interest in urban biking (and try to retain any funding for it in infrastructure budget)." A follow-up to his "fascinating" Roads Were Not Built for Cars, Bike Boom picks up where that story left off: immersing readers in cycling advocacy from 1906 to the doldrums of the 1980s. It is an extensively researched, at times humorous journey through time, flush with optimism for what could be the next, greatest bike boom of all.
 

4.) Natural Defense by Emily Monosson
 

Bugs and germs are big problems—and they’re evolving. But in the fight to protect our food and health, bugs and germs may also be part of the solution. Natural Defense by Emily Monosson is the first book to bring readers into this exciting new world, highlighting cutting-edge solutions such as pheromones that send crop-destroying moths into a misguided sexual frenzy, and proteins that promise targed destruction of infectious bacteria. Brooke Borel, contributing editor at Popular Science had this to say about the book: "With deft prose and fascinating anecdotes, Monosson’s survey of the latest scientific research leaves us in awe of humankind’s ingenuity."
 

5.) Immersion by Abbie Gascho Landis
 

If summer is the time for exploring neighborhood creeks and streams, Immersion by Abbie Gascho Landis is the summer read for you. A breathtaking journey into the world of freshwater mussels, Immersion explores the hidden lives of mussels in our rivers and streams, and asks whether our capacity to love these alien creatures can power us to protect freshwater for humans and nature alike. Blending science with artful storytelling, Immersion takes readers from perilous river surveys and dry riverbeds to laboratories where endangered mussels are raised one precious life at a time. Production Assistant Elise Ricotta says this is the perfect book to read at the beach or lake.
 

 6.) Seeking the Sacred Raven by Mark Jerome Walters
 

Associate Editor and Rights Manager Rebecca Bright picked up Seeking the Sacred Raven while she was preparing for an interview to intern at Island Press (we won't say how many years ago). The book tells the story of Hawaii's 'Alla, a member of the raven family that once flourished on the islands and now survives only in captivity. Mark Jerome Walters chronicles the history of the birds' interactions with humans throughout the centuries, painting a picture of one species' decline that resonates today, as many others face the same fate. The first Island Press book she ever read, Rebecca found the book to be "both fascinating and heartbreaking."
 

7.) Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis
 

As you fire up the grill for summer barbeques and head to your local farmer's market, consider reading Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis, a sensory-rich journey through two hundred years of making dinner. From eighteenth-century gardens and historic cookbooks to calculated advertising campaigns and sleek supermarket aisles, Vileisis chronicles profound changes in how Americans have shopped, cooked, and thought about their food for five generations. Revealing how knowledge of our food has been lost and how it might now be regained, Kitchen Literacy promises to make us think differently about what we eat.
 

8.) Water is for Fighting Over by John Fleck
 

Water is for Fighting Over by John Fleck makes for perfect reading while sitting by the pool, river, or ocean. In it, he offers a unique, fresh perspective on the catastrophe narrative of the West, showcasing how this region is less of a battlefield and more of a place where individuals and communities find common ground amid a changing geography. This book shows that even in the depths of the worst droughts, positive solution stories can still be found. Vice President and Director of Marketing & Sales Julie Marshall likes "John’s thoughtful and balanced approach to the issue. I also really appreciate the fact he has such deep knowledge based on his many years covering the issues in the west. It gives him great credibility but also makes his explanations of the issues and solutions seem solid based on 'all the facts' and not just a superficial assessment." 
 

9.) Within Walking Distance by Philip Langdon 
 

While walking around and enjoying the summer sunshine, don't forget to pack Within Walking Distance by Philip Langdon. In it, he takes an in-depth look at six walkable communities—and the citizens, public officials, and planners who are making them satisfying places to live. Civil Engineering said "Within Walking Distance shines...a warm, personal, and heartening depiction of our power to shape our communities in a positive way when we set our minds to it." 
 

10.) Tibet Wild by George B. Schaller
 

Hungry for adventure? Tibet Wild is George B. Schaller's account of three decades of exploration in the most remote stretches of Tibet: the wide, sweeping rangelands of the Chang Tang and the hidden canyons and plunging ravines of the southeastern forests. Throughout, it is an intimate journey through the changing wilderness of Tibet, guided by the careful gaze and unwavering passion of a life-long naturalist. Editor Courtney Lix loves the book because "it transports you to the wildest regions in Tibet, from describing the daily challenges of being a field biologist, to admiring breathtaking landscapes, and encounters with rare and beautiful creatures." 

What are your top Island Press reads? Share them below, so others can add them to their summer reading lists. 

A piece from Grist points out that major TV networks spent just 50 minutes on climate change—combined—in 2016. We’ve asked a few of our journalist-authors what kind of responsibility the media has to report on climate change topics. Does this lack of coverage happen because there isn't a compelling news story or narrative? Check out what John Fleck, Dan Fagin, and Randy Olson have to say about it below. 

John Fleck, author of Water is for Fighting Over:

As a journalist-turned-academic who has spent much of the last two-plus decades working on climate change issues, I agree with Grist and Media Matters that coverage of climate change is important, and that there should be more of it. In that regard, one of the highlights of the study is that there is a network that provided extensive coverage of climate change issues last year—PBS. Viewers' time is precious, and they have choices. On this issues, as on many important public policy questions, PBS is a good one.

Dan Fagin, author of Toms River: 

The problem is not that media coverage of climate change is imbalanced. 'Balance' is not even something we should aspire to in journalism; fairness is, along with clarity and context. Why? Because all ideas shouldn't be given equal weight; some have a lot more evidence behind them than others! Actually, when climate issues are covered in media (with the very notable exceptions of FoxNews and right-wing websites like Breitbart and Daily Caller), the coverage usually reflects the scientific consensus. The bigger problem is that climate is so rarely covered at all, or at least it isn't covered as anything more than a political struggle. There are many reasons for this, including that climate is rarely "breaking news"; it is often very difficult to make accurate connections between specific local news events (such as storms and droughts) and global climate change. 

A less obvious but even more important reason why climate in the mainstream media tends to be rare and shallow is what the communications scholar Dan Kahan at Yale has called the "polluted science communication environment" that plagues certain issues, including climate change. Through some very clever experiments, he has shown very clearly that what we may think is a relatively straightforward question of atmospheric physics and chemistry is actually now very emotional question of cultural identity. When we decide what we think about climate, we rarely make up our minds based on a dispassionate evaluation of the scientific evidence. Instead, we take our clues from the broader culture, because climate has become a powerful cultural signifier. Most of us believe whatever we believe about climate based on which "team" we prefer to be on—Team Red or Team Blue. Do we like Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh? Saturday Night Live or Duck Dynasty? 

Once an issue has acquired this kind of cultural salience, it becomes very problematic for major media to cover because each side very passionately wants the coverage to reflect its point of view. So, more often than not, these very polarized issues either aren't covered at all or are covered as political struggles instead of us explications of evidence. That's a crucial failing of big journalism but it's a very difficult problem to solve because polarization is so difficult to avoid. Indeed, Kahan's research shows that the more people know about climate change—the more the understand the details of atmospheric chemistry and physics, for example—the greater the polarization becomes! Why? Because people cherry-pick that new information to reinforce what they already believe! Communications scholars call this 'motivated reasoning', and it is an extremely powerful force on issues that have become cultural signifiers. 

The good news is, not all issues are as polarized as climate change, and we're not all automatically prisoners of motivated reasoning. Young people, especially, tend to be more open to evidence, especially if the topic is unfamiliar and has not been "polluted" with lots of partisan messages. For the rest of us, a smarter, deeper dialogue on global climate change is going to require talking about climate in ways that don't force our audiences to renounce their deeply held sense of who they are, what 'team' they're on. People like E.O. Wilson understand this; when he talks to evangelicals about biodiversity he frames it as "creation care". For journalists, though, this is a tricky business—we equate such framing with marketing and advocacy, not journalism.

Major media are going to produce more and better coverage of global climate change only after we can figure out ways of telling true stories about our changing planet that avoid antagonizing large chunks of our audiences while also living up to the ethical standards of good journalism. That's the challenge we face, and it's a daunting one.

Randy Olson, author of Don't Be Such a Scientist:

First question — who says that climate change is “the defining issue of our time”? Seriously. Yes, we know that the educated left feels this way, but what about the general public? What percentage of them would answer “climate change” to the question of “What is the defining issue of our time?”?   

This is a lot of the problem of the climate movement—an air of “everybody knows this” to all that they say. Everybody doesn’t know this. I would bet most people would say “the defining issue of our time” is terrorism. So that’s the first problem.

In fact, here’s the real, broader problem, which happens all the time—the production of solutions to problems that nobody feels we have. Effective communication is built around the problem/solution dynamic. Too often smart people sense a problem that few others do, come up with a big set of solutions, then can’t figure out why nobody wants to implement the solutions when presented.

Agreeing on “the problem” and agreeing it’s urgent and important is the challenge. When people sense problems they act. So far, climate change is still not perceived as “soon, salient and certain.” These are three words that EVERYONE in the climate movement should live by. Furthermore, they should all read Andy Revkin’s excellent and profound 2006 blogpost, “Yelling Fire on a Hot Planet” over and over again.  

That blogpost is still about the smartest thing I’ve ever read on climate change. In the middle of it he cites Helen Ingram of U.C. Irvine who offered up those three words—soon, salient and certain.

And then talk to the two New Jersey TV meteorologists I met at a workshop a couple years ago who told me that before Super Storm Sandy their audience had zero interest in climate change. After it, they wanted to know everything about it. They had been the victims of an event that was soon (just happened), salient (happened to them in a big way), and certain (definitely happened).

Communicating effectively requires understanding the perceptions of the audience.  If they don’t perceive a problem, they aren’t going to listen to your solutions, no matter how brilliant and passionately conveyed.

And so guess what drives TV coverage?   It’s all about the problems the public wants solved.  Convince them that climate really is the defining issue of our time and that it’s a problem and they will demand you present solutions.

Oregon State University’s Aaron Wolf, in his studies of conflict and cooperation around international waterways, has found something both counter-intuitive and remarkable. Despite myths of “water wars,” cooperation is far more common than conflict when neighbors share a river and an aquifer, according to Wolf, author of the new Island Press book The Spirit of Dialogue.

This goes beyond simply cooperating over water. “Once cooperative water regimes are established…,” Wolf wrote in a 1999 essay, “they turn out to be tremendously resilient over time, even between otherwise hostile … states, and even as conflict is waged over other issues.”

Wolf’s point was put strikingly on display last month at a meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, as representatives of the Unites States and Mexico gathered for a formal signing ceremony of an agreement over sharing the waters of the Colorado River.

The Colorado River is often described as being shared among seven states, but the number is really nine—seven in the United States and two in Mexico. U.S. farms and cities use most of the river’s water, and what little is left when it arrives at the U.S.-Mexico border near the towns of Algodones and San Luis is diverted for use by Mexican farms and cities. The last hundred miles of river channel between the border and the Sea of Cortez is usually dry.

The agreement includes provisions for the two nations to share shortages if (when?) drought and climate change shrink the river. The deal gives Mexican water users the ability to store their water in Lake Mead, the massive storage reservoir behind Hoover Dam on the Arizona-Nevada border, near the city of Las Vegas. Storage is critical to give Mexico flexibility in managing its water. U.S. water agencies will contribute under the deal to water efficiency improvements to Mexican infrastructure, with some of the saved water available for use in the United States.

Crucially, the agreement also sets aside water for habitat restoration in the dry river channel of Mexico.

The agreement was negotiated over a more than two-year period, but it is really rooted in more than a decade of increasingly deep collaboration between a community of water managers on both sides of the border. When the Trump administration took over in January, there was fear that the carefully crafted deal, so beneficial and important to communities on both sides of the border, would be sidelined by the heated rhetoric over free trade and immigration, over NAFTA and walls. But Wolf was right. Even as conflict raged over other issues, the trust and reciprocity built around the Colorado River proved remarkably resilient. The old saw that “water is for fighting over” was proven wrong again.

Recent climate marches have captured our collective attention. Students and young people around the world have taken to the streets to demand action on climate change now, in order to protect the environment for a better future. The impacts that we can already see are not the only climate impacts that will affect quality of life for future generations. Some climate dangers have yet to materialize. We turned to some of our authors to find out—What do they think will be the most pressing climate change issue in the next 50 years? Why?

The most pressing climate change issue will be our capacity to provide adequate nutrition and water to every person on Earth. This is a challenge we already struggle with and climate change will increasingly cause droughts and extreme weather events. Both our water sources and agricultural production are sensitive to these climatic shifts. Potential future food and water shortages will lead to increased global unrest and political tensions. However, we can take steps today to prevent these future shortages by developing sustainable adaptation strategies. Our greatest strength as humans is our capacity to innovate, and if we do so carefully and responsibly we'll be able to prevent many of these future crises. 
-Jessica Eise, author of How to Feed the World

Clearly, the most pressing climate issue is figuring out how to get the global economy to carbon neutrality, and then developing the technologies for economically taking large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. But another critical issue that is not yet really being addressed is how we get in place national and international regimes to manage massive human migrations that will be driven by climate change. Regardless of the success that the global community has in implementing deep greenhouse gas reductions over the coming decades, we already know that anticipated future climate impacts will eventually cause large-scale migration of populations away from areas that are threatened by climate risks such as sea level rise, extreme heat, extreme storms, drought and wildfires, and towards areas of lower risk. The timing and geographic distribution of these movements is highly uncertain. They will, however, have a large impact on both the areas that lose population and the areas that gain population. And they will cause substantial economic, social, and political turbulence. As one commentator noted: "You can set up a wall to try to contain 10,000 and 20,000 and one million people, but not 10 million." How will we manage this climate migration? What legal status will the migrants have? How do we prepare the areas that are losing population, as well as those that are likely to find themselves with large unplanned in-migrations? It is time to start digging into these questions.
-John Cleveland, author of Life After Carbon

In my view, the largest threat to Earth in the decades to come will be unsustainable human population growth. This will trigger all kinds of irreversible environmental change. A smaller human footprint means first of all fewer feet.
-Michiel Roscam Abbing, author of Plastic Soup

Most scientists agree that climate change will increase the occurrence, intensity, and duration of extreme weather events, including flooding, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, and wildfires. If we don’t do anything about this, most cities will become less comfortable—some by a lot. Depending on their location, cities and their inhabitants could suffer from the following possible scenarios: too wet, too dry, or too warm. Homes could be flooded on a regular basis, water faucets could stop flowing, or people’s lives could be confined to air-conditioned interiors because outside will be too hot. Fortunately, architects and city planners can help increase urban resilience—the ability of urban communities to bounce back from shock. If we do it right, we can even think of this as an opportunity to improve our cities and buildings. Dikes could double as flood protection and functional buildings, native species and drought tolerant plants can save water used for landscaping, and trees and plants can help cool down urban spaces. The future has always been uncertain, but our future may be even more uncertain. With climate change impacting our cities in unpredictable ways, the big question is: how do we design with these new risks?
-Stefan Al, author of Adapting Cities to Sea Level Rise

Climate change, as western U.S. water scholar Brad Udall frequently points out, is water change. What Udall means is that, even as we work toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions, we need to focus on reducing our vulnerability to changes even now being felt in the planet's hydrologic cycles. That can mean more water where we don't want it—think for example the flooding felt in the central United States from a freak storm in March 2019, or the creeping rise of sea level confronting our coastal cities. It often means less water where we've come to depend on it, like the shrinking reservoirs of the Colorado River Basin. Preparing for a future of water change is essential regardless of how successful we are in reducing our greenhouse gas footprint.
-John Fleck, author of  Water is for Fighting Over

The transportation sector remains one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, and thus represents the lowest-hanging fruit for governments looking to meet difficult carbon-reduction targets. Through our research, we've found that the Netherlands provides the best example of a clear path forward. A 2014 World Bank report ranked it in the bottom 25 nations for transport-related carbon dioxide emissions (as a percentage of total national production). In fact, Dutch transportation contributes just a fifth of their overall emissions, compared to a third in the United States, which—with 1.9 billion tons of CO2 emissions in 2016—overtook power generation as the most-polluting sector in the country for the first time in 40 years. Rather than wait for the electric car to save us, we should be looking to the humble bicycle, which—with the right infrastructure and policies in place—could immediately replace a significant number of trips we take by car, and begin moving us in a more sustainable direction for the future of our planet and our children.
-Chris and Melissa Bruntlett, co-authors of Building the Cycling City

The most pressing issue in relation to climate change is almost certainly the preservation and, if possible, extension of forest cover. Obviously, we must work toward reducing carbon emissions and increasing the adoption of renewable energy, but even the most optimistic scenarios around that would not solve the problem. Forests, and the oceans, provide the greatest sinks for CO2; we can fight to maintain oceanic biosphere and health, but we could—at least conceptually—increase the area of forests. And we MUST try to halt forest destruction.
-Joe Landsberg, co-author of Forests in Our Changing World

Society will not only need to prepare for current and impending changes due to climate change, we will need to do this while taking drastic action to avoid catastrophic consequences in the future. Many cities are vulnerable and dealing with the effects of climate change already. Forty percent of the United States’ population lives on 10% of its land mass—along coastlines. While cities have the power to make a greater impact on how we prepare for climate change, future planning and growth needs to be coordinated, thoughtful, and innovative. To start, policymakers should embrace and champion policies that encourage walkable, urban places and associated density—particularly in suburbs. Walkable, urban places create the opportunity for a lower carbon footprint, while contributing to a better quality of life for residents.
-Jason Beske, co-author of Suburban Remix

While the costs of adapting to climate change will be historic—in the US exceeding in real dollar terms the costs of fighting World War II and building the interstate highway system combined—the costs of inaction will be catastrophic. The UK’s National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) estimates annual global costs of climate-driven flooding, only one of multiple climate change impacts, at more than US$14 trillion. The NOC also projects that more than six hundred million people could be displaced by rising seas alone by 2100. In the US, seven of the ten most economically productive metros—representing roughly one-quarter of the entire economy and growing 50% faster than the US as a whole—face serious risks from rising sea levels.

Yet a blinders-on, single-issue focus on resiliency can mean falling into an all-too-familiar priority trap that pulls resources away from other compelling challenges. For example, the developed world is rapidly aging. People over the age of 65 will represent more than half of America’s (and the developed world’s) net growth for at least the next two decades—placing extraordinary stresses on healthcare costs that are projected to eat up all discretionary US federal spending by 2050. Growing income disparities in the US and across the developed world, accelerated by the shift to a knowledge economy that delivers most of its economic benefits to the better-educated top 20% of the workforce, are generating growing social as well as economic strains. Rapidly evolving technology means that within two decades the US and rest of the developed world will need to retool trillions of dollars in transportation infrastructure to adapt to autonomous mobility while at the same time responding to automation’s projected evisceration of the jobs of tens of millions of workers in the US alone. Nor can government stop funding transit, parks, and education—without facing grave social unrest and economic decline. And already today the developed world faces an enormous bill for fixing existing infrastructure—a figure that in the US will reach US$2 trillion, or almost 10% of the entire US economy, by the late 2020s.

Despite doubts expressed by US political leaders, the real question is not should we react to climate change, but how? The sheer enormity of the threat compels action. But how do we avoid the priority trap? My own experience planning for New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina suggests three strategies: public private partnerships that unleash the innovation potential of the private sector, institutions and government working together; adopting the principles the Dutch originated following World War II—any resources spent on protection from rising seas or other climate forces need to also address livability, economic competitiveness, and wellness; and the time
-David Dixon, co-author of Suburban Remix

I just returned from Sweden where it’s all about climate change. The government is planting trees around the world, as well as working hard to reduce Sweden’s carbon footprint. Recycling options are everywhere. At the university where I spoke there are only washable dishes, cups, silverware in the cafeteria and break rooms. Everyone over four years old rides a bike, and those under four are in contraptions attached to an adult’s bike. Greta, the 16-year-old Swedish climate change activist, is inspiring us all with her courage and passion. For me the key question in tackling climate change is: Will we be willing and able to follow and support the youthful leadership taking on the challenge? It’s easy to write off the younger generation as inexperienced, whimsical, lost in their devices. That is old-fashioned and destructive thinking. These young activists are on the frontline of climate change, and we need to put our faith—as well as our money, influence and energy—in their leadership.
-Lucy Moore, author of Common Ground on Hostile Turf

Creating extensive ecological networks consisting of well-connected, large protected areas is most pressing priority because it is our best option to limit the extent of the sixth mass extinction. Climate change is adding to and exacerbating other threats to biodiversity, such as habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, and environmental degradation. Ecological networks can reduce the impact of all stressors, promote population persistence, and allow species to adapt to climate change by moving to climatically suitable areas.
-Dr. Annika Keeley, co-author of Corridor Ecology, Second Edition