Green Group discussion

Written in Water: Messages of Hope for Earth's Most Precious Resource by Irena Salina is a message for the Future comprises a collection of essays authored by heroes and leaders in the field of water solutions and innovations —a broad range of people from varied disciplines who have contributed their hearts and minds to bringing awareness to and conserving Earth’s freshwater supply. In their own words, authors tell of such tragedies as water slavery, drought, or contamination, as well as their own professional struggles and successes in pursuit of freshwater solutions.

Contributors include: Alexandra Cousteau, social environmental advocate and granddaughter of legendary marine scientist Jacques Cousteau; Peter Gleick, environmental visionary and winner of a 2003 MacArthur "genius grant"; Bill McKibben, bestselling author and winner of a Guggenheim fellowship; Sylvia Earle, oceanographer and Time magazine’s first "hero for the planet"; and Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, along with more than a dozen other notable people.

These visionaries’ stories touch, surprise, and amaze as they help us see the essential role played by water in our world, our lives, and our future.

Irena Salina also directed a documentary " Flow : For Love of Water " ( see the folder " Environment in Films )

Empires of the Indus: From Tibet to Pakistan - The Story of a River

One of the largest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains, flows west across northern India and south through Pakistan. For millennia it has been worshipped as a god; for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion; today it is the cement of Pakistan's fractious union. Five thousand years ago, a string of sophisticated cities grew and traded on its banks. In the ruins of these elaborate metropolises, Sanskrit-speaking nomads explored the river, extolling its virtues in India's most ancient text, the Rig-Veda. During the past two thousand years a series of invaders -- Alexander the Great, Afghan Sultans, the British Raj -- made conquering the Indus valley their quixotic mission. For the people of the river, meanwhile, the Indus valley became a nodal point on the Silk Road, a center of Sufi pilgrimage and the birthplace of Sikhism. Empires of the Indus follows the river upstream and back in time, taking the reader on a voyage through two thousand miles of geography and more than five millennia of history redolent with contemporary importance.

The Black Nile: One Man's Amazing Journey Through Peace and War on the World's Longest River

Investigative journalist Dan Morrison takes a thoughtful, funny, and frightful trip across a region whose people are trying to claw their way from war and poverty to something better.

Song for the Blue Ocean: Encounters Along the World's Coasts and Beneath the Seas

The oceans of the world rank foremost among humankind's last great frontiers, and their climatological and ecological workings remain mysterious to all but specialists. In this lively, well-written survey, marine scientist Carl Safina encourages readers to take a wider interest in the oceans, especially because so much of that great blue expanse is now threatened by human progress. Safina notes, for example, that the North Atlantic's tuna population has fallen by more than 90 percent in just the last few decades. It has gone the way of cod and herring and pilot whales thanks to a combination of changing global temperatures, overfishing, pollution, inland watershed and delta destruction, and other causes--many of them attributable to human activities. Even now, he notes, many Pacific fishing fleets use cyanide to catch fish, a process that destroys sensitive marine ecosystems. Safina's tour of the world's waters may inspire readers to press for changes in the way that fish is brought to their tables, and to take a more careful look at the natural processes that govern this watery planet.

The Ocean World

The late undersea explorer sets out the fascinating story of the oceans in fact, lore, and legend. An eyepopping, beautifully designed volume, brimming over with glorious full-color photographs of the ocean's bounty and its most secret underwater habitats, this book includes 18 lively chapters covering all aspects of life in the sea: evolution, reproduction, foodgetting, motion, communications, attack and defense, legends and tales, life in the polar regions and in the abyss, and the future of the oceans. "Even out of the water, the reader feels immersed in the intoxicating `rapture of the deep'..."