Earth Month
Earth Day is April 22, but our beloved blue planet deserves special recognition all April long!
2025 marks 55 years since the first Earth Day commemorations. This year's theme is Our Power, Our Planet, which aims to educate, advocate, and mobilize in support of clean and renewable energy production. To celebrate our beloved blue planet, we are spotlighting books in the Pardee collection that focus on sustainability, renewable energy, and efforts to combat climate change. Learn from experts, activists, and innovators working to protect our planet, and get inspired to make a difference in work, school, and life.
For more information about BU's contributions to a better future, visit BU Sustainability. Or visit the official Earth Day web site.
The Green New Deal from Below: How Ordinary People Are Building a Just and Climate-Safe Economy by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024Jeremy Brecher goes beyond the headlines and introduces readers to the community, municipal, county, state, tribal, and industry efforts advancing the Green New Deal across the United States.
Clean Economy Now: Stories from the Frontlines of an American Business Revolution by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024An inspiring look at the clean energy revolution, combining the instincts of a journalist and the insight of the leader of a national business organization at the forefront of climate policy.
Environmental Innovation: An Action Plan for Saving the Economy and the Planet by 2050 by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024Jack Buffington provides a unique perspective on environmental sustainability and how it can be addressed with to 21st-century solutions to reduce poverty levels, transform human systems, and enable environmental innovation.
Books for Earth Month
Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet by Location: Online; Science & Engineering Library / Howard Thurman Center HC79.E5 R58 2024Publication Date: 2024In this bold, hopeful book, a data scientist draws on the latest research to give us the tools for understanding our current environmental crisis and making truly impactful changes.
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Location: Online and Howard Thurman Center HB97.5 .S2317713 2024Publication Date: 2024Kohei Saito argues that calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise with the same capitalist forces that impoverish people and ravage the planet. Rather, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration.
Legacy: How to Build a Sustainable Economy by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024What would a sustainable economy look like? What would it take to live within our environmental means? This book explains what we would have to do to mend our ways and ensure a bright future for the next generations.
The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022In this searing and insightful critique, Adrienne Buller examines the fatal biases that have shaped the response of our governing institutions to climate and environmental breakdown, and asks - in the face of crisis - what we really value.
Climatenomics: Washington, Wall Street, and the Economic Battle to Save Our Planet by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022Bob Keefe details how climate change has become an economic issue above all and how that has changed everything from the business to politics to the outlook for the future.
Sustainable Investing: Problems and Solutions by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2025Written by experts in the field from academia and industry, this book covers the concept of sustainable investing, its role in fighting climate change, and sustainable investing strategies you can implement.
Beyond Shareholder Primacy: Remaking Capitalism for a Sustainable Future by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024Capitalism has reformed itself twice before and is poised for a third major reformation. Retelling the origin story of capitalism from the 15th century to today, Stuart L. Hart argues that a radically sustainable, just capitalism is possible, and even likely, in our lifetime.
This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy, and Ecological Conflict by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024Centering on the Indigenous land defenders whose lives are being destroyed by untamed capitalist growth, this book provides an under-discussed but vital perspective on climate change, energy infrastructure, and mining.
April 21-27: Massachusetts Space Week
April 21-27 is Massachusetts Space Week, a weeklong initiative organized by the Space Consortium to democratize space knowledge and connect MA-based space experts and enthusiasts with each other and with the public. From Boston to the Berkshires, this grassroots campaign aims to make space science accessible to everyone.
We are Pardee are celebrating with books about business in space - the leadership and management strategies that propel people to the stars, the modern-day space race between some of the world's most powerful companies, and the complicated ethical questions we must ask as the gap between science fiction and fact grows narrower.
For more information about MA Space Week, visit the schedule on their website. And don't miss out on the Inclusive Astronomy Space Night on April 25, right here at BU's Coit Observatory!
Crowded Orbits: Conflict and Cooperation in Space by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024Space has become increasingly crowded since the turn of the century, as a growing number of countries, companies, and even private citizens have begun operating satellites and become spacefarers. Crowded Orbits offers readers a primer on space policy from an international perspective, examining technology, diplomacy, commerce, science, and military applications.
Commercial Astronauts: The Next Generation of Spacefarers by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024How will the opportunities for commercial astronauts develop, how will they be trained, and will this new group of astronauts evolve? This book describes how the commercial spaceflight industry is evolving, how it will continue to evolve.
Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022Mary-Jane Rubenstein pulls back the curtain on the myths sold by space barons Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, rooted in the ugly history of colonialism. She offers a vision for how we might approach the exploration of space in ways that prioritize cosmic caretaking, not profiteering.
Books for MA Space Week
Financing the Race to Space: How to Value, Invest, and Explore the Universe by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024This seminal book explores the monetary and financial foundations necessary for outer space exploration, development, and settlement.
Commercial Space Capabilities and Market Overview: The Relationship Between Commercial Space Developments and the U.S. Department of Defense by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2022A report from the U.S. Space Force and Department of Defense regarding the space industry.
Lunar Commerce: A Primer by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024This book explores the advent of lunar commerce including the potential scale and timing of the initiative, the associated revenue potential and the potential risks and uncertainties.
Deep Space Commodities: Exploration, Production, and Trading by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2018Tom James, a leading commodity and energy market practitioner, has brought together top professionals in academia, astropolitics, space engineering, and space law to explore the exciting opportunities and challenges businesses face in the new off-planet economy.
Space Business: Emerging Theory and Practice by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2024An academic investigation of commercial activities of "New Space" firms, a wide-reaching new industry with implications in everything from tourism to disaster relief to banking.
The Consequential Frontier: Challenging the Privatization of Space by Location: Pardee Stacks HD9711.75.A2 W37 2019Publication Date: 2019As a new space race dawns, companies are readying their engines to head into the cosmos for the sake of privatization and profit. Journalist Peter Ward investigates how such endeavors could lead not to a new golden age, but a new era of colonialism.
Commercial and Military Uses of Outer Space by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2021A timely international and interdisciplinary book, which addresses some of the contemporary issues facing activities in space and those attempting to understand, use and regulate the space domain.
The Politics and Perils of Space Exploration: Who Will Compete - Who Will Dominate? by Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2021Examines the U.S. space program's triumphs and failures in order to assess what constitutes a successful space policy, written by a former NASA Aerodynamics Officer at Houston Mission Control.
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