Why am I passionate about this?

I enjoy illusion-busting to sharpen critical thinking, which I’ve done at Google, The American Institute of Architects, and numerous college campuses. I’ve appeared on NPR, BBC, MSNBC, and in the film Planet of the Humans. I’m teaching a college course titled, How to Destroy the Planet: Critical Thinking on Proven Methods.


I wrote

Book cover of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism

What is my book about?

We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do about It

Ozzie Zehner Why did I love this book?

Environmentalism was once centered on conserving the living world. Today it’s centered on maintaining human expansion and technologies that are destroying the living world. Bright Green Lies is the central book for understanding this shift and lays the groundwork for the next generation of environmental thinking. The three highly capable authors name the names, disclose the locations, and brilliantly interrogate the lies we've told ourselves. 

There is also a powerful film, Bright Green Lies, based on the book, directed by award-winning filmmaker Julia Barnes.

By Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, Max Wilbert

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Bright Green Lies as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“This disturbing but very important book makes clear we must dig deeper than the normal solutions we are offered.”―Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia Works

"Bright Green Lies exposes the hypocrisy and bankruptcy of leading environmental groups and their most prominent cheerleaders. The best-known environmentalists are not in the business of speaking truth, or even holding up rational solutions to blunt the impending ecocide, but instead indulge in a mendacious and self-serving delusion that provides comfort at the expense of reality. They fail to state the obvious: We cannot continue to wallow in hedonistic consumption and industrial expansion and survive as…


Book cover of Silent Spring

Ozzie Zehner Why did I love this book?

David Attenborough, the natural historian famous for the Planet Earth series, cited Silent Spring as likely the most influential book on the scientific community since Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. It didn’t start out that way. 

Upon its release, author Rachel Carson was accused of everything from being a communist to advocating for genocide. Her astute analysis survived the storm and opened a space for launching the Environmental Protection Agency. Most importantly, her research initiated a public dialogue around the long-term sustainability of the living world.

By Rachel Carson,

Why should I read it?

12 authors picked Silent Spring as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed…


Book cover of Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature

Ozzie Zehner Why did I love this book?

White argues it isn’t enough for environmentalists to simply point a finger at oil drillers and multinational corporations. He instead interrogates how greater humanity has maintained an elusive system of stints and bypasses for what he calls a Barbaric Heart. As citizens of Nature, White maintains we fail ourselves in numerous ways. We call upon the rhetoric and logic of technical, scientific, and bureaucratic systems even though we suspect they might have caused the problem in the first place. 

He points to the value of redefining work into vocations, of reconsidering what we principally consider to be holy and beautiful, and of directing our large brains toward expanding the project of Being rather than the GDP. Like Nietzsche, White believes the purpose of thought is not to locate Truth but rather to make it ever less convenient to lie to ourselves and live in perpetual dishonesty. White doesn’t spoon-feed us remedies for the same reason you can’t feed breakfast to a sleeping person…you must first wake them up.

By Curtis White,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Barbaric Heart as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Smart, funny, and fresh, The Barbaric Heart argues that the present environmental crisis will not be resolved by the same forms of crony capitalism and managerial technocracy that created the crisis in the first place. With his trademark wit, White argues that the solution might very well come from an unexpected quarter: the arts, religion, and the realm of the moral imagination.


Book cover of The Dying of the Trees

Ozzie Zehner Why did I love this book?

Hauntingly prescient, The Dying of the Trees mounted an investigation into mysterious tree deaths and forest decline that are still spreading today across the United States today. Charles E. Little interviews scientists, government officials, and citizen leaders to investigate a wide range of human-caused impacts. His sobering analysis reveals there isn’t just one cause but many.

By Charles E. Little,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Dying of the Trees as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Examines the loss of trees from New England to California; details causes including acid rain, ozone, ultraviolet rays, and clear-cutting; and discusses responses from scientists, government officials, and citizens


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism

What is my book about?

We don’t have an energy crisis. We have a consumption crisis. And this book, which takes aim at cherished assumptions regarding energy, offers refreshingly straight talk about what’s wrong with the way we think and talk about the problem. Though we generally believe we can solve environmental problems with more energy—more solar cells, wind turbines, and biofuels—alternative technologies come with their own side effects and limitations. How, for instance, do solar cells cause harm? Why can’t engineers solve wind power’s biggest obstacle? Why won’t contraception alone solve the problem of overpopulation lying at the heart of our concerns about energy, and what will?

This practical, environmentally informed, and lucid book persuasively argues for a change of perspective. If consumption is the problem, as Ozzie Zehner suggests, then we need to shift our focus from suspect alternative energies to improving social and political fundamentals: walkable communities, improved consumption, enlightened governance, and, most notably, women’s rights. 
Book cover of Bright Green Lies: How the Environmental Movement Lost Its Way and What We Can Do about It
Book cover of Silent Spring
Book cover of Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature

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Elephant Safari

By Peter Riva,

Book cover of Elephant Safari

Peter Riva Author Of Kidnapped on Safari

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been to, and loved, North, Central, and especially East Africa for over fifty years. Only six times have I been to Africa on holiday; more often, perhaps twenty or more times, as a television producer. Working in Africa gains a perspective of reality that the glories of vacation do not. Each has its place, each its pitfalls like stalled plane rides with emergency landings in the bush or attacks by wildlife. But, in the end, the magic of the “otherness,” what an old friend called “primitava” captures one’s soul and changes your life.

Peter's book list on the otherness that few get to experience

What is my book about?

Keen to rekindle their love of East African wildlife adventures after years of filming, extreme dangers, and rescues, producer Pero Baltazar, safari guide Mbuno Waliangulu, and Nancy Breiton, camerawoman, undertake a filming walking adventure north of Lake Rudolf, crossing from Kenya into Ethiopia along the Omo River, following a herd of elephant making their annual migration.

Stumbling onto an elephant poaching, the team become embroiled in true financing of terrorism for al Shabaab –ivory sales–and are determined to stop the slaughter at any cost. Ivory trade financing terrorism involves UN refugee camps with two hundred thousand displaced Somali persons, powerful…

Elephant Safari

By Peter Riva,

What is this book about?

A documentary team hiking through East Africa collides with a gang of deadly poachers, in this gripping adventure by the author of Kidnapped on Safari.

Years of filming, extreme dangers, and daring rescues have taken their toll on documentary producer Pero Baltazar and his team. To relax and reconnect with the East African wildlife they love, Pero organizes a walking safari for him, his camerawoman Nancy Breiton, and their elite guide Mbuno Waliangulu. Still, Pero has trouble truly disconnecting from work. When the team comes across a herd of elephants making their annual migration north of Lake Rudolf, Pero decides…


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