BINDERY: Marilyn Berlin Snell / Unlikely Ally

The Bindery hosts the launch party for Marilyn Berlin Snellfor her new book Unlikely Ally: How the Military Fights Climate Change and Protects the Environment. Please join us!

What do national security and defense mean in the ecologically destabilizing age of climate change? In California, the US military has begun to redefine these concepts by taking on a largely unrecognized yet crucial role in renewable-energy innovation and in preserving cultural and natural treasures. Environmental stewardship is law on installations throughout the United States, but a few bases in Southern California have taken a more comprehensive approach—one in which energy security and protection of threatened and endangered species are embedded in the practice of national defense. Unlikely Ally takes us through these bases to examine what twenty-first-century sustainable-energy infrastructure looks like; whether combat readiness and species protection can successfully coexist; how cutting-edge technology and water-conservation practices could transform life in a resource-constrained world; and how the Department of Defense’s scientific research into the metabolic secrets of the endangered desert tortoise could speed human travel to Mars. With investigative journalist Marilyn Berlin Snell as our guide, we explore a martial culture in California informed by science, strategic imperative, state and federal law, and visionary leadership.

“Marilyn Berlin Snell brings the paradox of military sustainability into full view in this lively account from California’s desert and coastal training grounds, showing how national security and natural security can manage to work together.” – David Havlick, author of Bombs Away: Militarization, Conservation, and Ecological Restoration

“Uncovers a surprising bright spot on our fraught horizon.” – Mary Ellen Hannibal, author of Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction

Marilyn Berlin Snell is an independent journalist whose work focuses on the environment and politics. She was staff writer for Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, from 2000 to 2008 and founding director of the magazine’s Investigative Journalism Project. Her freelance work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, and Discover. Visit her website at www.marilynberlinsnell.com.

Please note: this event will be at The Bindery at 1727 Haight.

This is a free and all-ages event, with mature themes. The bar opens with doors at 7pm; event begins at 7:30.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Unlikely Ally, order below and put your request in the comments field.