He has worked for the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, Fortune 500 corporations such as Chevron, nonprofit groups such as Friends of the Earth, and governmental organizations, including the Office of Technology Assessment of the United States Congress. Berger co-founded and directed the Nuclear Information and Resource Service and founded and directed the Restoring the Earth organization.
He was a visiting professor at University of Maryland, and has served as a consultant to corporations, utilities, and foundations. His articles have been published by Scientific American, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, USA Today Magazine, Resilience, LA Progressive, and Countercurrents.
Berger has authored and edited 11 books on energy and environmental issues, including Solving the Climate Crisis: Frontline Reports from the Race to Save the Earth, Climate Peril: The Intelligent Reader’s Guide to Understanding the Climate Crisis, Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science, Restoring the Earth: How Americans Are Working to Renew Our Damaged Environment, and Charging Ahead: The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America.
He is a graduate of Stanford and the University of California.- The technological dimension: move to 100% clean renewable energy as fast as we possibly can through innovations like clean-steel, “green” cement, and carbon-reuse companies;
- The ecological dimension: enhance and protect natural ecosystems, forests, and agricultural lands to safely store greenhouse gases and restore soils, transforming how we grow, process, and consume food;
- The social dimension: update and create new laws, policies and economic measures to recenter human values and reduce environmental and social injustice.
Based on more than 6 years of research, Berger traveled the nation and abroad to interview governors, mayors, ranchers, scientists, engineers, business leaders, energy experts, and financiers as well as carbon farmers, solar and wind innovators, forest protectors, non-profit leaders, and activists.
With real world examples, an explanation of cutting-edge technologies in solar and wind, and political organizing tactics, Solving the Climate Crisis provides a practical road map for how we effectively combat climate change. Replacing the fossil-fuel system with a newly invigorated, modernized, clean-energy economy will produce tens of millions of new jobs and save trillions of dollars. Protecting the climate is thus potentially the greatest economic opportunity of our time.The book explores the major consequences of climate change, especially its ramifications for the economy, human health, other species, and the oceans. It warns of the billions of ton of carbon lurking in ocean sea beds and thawing permafrost and the global danger of crossing an invisible threshold beyond which catastrophic climate changes become inevitable.
While its conclusions are alarming, Climate Peril is a realistic and authoritative book that will help you better understand how climate change may affect you and your family.Climate Myths puts the campaign against climate science in historical, political, and economic context and juxtaposes the claims of climate change deniers with the facts about climate change as revealed by authoritative climate science. Climate Myths dispels common misunderstandings about climate change and spotlights the companies, organizations, and individuals who have promoted climate myths in the course of their highly successful, multimillion dollar climate disinformation campaigns.
Drawing on the principles and achievements of climate science, Climate Myths summarizes the imminent threat of rapid climate change, pointing readers toward needed action.Among the people we meet are a housewife who led the fight to clean up a river in Massachusetts… a California pharmacist who saved a redwood forest and who has, with the help of friends, planted 10,000 trees… a Pennsylvania mine inspector who repaired strip-mined lands… a Wisconsin architect who saved a town afflicted by severe floods and redesigned it as a flood-proof solar village, America’s first. We watch as a small town in Michigan takes on a giant multinational chemical company whose toxic wastes have poisoned their groundwater… as a plumber on Cape Cod works to transform a brush-choked ditch into a trout stream like the one Daniel Webster once enjoyed… and as a daring, imaginative group of biologists in California routinely risk their lives to rescue an endangered falcon species from extinction.
Finally we are offered proposals—for making existing human settlements more ecologically sound as well as more enjoyable places to live in. Restoring the Earth goes beyond traditional conservation and preservation—it offers the message that something really can be done about the pollution and destruction and waste familiar to all Americans. It should hearten those already committed to environmental causes and offer hope to those who think these problems are beyond solution.