Book Club

Please join CLA ELS and the Sacramento County Bar Association Environmental Law Section as we welcome professor and author Daniel Selmi to discuss his 2022 book Dawn at Mineral King Valley: The Sierra Club, the Disney Company, and the Rise of Environmental Law. Dawn at Mineral King Valley tells the story behind the landmark case Sierra Club v. Morton (1972) 405 U.S. 727. Read more

In October 2022, ELS is thrilled to welcome section members, panelists and guests back to Yosemite for our iconic Annual Conference. The August Book Club will explore Yosemite National Park’s long and painful history, which cannot be separated from its scenic beauty. Read more

Butterflies, honey bees, lightening bugs and ladybugs are all part of summer. But so are spiders and mosquitoes. Are bugs good? Are they bad? What do we really know about these amazing creatures? Read more

Many environmental law students and practitioners in California are familiar with National Audubon Society v. Superior Court, 33 Cal. 3d 419 (1983), in which the City of Los Angeles water diversions were impacting the water volume and ecosystem of Mono Lake, one of the oldest inland seas in North America. Read more

In 2022, the ELS Book Club is using a “Book Pairing” format and meeting every other month. Read more

This Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of the natural world. Read more

Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the "great outdoors" and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces. Read more

Stokes argues that organized combat between opposing interest groups is central to explaining why states are not on track to address the climate crisis. Read more

Equal parts memoir, adventure tale, and call to action, Sea Changes has become a classic of environmental literature, at once the gripping adventure story of Earle’s three decades of undersea exploration, an insider’s introduction to the dynamic field of marine biology, and an urgent plea for the preservation of the world’s fragile and rapidly deteriorating ocean ecosystems. Read more

In Parable of the Sower, award-winning science fiction author Octavia E. Butler tells the story of Lauren Olamina, a teenager living in a walled neighborhood near Los Angeles in the mid-2020s. Read more