Imagine a world without human beings.

The tag line to the latest Omega Man remake? Hardly. Rather, its the premise of journalist Alan Weisman’s newest book, The World Without Us, an examination of what might happen if the strain of humanity was taken off the earth. For instance, in days’ time, the pumps that keep our subways dry would fail, flood, and begin eroding underground construction. In a year’s time, millions more birds will exist in a world without airplanes. In twenty years’ time, the steel beams that support New York’s East Side would buckle and break. As Lexington Ave. collapses, it would become a river. Our plastic would exist long after everything else. Our radio signals, however broken, would be emitted forever.

The book is full of juicy factoids like those, but Weisman also takes a look at parts of the world untouched by human hands — Chernobyl, the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the old-growth forests of Poland — and uses those environments to further inform his post-apocalyptic vision.

But Jon Stewart makes it all funny. Watch the Daily Show interview.

Intrepid nice guy and environmentalist David de Rothschild’s The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook is the latest in the parade of Green literature, and perhaps the most informative, too. Published to coincide with the Live Earth concert this summer, de Rothschild’s book offers 77 ways for the common household to combat the ever-looming threat of global warming, ranging from the obvious — start a compost pile, go vegetarian — to the downright bizarre: mutate, burrow underground.

The Today Show, perhaps the greenist of all the morning shows, hosted de Rothschild this morning, and the results are stunning. Watch the interview.

What do you mean, you’re not green? Being green is the new anti-drug! Do you hate the environment? You’re lucky Al Gore doesn’t kick you in the shins!

Even though scientists say we have roughly a decade to effectively deal with global warming, it’s still not too late to check out Elizabeth Rogers’ and Thomas Kostigen’s newest, The Green Book. The authors stopped by The Today Show to demonstrate a few of the dozens of simple things American’s can do to cut down on its massively disproportionate energy consumption.

For instance, cook your food with a microwave, which is roughly four times more efficient than a traditional electric oven. If every American used a microwave for every meal, the authors point out that we would save as much energy as the entire continent of Africa consumes in one year.

For more greenish tips, including ones from Cameron Diaz and Will Ferrell (!), watch the interview and read the excerpt.

This week’s G8 summit got President Bush to acknowledge climate change as a “real” concern and that ignoring international environmental agreements might be a bad thing. New York Times‘ environment reporter Andrew Revkin, author of The North Pole Was Here, talks to On The Media about how Al Gore’s environmental rhetoric is actually helping distract from the current administration’s Iraq quagmire.

Listen to the discussion here.