Rambunctious Garden by Emma Marris is about a new conservation ethic. Marris argues that pristine nature as glorified and portrayed by the "wilderness cult" of the 19th century does not exist in modern day, and that it is futile for conservationists to try and attempt to rewind the clock of ecosystems back to some arbitrary baseline like "before humans arrived." In place of classic conservation, Marris argues for radical rewilding, assisted migration, novel ecosystems, and designer ecosystems. The book is geared towards a popular audience, and as such, it might be a bit elementary for environmental studies majors. That said, for the most part the argument Marris makes is still compelling, although perhaps not novel.

While this is old news, the issue is still very current in Hungary. While I spent time living in Budapest I found that despite the Hungarian company MAL's lack of safety regulations, the Hungarian government ended up paying the brunt of reparations to the victims of the red sludge disaster in October 2010. The issue is very pertinent after Hungary's EU Presidency in January-June 2011, and in fact it has caused the EU to tighten regulations on what constitutes "toxic" red mud throughout Europe.