|
Recommended Reading List
Human consciousness arose but a minute before
midnight on the geological clock. Yet we mayflies try to bend an ancient world
to our purposes, ignorant perhaps of the messages buried in its long history.
Let us hope that we are still in the early morning of our April day.
~Stephen Jay Gould,
"Our Allotted Lifetimes," The Panda's Thumb, 1980
|
|
Click here to see an alphabetical listing
by title or here for a listing by topic.
To see BUF's GSP library section holdings, click here to go to our GSP Library List.
Andrew Nikiforuk
|
About the Author
For the last two decades Andrew Nikiforuk has written about energy, economics and the
west for a variety of Canadian publications including Walrus, Maclean's, Canadian
Business, Report on Business, Chatelaine, Georgia Straight, Equinox and Harrowsmith.
Nikiforuk's journalism has won seven National Magazine Awards since 1989 and top honors
for investigative writing from the Association of Canadian Journalists. His dramatic
Alberta-based book, Saboteurs: Wiebo Ludwigs War Against Big Oil, won the Governor
General's Award for Non-Fiction in 2002. His latest book, Pandemonium, examines the
impact of global trade on disease exchanges and has received widespread national acclaim.
|
|
Tar Sands
The oil sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta are the world’s largest energy project,
America’s #1 supply of crude oil, and have been criticized as a source of "dirty oil."
The environmental and social impact of the tar sands has led Al Gore to dub them
"an economic weapon of mass destruction." Providing almost 20 percent of America's
fuel, much of this dirty oil is being processed in refineries in the Midwest. This
out-of-control megaproject is polluting the air, poisoning the water, and destroying
boreal forest at a rate almost too rapid to be imagined. Andrew Nikiforuk’s Tar Sands
declares a political emergency, outlines the issues as he sees them and argues forcefully
for change.
|
Brian Swimme
|
About the Author
Brian Swimme's Official Website
Dr. Brian Swimme is a mathematical cosmologist on the graduate faculty of the California
Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. (1978) from the
University of Oregon specializing in gravitational dynamics, mathematical cosmology and
singularity theory. Swimme was a faculty member in the Dept. of Mathematics and Physics
at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington from 1978-1981. He was a member of
the faculty at the Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality at Holy Names College
in Oakland, California from 1983-1989. He is the producer of a twelve-part dvd series
Canticle to the Cosmos which has been distributed worldwide. Other dvd programs featuring
Swimme’s ideas include The Earth’s Imagination and The Powers of the Universe. Brian
Swimme's primary field of research is the nature of the evolutionary dynamics of the
Universe. Swimme brings us a meaningful interpretation of the human as an emergent being
within the Universe and Earth. His central concern is the role of the human within the
Earth community.
|
|
The Universe is a Green Dragon
Communicating his ideas in the form of a classical dialogue between a youth and a wise
elder, cosmologist Brian Swimme crafts a fascinating exploration into the creativity
suffusing the universe. His explication of the fundamental powers of the cosmos is
mystical and ecstatic and points directly to the need to activate one’s own creative
powers.
|
|
The Universe Story
Cosmologist Brian Swimme and cultural historian Thomas Berry provide a new, science-based
cosmology for our times that provides an epic and poetic explanation of the creation of
the universe and our place in it. A celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos--from
the primordial flaring forth to the ecozoic era. From the big bang to the present and
into the next millenium, "The Universe Story" unites science and the humanities in a
dramatic exploration of the unfolding of the universe, humanity's evolving place in the
cosmos, and the boundless possibilities for our future.
|
|
The Hidden Heart Of The Cosmos: Humanity And The New Story
What does it mean to be human, to live on planet Earth, in the universe as it is now
understood? In The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos best-selling author and mathematical
cosmologist Brian Swimme takes us on a journey through the cosmos in search of the
"new story" that is developing in answer to this age-old question. The Hidden Heart
of the Cosmos opens up not only the exhilarating truths that science reveals of the
birth of the universe, but how these truths can transform our lives. In such a view
the cosmos appears as awesome and meaningful, its dynamics revelatory, and in this
revelation can be found the wisdom humanity needs to face and overcome its present
crises, particularly the soul-numbing consumerism that threatens to overwhelm not
only individuals, families or societies, but the Earth itself. The Hidden Heart of
the Cosmos helps us to grasp the larger significance of the human enterprise in this
evolving university. Upon meeting that challenge rests much of the vitality of Earth
community, and the future quality of life, for ourselves and our children.
|
David Suzuki
|
About the Author
David Suzuki's Official Website
David has received consistently high acclaim for his 30 years of award-winning work in
broadcasting, explaining the complexities of science in a compelling, easily understood
way. He is well known to millions as the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's
popular science television series, The Nature of Things. His eight part series, A Planet
for the Taking won an award from the United Nations. His eight-part PBS series The Secret
of Life was praised internationally, as was his five-part series The Brain for the
Discovery Channel. For CBC Radio he founded the long running radio series, Quirks and
Quarks and has presented two influential documentary series on the environment, From
Naked Ape to Superspecies and It's a Matter of Survival. An internationally respected
geneticist, David was a full Professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver
from 1969 until his retirement in 2001. He is professor emeritus with UBC's Sustainable
Development Research Institute. From 1969 to 1972 he was the recipient of the prestigious
E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship Award for the "Outstanding Canadian Research Scientist
Under the Age of 35".
|
|
The Sacred Balance
This powerful book captures David Suzuki's vision for a world in which we can rediscover
our place in nature and live in balance with our surroundings. It offers concrete
suggestions for meeting our physical and spiritual needs while creating a way of life
that is sustainable, fulfilling and just. It also tells the stories of people who have
put their beliefs into action and are helping to create such a way of life.
|
|
The Big Picture
David Suzuki and Dave Robert Taylor look beyond our environmental problems to examine
the forces that are preventing real change. Whether they’re discussing how to reconcile
economy with ecology or why we may need to start eating jellyfish for dinner, they point
in the direction we must go if we hope to meet the environmental challenges we face in
the twenty-first century. Covering suburban sprawl, sustainable transportation, food
shortages, biodiversity, technology, public policy, and more, The Big Picture identifies
the problems facing our world and proposes solid, science-based solutions.
|
|
Tree: A Life Story
"Only God can make a tree," wrote Joyce Kilmer in one of the most celebrated of
poems. In Tree: A Life Story, authors David Suzuki and Wayne Grady extend that
celebration in a "biography" of this extraordinary — and extraordinarily important —
organism. A story that spans a millennium and includes a cast of millions but focuses
on a single tree, a Douglas fir, Tree describes in poetic detail the organism’s
modest origins that begin with a dramatic burst of millions of microscopic grains
of pollen. The authors recount the amazing characteristics of the species, how they
reproduce and how they receive from and offer nourishment to generations of other
plants and animals. The tree’s pivotal role in making life possible for the creatures
around it — including human beings — is lovingly explored. The richly detailed text
and Robert Bateman’s original art pay tribute to this ubiquitous organism that is too
often taken for granted.
|
Joanna Macy
|
About the Author
Joanna Macy's Official Website
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory,
and deep ecology. A respected voice in movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she
interweaves her scholarship with four decades of activism. She has created a ground-
breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful
workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological
and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the
fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. Many thousands of
people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group
methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely
in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform
despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into
constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our
larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten
the continuity of life on Earth.
|
|
The Work That Reconnects
Here is a visual tool for educators, clergy, helping professionals, and activists who
wish to understand this work. It is also a training guide for those currently facilitating
the work and for those who may be inspired to do so. You will see Joanna teaching the
conceptual foundations of the work, including the Great Turning, systems theory, deep
ecology, and despair work, as well as many of her favorite exercises. To these she adds
for the viewer guidelines on critical aspects and choice points of the experiential work.
The Work That Reconnects is a pioneering form of group work that began in the 1970s. It
demonstrates our interconnectedness in the web of life and our authority to take action
on its behalf. It has helped many thousands around the globe find insight, solidarity,
and courage to act, despite rapidly worsening conditions. Based on systems theory,
spiritual teachings, and deep ecology, its methods are described in "Coming Back to
Life".
|
|
World As Lover, World As Self
Weaving together the Buddhist principle of dependent co-arising with deep ecology, Macy
offers a blueprint for positive social change and for reversing the destructive attitudes
that have brought us to the brink of extinction. A thorough overview of two decades of
this prominent eco-philosopher's ground-breaking work.
|
David Korten
|
About the Author
David Korten's Official website
Dr. Korten is co-founder and board chair of Positive Futures Network, which publishes
YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, a quarterly magazine, a board member of the Business
Alliance for Local Living Economies, an associate of the International Forum on
Globalization.[2], and a member of the Club of Rome. Korten came to believe that the
crisis of deepening poverty, growing inequality, environmental devastation, and social
disintegration he was observing in Asia was also being experienced in nearly every
country in the world -- including the United States and other "developed" countries.
Furthermore he came to the conclusion that the United States was actively promoting --
both at home and abroad -- the very policies that were deepening the resulting global
crisis. For the world to survive, the United States must change.
|
|
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
The Great Turning is an essential resource which cuts through the complexity of our time
to illuminate a simple, but elegant truth. We humans live by stories. We are held captive
to the ways of Empire by a cultural trance of our own creation maintained by stories that
deny the higher possibilities of our human nature—including our capacities for compassion,
cooperation, responsible self-direction, and self-organizing partnership. In "The Great
Turning," Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely a contemporary
manifestation of what he defines as "Empire"—the organization of society by hierarchies
of domination grounded in violent chauvinisms of race, gender, religion, nationality,
language, and class. The result has been the same for 5,000 years—fortune for the few
and misery for the many. Now, thanks to modern technologies, the way of Empire is
increasingly destructive to children, family, community, and nature itself, rapidly
leading us all to the brink of worldwide environmental and social collapse.
|
|
When Corporations Rule The World
The Second Edition of the Modern Classic, Released April 2001. Considered by many to be
the "bible" of the emerging global Living Democracy Movement, When Corporations Rule the
World has become a modern classic with a message that seems increasingly prophetic with
each passing day. Its central message is a clear and unequivocal wake up call to humanity.
The global economy has become like a malignant cancer, advancing the colonization of the
planet's living spaces for the benefit of powerful corporations and financial institutions.
It has turned these once useful institutions into instruments of a market tyranny that is
destroying livelihoods, displacing people, and feeding on life in an insatiable quest for
money. It forces us all to act in ways destructive of ourselves, our families, our
communities, and nature. This destructive process is driven by a combination of
institutional forces and an extremist ideology of corporate libertarianism that invokes
the theories of Adam Smith and market economics to advance policies that systematically
undermine both the market and democracy.
|
|
Agenda For A New Economy
Our hope lies not with Wall Street, Korten argues, but with Main Street, which creates
real wealth from real resources to meet real needs. He outlines an agenda to liberate
the latent entrepreneurial energies of Main Street from Wall Street’s deadly grip and
bring into being a new economy—locally based, community-oriented, and devoted to creating
a better life for all, not simply increasing profits. It will require courageous and
imaginative changes to how we measure economic success, organize our financial system,
even the very way we create money. Korten outlines a challenging, but practical agenda
summarized at the end of the book in his version of the economic address to the nation
he wishes Barak Obama were able to deliver.
|
Thomas Berry
|
About the Author
Thomas Berry's Official Website
From his academic beginnings as a historian of world cultures and religions, Berry
developed into a historian of the Earth and its evolutionary processes. He describes
himself as a "geologian". Berry received his Ph.D. in European Intellectual History
with a thesis on Giambattista Vico's philosophy of history. Widely read in Western
history, he also spent many years studying the cultural history of Asia. He has lived
in China and traveled to other parts of Asia. He authored two books on Asian religions,
Buddhism and Religions of India (distributed by Columbia University Press). For two
decades, he directed the Riverdale Center of Religious Research along the Hudson River.
During this period he taught at Fordham University where he chaired the history of
religions program and directed 25 doctoral theses. His major contributions to the
discussion on the environment are in his books The Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club Books,
1988 reprinted, 2006), The Great Work: Our Way into the Future (Random House, 1999) and,
with Brian Swimme, The Universe Story (Harper San Francisco, 1992). His latest collection
of essays is Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community (Sierra Club Books
and University of California Press, 2006).
|
|
The Dream of the Earth
This landmark work, first published by Sierra Club Books in 1988, has established itself
as a foundational volume in the ecological canon. In it, noted cultural historian Thomas
Berry provides nothing less than a new intellectual-ethical framework for the human
community by positing planetary well-being as the measure of all human activity. Drawing
on the wisdom of Western philosophy, Asian thought, and Native American traditions, as
well as contemporary physics and evolutionary biology, Berry offers a new perspective
that recasts our understanding of science, technology, politics, religion, ecology, and
education. He shows us why it is important for us to respond to the Earth's need for
planetary renewal, and what we must do to break free of the "technological trance" that
drives a misguided dream of progress. Only then, he suggests, can we foster mutually
enhancing human-Earth relationships that can heal our traumatized global biosystem.
|
|
The Universe Story
Cosmologist Brian Swimme and cultural historian Thomas Berry provide a new, science-based
cosmology for our times that provides an epic and poetic explanation of the creation of
the universe and our place in it. A celebration of the unfolding of the cosmos--from
the primordial flaring forth to the ecozoic era. From the big bang to the present and
into the next millenium, "The Universe Story" unites science and the humanities in a
dramatic exploration of the unfolding of the universe, humanity's evolving place in the
cosmos, and the boundless possibilities for our future.
|
|
The Great Work
The future can exist only if humans understand how to commune with the natural world
rather than exploit it, explains Thomas Berry. "Already the planet is so damaged and
the future is so challenged by its rising human population that the terms of survival
will be severe beyond anything we have known in the past."
|
|
Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community
Among the contemporary voices for the Earth, none resonates like that of noted cultural
historian Thomas Berry. His teaching and writings have inspired a generation's thinking
about humankind's place in the Earth community and the universe, engendering widespread
critical acclaim and a documentary film on his life and work. This new collection of
essays, from various years and occasions, expands and deepens ideas articulated in his
earlier writings and also breaks new ground. Berry opens our eyes to the full dimensions
of the ecological crisis, framing it as a crisis of spiritual vision. Applying his
formidable erudition in cultural history, science, and comparative religions, he forges
a compelling narrative of creation and communion that reconciles modern evolutionary
thinking and traditional religious insights concerning our integral role in Earth's
society. While sounding an urgent alarm at our current dilemma, Berry inspires us to
reclaim our role as the consciousness of the universe and thereby begin to create a
true partnership with the Earth community. With Evening Thoughts, this wise elder has
lit another beacon to lead us home.
|
Michael Pollan
|
About the Author
Michael Pollans's Official Website
Michael Pollan is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
His previous book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (2006), was
named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times and the Washington Post.
It also won the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the James
Beard Award for best food writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics
Circle Award. He is also the author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the
World (2001); A Place of My Own (1997); and Second Nature (1991). A contributing writer
to the New York Times Magazine, Pollan is the recipient of numerous journalistic awards,
including the James Beard Award for best magazine series in 2003 and the Reuters-I.U.C.N.
2000 Global Award for Environmental Journalism. Pollan served for many years as executive
editor of Harper’s Magazine and is now the Knight Professor of Science and Environmental
Journalism at UC Berkeley. His articles have been anthologized in Best American Science
Writing (2004); Best American Essays (1990 and 2003) and the Norton Book of Nature
Writing.
|
|
In Defense of Food
Pollan proposes a new (and very old) answer to the question of what we should eat that
comes down to seven simple but liberating words: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
By urging us to once again eat food, he challenges the prevailing nutrient-by-nutrient
approach -- what he calls nutritionism -- and proposes an alternative way of eating that
is informed by the traditions and ecology of real, well-grown, unprocessed food. Our
personal health, he argues, cannot be divorced from the health of the food chains of
which we are part. "In Defense of Food" shows us how, despite the daunting dietary
landscape Americans confront in the modern supermarket, we can escape the Western diet
and, by doing so, most of the chronic diseases that diet causes. We can relearn which
foods are healthy, develop simple ways to moderate our appetites, and return eating to
its proper context -- out of the car and back to the table. Michael Pollan's bracing
and eloquent manifesto shows us how we can start making thoughtful food choices that
will enrich our lives, enlarge our sense of what it means to be healthy, and bring
pleasure back to eating.
|
|
Omnivore's Dilemma
In this groundbreaking book, one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant
writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what
we should have for dinner. To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that
sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—
from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the
American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-
science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and
hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the
handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal,
he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins
of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste
for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance. The surprising
answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political,
economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us.
|
|
Second Nature
In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan
has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's
place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto
not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere. Chosen by the American
Horticultural Society as one of the seventy-five greatest books ever written about
gardening, Second Nature captures the rhythms of our everyday engagement with the
outdoors in all its glory and exasperation. With chapters ranging from a reconsideration
of the Great American Lawn, a dispatch from one man's war with a woodchuck, to an essay
about the sexual politics of roses, Pollan has created a passionate and eloquent argument
for reconceiving our relationship with nature.
|
|
The Botany of Desire
Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers:
The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers'
genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how
people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He
masterfully links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and
control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the
potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the
plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've
benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really
domesticating whom?
|
Bill McKibben
|
About the Author
Bill McKibben's Website
Bill McKibben is an American environmentalist and writer who frequently writes about
global warming, alternative energy, and the risks associated with human genetic
engineering. Beginning in the summer of 2006, he led the organization of the largest
demonstrations against global warming in American history. McKibben is active in the
Methodist Church, and his writing sometimes has a spiritual bent. In late summer 2006,
Bill helped lead a five-day walk across Vermont to demand action on global warming that
some newspaper accounts called the largest demonstration to date in America about climate
change. Beginning in January 2007 he founded stepitup07.org to demand that Congress enact
curbs on carbon emissions that would cut global warming pollution 80 percent by 2050.
With six college students, he organized 1,400 global warming demonstrations across all
50 states of America on April 14, 2007. Step It Up 2007 has been described as the largest
day of protest about climate change in the nation's history. A guide to help people
initiate environmental activism in their community coming out of the Step It Up 2007
experience entitled Fight Global Warming Now was published in October 2007 and a second
day of action on climate change was held the following November 3.
|
|
American Earth
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change,
writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, inspiring, and timely
anthology gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from
the last two centuries. "Each advance in environmental practice" in our nation's history,
McKibben observes in his introduction, "was preceded by a great book." Here, for the
first time in a single volume, are the words that made a movement. Classics of the
environmental imagination—the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John
Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring—are set
alongside an emerging activist movement, revealed by newly uncovered reports of
pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and
legislation, and searing protest speeches. Throughout, some of America's greatest
and most impassioned writers take a turn toward nature, recognizing the fragility
of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of
life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and
the nature of "nature" join ecologists' memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats
of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental
movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of
illustrations.
|
|
Deep Economy
In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge
in a generation to the prevailing view of our economy. Deep Economy makes the compelling
case for moving beyond "growth" as the paramount economic ideal and pursuing prosperity
in a more local direction, with regions producing more of their own food, generating more
of their own energy, and even creating more of their own culture and entertainment. Our
purchases need not be at odds with the things we truly value, McKibben argues, and the
more we nurture the essential humanity of our economy, the more we will recapture our
own.
|
|
End of Nature
Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our
environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the
progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth. This impassioned plea for
radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in
environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent
on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant
than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core
issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new
introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the
1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys
the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply a handbook for survival or
a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is
required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
|
|
Fight Global Warming Now
Bestselling author Bill McKibben turns activist in the first hands-on guidebook to
stopping climate change, the world's greatest threat. Hurricane Katrina. A rapidly
disappearing Arctic. The warmest winter on the East Coast in recorded history. The
leading scientist at NASA warns that we have only ten years to reverse climate change;
the British government's report on global warming estimates that the financial impact
will be greater than the Great Depression and both world wars—combined. Bill McKibben,
the author of the first major book on global warming, The End of Nature, warns that it's
no longer time to debate global warming, it's time to fight it.
|
Paul Hawken
|
About the Author
Paul Hawken's Official
Website
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author. Starting at age
20, he dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business
and the environment. His practice has included starting and running ecological businesses,
writing and teaching about the impact of commerce on living systems, and consulting with
governments and corporations on economic development, industrial ecology, and
environmental policy.
|
|
Blessed Unrest
Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative
strategies, and hidden history, which date back many centuries. A culmination of Hawken's
many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire
and delight any and all who despair of the world's fate, and its conclusions will surprise
even those within the movement itself. Fundamentally, it is a description of humanity's
collective genius, and the unstoppable movement to reimagine our relationship to the
environment and one another." - Viking Press
|
|
The Ecology of Commerce
"Hawken touches on a raw nerve here. How might millions of people live and work in a
complex business environment while causing "as little suffering as possible to all and
everything around us?" Hawken, no Luddite, believes that "we need a design for business
that will ensure that the industrial world as it is presently constituted ceases and is
replaced with human-centered enterprises that are sustainable producers." Avoiding stormy
rhetoric, Hawken thoughtfully reviews ecological theories and disasters and insists that
"ecology offers a way to examine all present economic and resource activities from a
biological rather than a monetary point of view." Calling for a restorative economy, he
proposes rational, achievable goals: stop "accelerating the rate that we draw down
capacity"; refrain from "buying or degrading other people’s environment"; and avoid
displacing "other species by taking over their habitats." This noteworthy study should
kindle debates within the business community." — Publishers Weekly
|
|
Natural Capitalism
"Hawken . . . and . . . the Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmental think tank, have
put together an ambitious, visionary monster of a book… The authors have two related
goals: first, to show the vast array of ecologically smart options available to
businesses; second, to argue that it is possible for society and industry to adopt
them. Hawken and the Lovinses acknowledge such barriers as the high initial costs
of some techniques, lack of knowledge of alternatives, entrenched ways of thinking
and other cultural factors. In looking at options for transportation (including the
development of ultralight, electricity-powered automobiles), energy use, building
design, and waste reduction and disposal, the book's reach is phenomenal. It belongs
to the galvanizing tradition of Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet and
Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog. Whether all that the authors have organized
and presented so earnestly here can be assimilated and acted on by the people who run
the world is open to question. But readers with a capacity for judicious browsing and
grazing can surely learn enough in these pages to apply well-reasoned pressure."
— Publishers Weekly
|
Barbara Kingsovler
|
About the Author
Barbara Kingsolver's Official Website
Kingsolver's short fiction and poetry began to be published during the mid-1980's,
along with the articles she wrote regularly for regional and national periodicals.
She has written eleven books. She has contributed to dozens of literary anthologies,
and her reviews and articles have appeared in most major U.S. newspapers and magazines.
Her books have earned major literary awards at home and abroad, and in 2000 she received
the National Humanities Medal, our nation's highest honor for service through the arts.
In 1997 Barbara established the Bellwether Prize, awarded in even-numbered years to a
first novel that exemplifies outstanding literary quality and a commitment to literature
as a tool for social change.
|
|
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Hang on for the ride: With characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her
family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a
rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it
themselves, or learn to live without it. Their good-humored search yields surprising
discoveries about turkey sex life and overly zealous zucchini plants, en route to a food
culture that's better for the neighborhood and also better on the table. Part memoir,
part journalistic investigation, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle makes a passionate case for
putting the kitchen back at the center of family life and diversified farms at the center
of the American diet.
|
Van Jones
|
About the Author
Van Jones' Official Website
Van Jones is founding president of Green For All and a senior fellow with the Center for
American Progress. He is also a TIME Magazine 2008 Environmental Hero, one of Fast
Company’s 12 Most Creative Minds of 2008, and the the New York Times Bestselling author
of The Green Collar Economy (Harper One 2008), which is endorsed by Nancy Pelosi, Tom
Daschle and Al Gore. He is a tireless advocate, committed to creating "green pathways
out of poverty" and greatly expanding the coalition fighting global warming. In 2008,
Van was awarded: one of Essence Magazine's "Influential/Inspiring African Americans of
2008"; the Puffin/Nation prize for "Creative Citizenship"; the Elle Magazine "Green
Award 2008"; selection as one of the George Lucas Foundation's "Daring Dozen 2008";
Hunt Alternatives "Prime Mover Award 2008"; Campaign for America's Future "Paul Wellstone
Award 2008"; Global Green USA "Community Environmental Leadership Award 2008"; designation
as one of the nation's "Plenty 20" in the October/November 2008 edition of Plenty
Magazine; San Francisco Foundation "Community Leadership Award 2008"; Environment News
Feed's "2008 Top Eco-entrepreneur of the Year"; in 2008, and one of the 20 Hottest
Influences in the National Urban League's Urban Influence Magazine.
|
|
Green Collar Economy
Provocative, personal, and inspirational, New York Times best-seller The Green Collar
Economy is not a dire warning but rather a substantive and viable plan for solving the
biggest issues facing the country--the failing economy and our devastated environment.
From a distance, it appears that these two problems are separate, but when we look closer,
the connection becomes unmistakable. The economy is built on and powered almost
exclusively by oil, natural gas, and coal, all fast-diminishing nonrenewable resources.
As supplies disappear, the price of energy climbs and nearly everything becomes more
expensive. With costs and unemployment soaring, the economy stalls. Not only that, when
we burn these fuels, the greenhouse gases they create overheat the atmosphere. As the
headlines make clear, total climate chaos looms over us. The bottom line: we cannot
continue with business as usual. We cannot drill and burn our way out of these dual
dilemmas. Instead, Van Jones illustrates how we can invent and invest our way out of
the pollution-based grey economy and into the healthy new green economy. Built by a broad
coalition deeply rooted in the lives and struggles of ordinary people, this path has the
practical benefit of both cutting energy prices and generating enough work to pull the
U.S. economy out of its present death spiral.
|
Al Gore
|
About the Author
Al Gore's Official Website
Former Vice President Al Gore is cofounder and Chairman of Generation Investment
Management, a firm that is focused on a new approach to Sustainable Investing. Gore is
also cofounder and Chairman of Current TV, an independently owned cable and satellite
television network for young people based on viewer-created content and citizen journalism.
A member of the Board of Directors of Apple Computer, Inc. and a Senior Advisor to Google,
Inc. Gore is also Visiting Professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro,
Tennessee. Mr. Gore is the author of An Inconvenient Truth, a best-selling book on the
threat of and solutions to global warming, and the subject of the movie of the same title,
which has already become one of the top documentary films in history. In 2007, An
Inconvenient Truth was awarded two Academy Awards for Best Documentary Feature and Best
Original Song. Since his earliest days in the U. S. Congress 30 years ago, Al Gore has
been the leading advocate for confronting the threat of global warming. His pioneering
efforts were outlined in his best-selling book Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the
Human Spirit (1992). He led the Clinton-Gore Administration's efforts to protect the
environment in a way that also strengthens the economy.
|
|
Earth In The Balance
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change,
writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, inspiring, and timely
anthology gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from
the last two centuries. "Each advance in environmental practice" in our nation's history,
McKibben observes in his introduction, "was preceded by a great book." Here, for the
first time in a single volume, are the words that made a movement. Classics of the
environmental imagination—the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John
Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring—are set
alongside an emerging activist movement, revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering
campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and
searing protest speeches. Throughout, some of America's greatest and most impassioned
writers take a turn toward nature, recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth
and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays
on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of "nature" join ecologists'
memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology
includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental
history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.
|
|
An Inconvenient Truth
A passionate and lifelong defender of the environment, Vice President Al Gore describes
in this classic best-selling book how human actions and decisions can endanger or
safeguard the vulnerable ecosystem that sustains us all. The book's groundbreaking
analysis helped place the environment on the national agenda, summoning politicians,
the media, and the public to attention and action. The message remains just as urgent
today as it did eight years ago: while much has been accomplished, we must meet a global
environmental challenge that reaches into every aspect of our society. In brave and
unforgettable terms, Earth in the Balance probes the roots of the environmental crisis
and offers a bold and forceful vision of a new, more sustainable path. Having provoked
international discussion upon its original publication, it continues to confront us with
profound challenges. Human civilization must change its course if we are to heal our
ailing environment and preserve the earth's ecology for future generations. Vice President
Gore describes in a new foreword to this classic what we have achieved and what remains
to be done, and issues a clarion call to begin the millennium with an "Environment
Decade." It is time to reflect deeply on the fate of our planet and commit ourselves to
its future.
|
Fred Pearce
|
About the Author
Fred Pearce is currently the environment consultant of New Scientist magazine and a
regular contributor to the London Daily Telegraph, The Independent, The Guardian, Times
Higher Education Supplement and Country Living. Fred's Footprint, his fortnightly
environment blog, appears on the New Scientist web site. He has also written for several
US publications including Foreign Policy, Audubon magazine, Seed, Popular Science and
Time. He has written a wide range of books on environment and development issues
published in both the UK and US including Confessions of an Eco Sinner, When the Rivers
Run Dry, Earth: Then and Now, including a foreword by Zac Goldsmith, The Last Generation
(on climate change) and Deep Jungle. His books have been translated into at least ten
languages including French, German, Portuguese, Japanese and Spanish. He is a regular
broadcaster and international speaker on environmental issues, and has given public
presentations on all six continents in the past two years. Among his engagements have
been the Edinburgh, Hay and Salisbury Book Festivals, the Ottawa and Melbourne
International Writers Festivals, the Brisbane RiverSymposium in 2006[8], Yale and
Cambridge Universities, a speaking tour for the British Council in India, and
presentations to business and financial groups, such as Anglo American PLC in South
Africa, Cathay Pacific in Hong Kong and UBS in London. He has also written reports
and extended journalism for WWF, the UN Environment Programme, the Red Cross, UNESCO,
the World Bank, the European Environment Agency, and the UK Environment Agency. He is
a trustee of the Integrated Water Resources International.
|
|
Confesson of an Eco-sinner
Pearce shows us the hidden worlds that sustain a Western lifestyle, and he does it by
examining the origins of everything in his own life. In conversational and convivial
prose, Pearce surveys his home and then tracks down the people behind the production
and distribution of everything from his socks to his computer to the food in his fridge.
It's a fascinating portrait, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world's
more than six billion inhabitants-all eating, consuming, making-have on our planet, and
of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.
|
|
The Last Generation
Climate Change has always been part of the world’s history, as he points out there have
been only two prolonged periods of stability in the earth’s climate. But in documenting
how the earth’s climate history has been punctuated by moments of rapid and extreme
climate change, the author is showing just how dramatic an effect the consequences of
human society are. Currently we are responsible for adding "4 billion tonnes of carbon
dioxide a year to the atmosphere". This is a colossal amount, and it is enough to nudge
to fragile climate systems in dangerous directions. It highlights something often
unmentioned by popular and political accounts of climate change, we don’t face a
problem which is gradually going to get worse, we face a situation where existing
climate problems will create greater problems that snowball out of our control. Unless
of course we all act, collectively, to solve the problem now.
|
|
When the Rivers Run Dry
We are a heavily water intensive society globally, and the planet has passed the point
of having enough water, on current patterns of usage, for everyone. Engineering solutions
(usually dams, reservoirs and canals) usually produce short term gains and serious long-
term problems; and most reservoir schemes don’t get close to meeting their promised energy
and/or irrigation targets. Eventually, silt does for the river scheme and salt for the
land. The traditional benefits of natural rivers systems (flooding, fertilisation etc)
aren’t well priced by planners and therefore are overlooked. The ‘green revolution’ has
enabled us to feed most of our expanding global population but the water intensity has
been high; agriculturalists are moving to a ‘more crop per drop’ model. The outlook is
not good - already many areas are reverting to desert - but the most promising approaches
involve simple local (and often traditional) solutions about harnessing and harvesting
rainwater.
|
|
Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World
Earth Then and Now records the dramatic way our planet has changed over the past century.
On one page is a specific part of the world as it was 5, 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. On
the facing page is the same place as it looks today. Each stark visual comparison tells a
compelling story -- a melting glacier, an expanding desert, an encroaching cityscape, a
natural disaster. It reminds us that nothing is without a cost. Highly topical and thought
provoking chapters in this book include: "Environmental change": Bearing witness to the
effects of global warming "Industrialization": Revealing the hidden costs of "progress"
"Urbanization": Showing the effects of our spreading cities "Natural disasters": Reminding
us of the power of nature "War": Using comparisons to show the impact of armed conflict
"Travel and tourism": Illustrating the predatory nature of development. Concise captions
explain the facts and then allow the reader to draw personal conclusions. Anyone concerned
about the environment will enjoy and appreciate Earth Then and Now.
|
|
With Speed and Violence
As Pearce began working on this book, normally cautious scientists beat a path to his
door to tell him about their fears and their latest findings. With Speed and Violence
tells the stories of these scientists and their work—from the implications of melting
permafrost in Siberia and the huge river systems of meltwater beneath the icecaps of
Greenland and Antarctica to the effects of the "ocean conveyor" and a rare molecule
that runs virtually the entire cleanup system for the planet. Above all, the scientists
told him what they're now learning about the speed and violence of past natural climate
change-and what it portends for our future. With Speed and Violence is the most up-to-date
and readable book yet about the growing evidence for global warming and the large climatic
effects it may unleash. "If you want to quickly get up to date on climate change and its
consequences, I recommend With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in
Climate Change. If you can read only one book on climate change, this is it." - Lester
Brown, president, Earth Policy Institute
|
Rachel Carson
|
About the Author
Rachel Carson Website
Rachel Louise Carson was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings
are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. Carson started her career
as a biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, and became a full-time nature writer in
the 1950s. Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems
caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought
environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public. Silent
Spring spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy—leading to a nationwide ban
on DDT and other pesticides—and the grassroots environmental movement the book inspired
led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.
|
|
Silent Spring
Rarely does a single book alter the course of history, but Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring did exactly that. The outcry that followed its publication in 1962 forced the
government to ban DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air,
land, and water. Carson's book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.
It is without question one of the landmark books of the twentieth century. It
meticulously described how DDT entered the food chain and accumulated in the fatty
tissues of animals, including human beings, and caused cancer and genetic damage.
A single application on a crop, she wrote, killed insects for weeks and months, and
not only the targeted insects but countless more, and remained toxic in the environment
even after it was diluted by rainwater. Carson concluded that DDT and other pesticides
had irrevocably harmed birds and animals and had contaminated the entire world food
supply. The book's most haunting and famous chapter, "A Fable for Tomorrow," depicted
a nameless American town where all life -- from fish to birds to apple blossoms to human
children -- had been "silenced" by the insidious effects of DDT.
|
James Speth
|
About the Author
James Gustave Speth Website
From 1993 to 1999, Dean Speth served as administrator of the United Nations Development
Programme and chair of the UN Development Group. Prior to his service at the UN, he was
founder and president of the World Resources Institute; professor of law at Georgetown
University; chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality; and senior attorney
and cofounder, Natural Resources Defense Council. Throughout his career, Dean Speth has
provided leadership and entrepreneurial initiatives to many task forces and committees
whose roles have been to combat environmental degradation, including the President’s Task
Force on Global Resources and Environment; the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment
and Development; and the National Commission on the Environment. Among his awards are the
National Wildlife Federation’s Resources Defense Award, the Natural Resources Council of
America’s Barbara Swain Award of Honor, a 1997 Special Recognition Award from the Society
for International Development, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Environmental Law
Institute, and the Blue Planet Prize. Publications include The Bridge at the Edge of the
World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, Red Sky
at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment; Worlds Apart: Globalization
and the Environment; and articles in Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Environmental
Science and Technology, the Columbia Journal World of Business, and other journals and
books.
|
|
The Bridge At The End Of The World
What kind of a system should follow our present, environmentally and socially destructive
one? The Bridge at the Edge of the World lays the groundwork. Speth’s proposals demand a
lot from world citizens and especially from Americans. At our current moment of economic
insecurity, panic about the present could overwhelm even the most pressing concerns about
the future. The knee-jerk scramble to fire up the stalling engines of economic growth
leaves little room for big-picture assessment. Voices such as Speth’s that call for
careful reconsideration of our assumptions are hard to hear. Although our position is
undeniably difficult, Speth finds hope in the very real interest of young people and many
others in finding solutions, and in the rich ideas being generated by top thinkers devoted
to the problem. Solutions that seemed foolish yesterday and that seem radical today will
seem sensible and necessary tomorrow, he argues.
|
|
Red Sky At Morning
This book will change the way we understand the future of our planet. It is both alarming
and hopeful. James Gustave Speth, renowned as a visionary environmentalist leader, warns
that in spite of all the international negotiations and agreements of the past two decades,
efforts to protect Earth’s environment are not succeeding. Still, he says, the challenges
are not insurmountable. He offers comprehensive, viable new strategies for dealing with
environmental threats around the world. "Gus Speth brought global environmental concerns
to the world's attention nearly a quarter of a century ago. His extraordinary new book is
an impassioned plea to take these issues seriously before it is too late. We owe it to our
children and grandchildren to read Red Sky at Morning and take action while we can."
- Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States
|
|
Worlds Apart: Globalizaton and the Environment
Worlds Apart presents a cohesive set of essays by leading thinkers on the subject of
globalization, offering a thoughtful overview of the major environmental issues related
to globalization in a clear, reasoned style. Framed by Gus Speth’s introduction and
conclusion, essays range from Jane Lubchenco’s discussion of the scientific indicators of
global environmental change to Robert Kates’ examination of the prospect that our growing
global interconnectedness could lead a transition to a more sustainable world to Vandana
Shiva’s impassioned plea for a new "living democracy" that counters the degrading,
dehumanizing tendencies of the global economy. Other contributors include Maurice Strong
on the Rio Earth Summit and the future course of environmentalism, José Goldemberg on
energy, Jerry Mander on the inherent destructiveness of the global economic system,
Stephan Schmidheiny on the forestry industry, and Daniel Esty and Maria Ivanova on
global environmental governance. Edited by one of the world’s leading experts on
international environmental issues, the book brings together the most respected
thinkers and actors on the world stage to offer a compelling set of perspectives and
a solid introduction to the social and environmental dimensions of globalization.
|
|
Global Environmental Governance
Today's most pressing environmental problems are planetary in scope, confounding the
political will of any one nation. How can we solve them? Global Environmental Governance
offers the essential information, theory, and practical insight needed to tackle this
critical challenge. It examines ten major environmental threats-climate disruption,
biodiversity loss, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, desertification, freshwater
degradation and shortages, marine fisheries decline, toxic pollutants, and excess
nitrogen-and explores how they can be addressed through treaties, governance regimes,
and new forms of international cooperation
|
Daniel Goleman
|
About the Author
Daniel Goleman Website
Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to
professional groups, business audiences, and on college campuses. Working as a
science journalist, Goleman reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The
New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books)
was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year-and-a-half; with more than
5,000,000 copies in print worldwide in 30 languages, and has been a best seller in
many countries. Dr. Goleman was a co-founder of the Collaborative for Academic,
Social and Emotional Learning at the Yale University Child Studies Center (now at
the University of Illinois at Chicago), with the mission to help schools introduce
emotional literacy courses. Dr. Goleman has received many journalistic awards for
his writing, including two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize for his articles in
the Times, and a Career Achievement award for journalism from the American
Psychological Association. In recognition of his efforts to communicate the
behavioral sciences to the public, he was elected a Fellow of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science.
|
|
Ecological Intelligence
The bestselling author of Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership, Daniel
Goleman reveals the hidden environmental consequences of what we make and buy, and
shows how new market forces can drive the essential changes we all must make to
save our planet. Ecological Intelligence draws on cutting-edge research to reveal
why "green is a mirage," illuminates inconsistencies in our response to the
ecological crisis, and introduces new technologies that reveal with "radical
transparency" the eco-impact of products we buy, with the potential to drive
consumers to make smarter decisions and companies to reform their business
practices.
|
Peter G. Brown
Geoff Garver
|
About the Author-Peter G. Brown
Moral Economy Project Website
Peter Brown is a professor in the School of Environment, the Department of Geography,
and the Department of Natural Resource Sciences at McGill University. Before coming to
McGill, he was Professor of Public Policy at the University of Maryland's graduate School
of Public Affairs. While at the University of Maryland, he founded the Institute for
Philosophy and Public Policy, the School of Public Policy itself, and established the
School's Environmental Policy Programs. He is a graduate of Haverford College, holds a
Master's Degree in the Philosophy of Religion from Union Theological Seminary and
Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Columbia in Philosophy. He is the author of
Restoring the Public Trust: A Fresh Vision for Progressive Government in America (Beacon
Press, 1994), and Ethics, Economics and International Relations: Transparent Sovereignty
in the Commonwealth of Life, Second Edition (Edinburgh University Press, 2008). It is
published in North America as The Commonwealth of Life: Economics for a Flourishing
Earth, Second Edition (Black Rose Books, 2008). He is actively involved in conservation
efforts in the James Bay and Southern regions of Quebec, and in Maryland. He operates
tree farms in Maryland and Quebec and is a Certified Quebec Forest Producer, and in 1995
was Tree Farmer of the Year in Garrett County, Maryland. He is a member of the Religious
Society of Friends.
|
|
About the Author-Geoff Garver
Moral Economy Project Website
Geoff Garver is an environmental law and policy consultant in Montreal, Quebec. From 2000
to 2007, he served as Director of Submissions on Enforcement Matters at North America's
Commission for Environmental Cooperation, directing the unit that handles assertions by
North American citizens that one of the NAFTA countries -- Mexico, the United States or
Canada -- is failing to effectively enforce its environmental law. Previously, he spent
nine years with the U.S. Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division
as a trial attorney and then as an Acting Assistant Chief handling cases concerning land
and natural resource management, water rights and environmental impact assessment. His
major cases included suits dealing with Everglades water quality, winter use and bison
management in Yellowstone National Park and water rights in Idaho and Oregon. From 1993
to 1995, he was special assistant and Senior Policy Counsel to the Assistant Administrator
for Enforcement and Compliance Assurance at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Before joining the U.S. Justice Department in 1989, he was a judicial clerk for the Hon.
Conrad Cyr in the U.S. District Court in Maine. He received his B.S. in chemical
engineering from Cornell University in 1982 and a J.D. cum laude from the University of
Michigan Law School in 1987. Geoff grew up in a Quaker family in rural Western New York.
|
|
Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy
Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy (February 2009) is available now from
Berrett-Koehler. Click here to purchase directly from the publisher and save! Most people
have been conditioned to accept the operation of the economy as an article of faith.
Unlimited growth and wealth accumulation are seen as the "natural law" of the economy
and nothing can be done to alter this fact – even if it means the integrity of Earth’s
ecological and social systems are severely damaged in the process. This "inconvenient
truth" is now a moral challenge. We are faced with a choice: bring the economy into right
relationship with the planet and its inhabitants, or suffer the consequences -- the
increasing destruction of Earth’s life support systems and social structures. Drawing on
the Quaker principle of "right relationship," the book Right Relationship: Building a
Whole Earth Economy presents a proposal for bringing our economy, our ethics, and our
environment into alignment.
|
Toby Hemenway
|
About the Author
Toby Hemenway Website
After obtaining a degree in biology from Tufts University, Toby worked for many years as
a researcher in genetics and immunology, first in academic laboratories including Harvard
and the University of Washington in Seattle, and then at Immunex, a major medical biotech
company. At about the time he was growing dissatisfied with the direction biotechnology
was taking, he discovered permaculture, a design approach based on ecological principles
that creates sustainable landscapes, homes, and workplaces. A career change followed, and
Toby and his wife spent ten years creating a rural permaculture site in southern Oregon.
He was associate editor of Permaculture Activist, a journal of ecological design and
sustainable culture, from 1999 to 2004. His current project is developing urban
sustainability resources in Portland, Oregon, where he now lives. He teaches permaculture
and consults and lectures on ecological design throughout the country. His writing has
appeared in magazines such as Whole Earth Review, Natural Home, and Kitchen Gardener. He
is available for workshops, lectures, and consulting on a wide variety of topics related
to permaculture, ecological design, Peak Oil, local food systems, and other subjects.
|
|
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture
The first edition of Gaia's Garden, sparked the imagination of America's home gardeners,
introducing permaculture's central message: Working with Nature, not against her, results
in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving gardens. This extensively revised and expanded
second edition broadens the reach and depth of the permaculture approach for urban and
suburban growers. Many people mistakenly think that ecological gardening — which involves
growing a wide range of edible and other useful plants — can take place only on a large,
multiacre scale. As Hemenway demonstrates, it's fun and easy to create a "backyard
ecosystem" by assembling communities of plants that can work cooperatively and perform
a variety of functions. The revised and updated edition also features a new chapter on
urban permaculture, designed especially for people in cities and suburbs who have very
limited growing space. Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply
basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and
more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or
eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and
garden. This extensively revised and expanded edition broadens the reach and depth of
the permaculture approach for urban and suburban gardeners. The text's message is that
working with nature, not against it, results in more beautiful, abundant, and forgiving
gardens.
|
Vandana Shiva
|
About the Author
Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental leader and thinker. Director of the
Research Foundation on Science, Technology, and Ecology, she is the author of many
books, including Water Wars: Pollution, Profits, and Privatization (South End Press,
2001), Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge (South End Press, 1997),
Monocultures of the Mind (Zed, 1993), The Violence of the Green Revolution (Zed, 1992),
and Staying Alive (St. Martin's Press, 1989). Before becoming an activist, Shiva was one
of India ’s leading physicists. She holds a master’s degree in the philosophy of science
and a Ph.D. in particle physics. Shiva is a leader in the International Forum on
Globalization, along with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. She addressed the World Trade
Organization summit in Seattle, 1999, as well as the recent World Economic Forum in
Melbourne , 2000. In 1993, Shiva won the Alternative Nobel Peace Prize (the Right
Livelihood Award). The founder of Navdanya ("nine seeds"), a movement promoting diversity
and use of native seeds, she also set up the Research Foundation for Science, Technology,
and Ecology in her mother’s cowshed in 1997. Its studies have validated the ecological
value of traditional farming and been instrumental in fighting destructive development
projects in India.
|
|
Water Wars
In Water Wars, Vandana Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to
analyze the historical erosion of communal water rights. Examining the international
water trade, damming, mining, and aquafarming, Shiva exposes the destruction of the
earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of their
rights to a precious common good. Shiva reveals how many of the most important conflicts
of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, such as the ongoing
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural
resources. Shiva celebrates the spiritual and traditional role water has played in
communities throughout history, and warns that water privatization threatens cultures
and livelihoods worldwide. She calls for a movement to preserve water access for all,
and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns
like the one in Cochabamba, Bolivia, where citizens fought for and retained their water
rights.
|
|
Stolen Harvest
In Stolen Harvest, "the South's best known environmentalist" (New Internationalist) and
1993 Right Livelihood Award winner, Vandana Shiva, continues her path-breaking work on
uncovering the devastating human and environmental impacts of corporate-engineered
international trade agreements. Shiva charts the impacts of industrial agriculture and
what they mean for small farmers, the environment, and the quality and healthfulness of
the foods we eat. A short, impassioned, and inspiring book that will shape the debate
about genetic engineering and commercial agriculture for years to come. Finalist for
2001 Independent Press Awards Best Environment/Ecology Book and Finalist for World Hunger
Year's Harry Chapin Media Award
|
|
Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge
In this intelligently argued and ethically principled book, internationally renowned
Third World environmentalist Vandana Shiva exposes the latest frontier of the North's
ongoing assault against the South's biological and other resources. Since the land, the
forests, the oceans, and the atmosphere have already been colonized, eroded, and polluted,
she argues, Northern capital is now carving out new colonies to exploit for gain: the
interior spaces of the bodies of women, plants, and animals. Under agreements such as
GATT, she argues, the North claims a need to be "protected" from the South so it can
continue its uninterrupted theft of the Third World's genetic diversity. This theft,
Shiva shows, has profoundly disturbing consequences for women, the Third World, and
the environment. With specific considerations of gene-patenting, genetic engineering,
and biotechnology, Biopiracy is essential reading for anyone concerned with technology,
imperialism, feminism or the environment.
|
|
Earth Democracy
Starting from the initial enclosure of the commons-the privatization of 6 million acres
of public land in 18th-century Britain—Shiva goes on to reveal how the "commons" continue
to shrink as more and more natural resources are patented and fenced. Accompanying this
displacement from formerly accessible territory, she argues, is a growing attitude of
disposability that erodes our natural resources, ecological sustainability, and cultural
diversity. Worse, human beings are by no means safe from this assignment of disposability.
Through the forces of neoliberal globalization, economic and social exclusion work in
deadly synergy to perpetrate violence on vulnerable groups, extinguishing the lives of
millions. Yet these brutal extinctions are not the only trend shaping human history.
Forthright and energetic, Vandana Shiva updates readers on the movements, issues, and
struggles she helped bring to international attention—the genetic engineering of food,
the theft of culture, and the privatization of natural resources—and deftly analyzes the
successes and new challenges the global resistance now faces. From struggles on the
streets of Seattle and Cancún and in homes and farms across the world has grown a set
of principles based on inclusion, nonviolence, reclaiming the commons, and freely sharing
the earth's resources. These ideals, which Shiva calls Earth Democracy, will serve as
unifying points in our current movements, an urgent call to peace, and the basis for a
just and sustainable future.
|
|
Soil Not Oil
With Soil Not Oil, Vandana Shiva brilliantly reveals what connects humanity’s most urgent
crises—food insecurity, peak oil, and climate change—and why any attempt to solve one
without addressing the others will get us nowhere. Condemning industrial biofuels and
agriculture as recipes for ecological and economic disaster, Shiva champions the small
independent farm instead. With millions hungry and the earth’s future at peril, only
sustainable, biologically diverse farms that are more resistant to disease, drought,
and flood can both feed and safeguard the world for generations to come. Bold and
visionary, Soil Not Oil calls for a return to sound agricultural principles—and a
world based on self-organization, community, and environmental justice.
|
|
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed
Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed lays out, with practical steps and far reaching
concepts, a program to ensure food and agriculture become more socially and ecologically
sustainable. It harvests the work and ideas produced by thousands of communities around
the world. Emerging from the historic gatherings at Terra Madre, farmers, traders, and
activists diagnose and offer prescriptions to reverse perhaps the worst food crisis
faced in human history. There is a growing realization that food politics is vital to
the health of our bodies, economies, and environment—in other words, a matter of life
or death. Featuring contributions by Michael Pollan, Prince Charles, Vandana Shiva,
the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture, and more, this
pocket-sized and galvanizing collection grapples with these enormous costs, daring to
imagine a food system—a world—that is sustainable, healthy, and ultimately, just.
|
Carlo Petrini
|
About the Author
Italian founder and president of the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini coined the term
"eco-gastronomy" to describe his vision of good food sustainably produced. Petrini first came
to prominence in the 1980s for taking part in a campaign against the fast food chain
McDonald's opening near the Spanish Steps in Rome. He began writing about wine and food in
1977, and has contributed to hundreds of Italian periodicals and other publications around
the world. In 1983, Petrini was instrumental in creating and developing the Italian non-profit
food and wine association, Arcigola. Founder and president of the organization of Slow Food
International, this organization exists in over 50 countries and has over 80,000 members and
supporters. Slow Food International is responsible for publishing periodicals, books, and
guides that are read in many languages around the world. Petrini is an editor of multiple
publications at the publishing house Slow Food Editore and writes several weekly columns for
La Stampa. He was one of Time Magazine's heroes of 2004. In 2004, he founded the University
of Gastronomic Sciences, a school intended to bridge the gap between agriculture and
gastronomy. Carlo is the recipient of many awards and honorsand was was also named
"Innovator" in the 2004 Time Magazine list of European heroes.
|
|
Slow Food Revolution: A New Culture for Dining
and Living
Founded in Italy in 1986 by charismatic Italian gourmand Carlo Petrini, Slow Food has
grown into a phenomenally successful movement against the uniformity and compromised
quality of fast food and supermarket chains. With nearly 85,000 members in 45 countries
around the world, Slow Food has developed from a small, grassroots group into the most
influential gastronomic movement in the world. Known as the "WWF of endangered food and
wine," Slow Food not only focuses on a slower, more natural and organic lifestyle that
complements nature, but also works to preserve dying culinary traditions, conserve
natural biodiversity, and protect fading agricultural practices threatened in this age of
mass consumerism. The book takes the reader on a gastronomic journey through the practices
and traditions of the world's ethnic cuisines, from the artisanal cheeses of Italy to the
oysters of Cape May and the native American turkey. It includes testimonies from Slow Food
representatives—such as Alice Waters of Chez Panisse—illustrating exactly what they are
doing—and what still needs to be done—to preserve them.
|
|
Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should Be Good,
Clean, and Fair
By now most of us are aware of the threats looming in the food world. The best-selling
"Fast Food Nation" and other recent books have alerted us to such dangers as genetically
modified organisms, food-borne diseases, and industrial farming. Now it is time for
answers, and "Slow Food Nation" steps up to the challenge. Here the charismatic leader of
the Slow Food movement, Carlo Petrini, outlines many different routes by which we may
take back control of our food. The three central principles of the Slow Food plan are
these: food must be sustainably produced in ways that are sensitive to the environment,
those who produce the food must be fairly treated, and the food must be healthful and
delicious. In his travels around the world as ambassador for Slow Food, Petrini has
witnessed firsthand the many ways that native peoples are feeding themselves without
making use of the harmful methods of the industrial complex. He relates the wisdom to
be gleaned from local cultures in such varied places as Mongolia, Chiapas, Sri Lanka,
and Puglia. Amidst our crisis, it is critical that Americans look for insight from other
cultures around the world and begin to build a new and better way of eating in our
communities here.
|
|
Slow Food: The Case for Taste (Arts &
Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History
Slow Food is poised to revolutionize the way Americans shop for groceries, prepare and
consume their meals, and think about food. The book not only recalls the origins, first
steps, and international expansion of the movement from the perspective of its founder,
it is also a powerful expression of the organization's goal of engendering social reform
through the transformation of our attitudes about food and eating. As Newsweek described
it, the Slow Food movement has now become the basis for an alternative to the American
rat race, the inspiration for "a kinder and gentler capitalism.
|
Senator Paul Simon
|
About the Author
Senator Paul Simon Website
American politician and educator (b. Nov. 29, 1928, Eugene, Ore.—d. Dec. 9, 2003,
Springfield, Ill.), had a long career in public life that was highlighted by two terms
as a U.S. senator (1985–97) and a brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination in
1988. He blended his liberal social outlook with fiscal conservatism and forged a
reputation for honesty and forthright integrity. Simon entered the University of Oregon
at age 16, transferred to Dana College, Blair, Neb., a year later, and at age 19 left
school to buy and run a struggling weekly newspaper in Troy, Ill. Through the paper he
fought against illegal gambling interests and organized crime, a crusade that attracted
the attention of Democratic Party leaders interested in reform, and in 1954 he was
elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. Simon was elected a state senator in
1962, and in 1968, although a Republican was elected governor, he was elected lieutenant
governor—the only time in Illinois history that the two offices had been split between
parties. He was defeated in the primary when he ran for governor in 1972, however, and
taught college journalism for two years, but in 1974 he was elected to the U.S. House of
Representatives, in which he served five terms before entering the Senate. As a senator
he counted a balanced budget, job creation, reduction in violence on television, adult
literacy, and federal loans for college students among his major concerns and was a firm
believer in the government’s power to solve social problems. The late Paul Simon served
as the founding director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale. He also taught courses in political science, journalism, and history. Prior
to leaving the U.S. Senate and joining the SIUC faculty in 1997, Simon ranked as the
senior senator from Illinois. In the 104th Congress, he served on the budget, labor and
human resources, judiciary, and Indian affairs committees. He was the author or coauthor
of nineteen books, including "Freedom's Champion: Elijah Lovejoy," "Tapped Out: The
Coming World Crisis in Water and What We Can Do Abo
|
|
Tapped Out
Simon, a former Democratic senator from Illinois, delivers a call-to-arms to citizens
and political leaders to act to save the world's water supply. "Within a few years,"
he writes, "a water crisis of catastrophic proportions will explode on us." Simon, who
was a newspaperman before he was a politician, is a clear and forceful writer who makes
use of compelling statistics to outline the looming crisis: 9500 children die every day
due to thirst or polluted water and a projected three billion people will be living in
regions afflicted by severe water shortages in just 25 years. Among the most immediate
problems Simon covers are vanishing groundwater reserves in California, polluted drinking
water in India and the potential for geopolitical violence in the arid Middle East. Simon
urges governments to step up their support for desalination, conservation and pollution
control. He also calls for policy changes such as charging consumers for the actual cost
of conveying their water. Although suffering from a drought of firsthand vignettes and
individual case studies, Simon's book is well reasoned and well researched and deserves
serious attention not least because he offers the bracing example of a former public
servant still committed to the intelligent and informed discussion of a pressing issue.
|
Michael Brune
|
About the Author
Michael Brune is the newly named executive director of the Sierra Club, which he joins
after seven years overseeing and providing strategic direction for Rainforest Action
Network. He holds dual B.S. degrees in economics and finance.
|
|
Coming Clean-Breaking America's Addiction to Oil and
Coal
Americans are awakening to just how costly and destructive our fossil-fuel habit has
become -- to the environment, our national security and stature, our health, and especially
our pocketbooks. We want to take action, to move our country down the path to clean energy,
but we're not sure how. Coming Clean provides the road map. Michael Brune shows how we,
as motivated citizens, can promote real solutions and collectively pressure government and
corporations to change their energy priorities. Coming Clean tracks the myriad ways our
thirst for dwindling supplies of oil and coal corrupts national policy and international
finance, harms poor communities worldwide, and wreaks havoc on the climate. And Brune
describes the most promising developments in renewables, biofuels, and efficient design,
while outlining an inspiring vision of the clean-energy future that's within our reach.
|
Irene Salina
|
About the Author
Irena Salina’s first feature-length documentary, Ghost Bird: The Life and Art of Judith
Deim (2000) won numerous prestigious international prizes. FLOW: For the Love of Water
(2008) won various awards for its exploration of the global water crisis that threatens
world health and stability.
|
|
Written in Water: Messages of Hope for Earth's Most
Precious Resource
A Message for the Future comprises a collection of essays authored by heroes and leaders
in the field of water solutions and innovations—a broad range of people from varied disciplines
who have contributed their hearts and minds to bringing awareness to and conserving Earth’s
freshwater supply. In their own words, authors tell of such tragedies as water slavery, drought,
or contamination, as well as their own professional struggles and successes in pursuit of
freshwater solutions. Contributors include: Alexandra Cousteau, social environmental advocate
and granddaughter of legendary marine scientist Jacques Cousteau; Peter Gleick, environmental
visionary and winner of a 2003 MacArthur "genius grant"; Bill McKibben, bestselling author and
winner of a Guggenheim fellowship; Sylvia Earle, oceanographer and Time magazine’s first "hero
for the planet"; and Christine Todd Whitman, former head of the Environmental Protection Agency,
along with more than a dozen other notable people. These visionaries’ stories touch, surprise,
and amaze as they help us see the essential role played by water in our world, our lives, and our
future. These are all people who are thinking far beyond the realm of self; they are devoted to
creating a better world for all of us.
|
Anna Lappe
|
About the Author
Anna Lappé is a nationally recognized public speaker, writer, and cofounder of the Small Planet
Institute and Small Planet Fund. She is the coauthor of the national bestseller Hope's Edge: The
Next Diet for a Small Planet. Named one of Time magazine’s “eco” Who’s Who, Lappé is a founding
principal of the Small Planet Institute and the Small Planet Fund. She can be seen as the host of
MSN’s Practical Guide to Healthy Living and as cohost of the public television series The Endless
Feast. She lives in Bryant Terry is a chef, food justice activist, and founding director
of b-healthy! (Build Healthy Eating and Lifestyles to Help Youth), a New York City-based nonprofit.
Bryant lives in Oakland, California.
|
|
Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen
Precious Resource
Combining a straight-to-the-point exposé about organic foods (organic doesn't mean fresh, natural,
or independently produced) and the how-to's of creating an affordable, easy-to-use organic kitchen,
Grub brings organics home to urban dwellers. It gives the reader compelling arguments for buying
organic food, revealing the pesticide industry's influence on government regulation and the extent
of its pollution in our waterways and bodies. With an inviting recipe section, Grub also offers the
millions of people who buy organics fresh ideas and easy ways to cook with them. Grub's recipes,
twenty-four meals oriented around the seasons, appeal to eighteen- to forty-year-olds who are looking
for fun and simple meals. In addition, the book features resource lists (including music playlists to
cook by), unusual and illuminating graphics, and every variety of do-it yourself tip sheets, charts,
and checklists.
|
|
Diet for a Hot Planet
In her groundbreaking new book, the Lappé exposes another hidden cost
of our food system: the climate crisis. While you may not think “global warming” when you
sit down to dinner, our tangled web of global food, from pork chops raised in Poland, with
feed from Brazil, shipped to South Korea, contributes to as much as one-third of the global
warming effect. If we’re serious about the climate crisis, says Lappé, we have to talk about
food. Lappé also exposes the interests resisting this conversation and the spin-tactics
companies are employing to defuse the heat. She offers a vision of a food system that can be
part of healing the planet and the climate. Lappé explores how food can be a powerful entry point
for tackling our most pressing environmental problems. With seven principles for a climate-friendly
diet and success stories from sustainable food advocates around the globe, Lappé dishes upstrategies
and stirring inspiration to bring to life food that’s better for people and the planet. An engaging
call to action, a spirited call for a food system for tomorrow, Diet for a Hot Planet delivers a
hopeful message during this troubling time.
|
Frances Beinecke
|
About the Author
Frances Beinecke is the president of NRDC. Frances has worked with NRDC for more than 30 years.
In addition to her work at NRDC, Frances has played a leadership role in several
other environmental organizations. She currently serves on the boards of the World
Resources Institute, the Energy Future Coalition and Conservation International's
Center for Environmental Leadership in Business and is on the steering committee of
the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. She has been a member of the boards of the
Wilderness Society, the China-U.S. Center for Sustainable Development and the New
York League of Conservation Voters. Frances received a bachelor's degree from Yale College
and a master's degree from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. She now
co-chairs the Leadership Council of the Yale School of Forestry, is a member of the School
of Management's Advisory Board and a former member of the Yale Corporation Frances has received
the Rachel Carson Award from the National Audubon Society, the Distinguished Alumni Award
from Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, the Annual Conservation Award
from the Adirondack Council and the Robert Marshall Award from the Wilderness Society.
|
|
Clean Energy, Common Sense
In her first book, Clean Energy Common Sense, NRDC President Frances Beinecke issues
a plainspoken, heartfelt call to action on global warming. As Robert Redford writes in
his forward, this little book -- for believers, skeptics and everyone in between -- just
might help change the world. This is, in many ways, a new kind of book, written in the
moment, using very current information, and produced on a sharply accelerated schedule
so it can become part of the conversation when it matters most - as the Senate takes up
climate change legislation and the world looks to Copenhagen for the UN climate change
summit in December. This little book documents the problem, sets forth solutions, and
challenges each of us to do our part of embrace a clean and sustainable energy future,
today and in the years ahead. Doing so, Beinecke convincingly argues, will help put
Americans back to work, reduce our reliance on foreign oil and create a healthier
planet, for ourselves and for our children.
|
Darrin Nordahl
|
About the Author
Darrin Nordahl is the city designer at the Davenport Design Center, which was formed
in 2003 as a division of the Community & Economic Development Department of the City of
Davenport, Iowa. He has taught in the planning program at the University of California
at Berkeley and is the author of My Kind of Transit. Darrin Nordahl was born in 1970 in
Oakland, California. He completed his bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture at the
University of California at Davis and his master’s degree in urban design at the University
of California, Berkeley. Darrin has taught in the City and Regional Planning Department at
UC-Berkeley and in the Landscape Architecture program at UC-Berkeley Extension.
|
|
Public Produce
Public Produce makes a uniquely contemporary case not for central government intervention,
but for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what Darrin Nordahl calls
"municipal agriculture," elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and
public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public control (parks,
plazas, streets, city squares, parking lots, as well as the grounds around libraries,
schools, government offices, and even jails) to grow food. Public agencies at one time
were at best indifferent about, or at worst dismissive of, food production in the city.
Today, public officials recognize that food insecurity is affecting everyone, not just
the inner-city poor, and that policies seeking to restructure the production and distribution
of food to the tens of millions of people living in cities have immediate benefits to
community-wide health and prosperity._ _This book profiles urban food growing efforts,
illustrating that there is both a need and a desire to supplement our existing food
production methods outside the city with opportunities inside the city. Each of these
efforts works in concert to make fresh produce more available to the public. But each
does more too: reinforcing a sense of place and building community; nourishing the needy
and providing economic assistance to entrepreneurs; promoting food literacy and good health;
and allowing for "serendipitous sustenance." There is much to be gained, Nordahl writes, in
adding a bit of agrarianism into our urbanism.
|
Jeff Biggers
|
About the Author
Author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek, The United States of Appalachia and In the Sierra Madre,
Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, educator, and radio correspondent across the United States,
Europe, India, and Mexico. He served as co-editor of No Lonesome Road: Selected Prose and Poems of
Don West. His award-winning stories have appeared on National Public Radio, Public Radio International,
and Washington Post, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, and Salon, among many others newspapers,
magazines and online journals. A contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review, he regularly blogs
for the Huffington Post and Grist. A member of the multimedia theatre performance company, Coal Free
Future Project , Biggers is a frequent speaker and performer at festivals, conferences and educational
institutions. His work has received numerous honors, including an American Book Award, a Foreword
Magazine Book of the Year Award, a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, a Plattner Award for
Appalachian Literature, a Field Foundation Fellowship and an Illinois Arts Council Creative Non-Fiction
Award/Fellowship. He serves as a contributing editor to The Bloomsbury Review, and is a member of the
PEN American Center. In the 1990s, as part of his work to develop literacy and literary programs in
rural communities in the American Southwest, he founded the Northern Arizona Book Festival. In the
1980s, Biggers served as an assistant to former Senator George McGovern in Washington, DC, and as a
personal aide to Rev. William Sloane Coffin at the Riverside Church in New York City, where he
co-founded the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing.
|
|
Reckoning At Eagle Creek
Award-winning journalist and cultural historian Jeff Biggers takes us on a journey into the
secret history of coal mining in the American heartland. Set in the ruins of his family's
strip-mined homestead in the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois, Biggers delivers
a deeply personal portrait of the largely overlooked human and environmental costs of our
nation's dirty energy policy. Reckoning at Eagle Creek digs deep into the tangled roots of
the coal industry beginning with the policies of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson,
chronicling the removal of Native Americans and the hidden story of legally sanctioned
black slavery in the land of Lincoln. It uncovers a century of regulatory negligence,
vividly describing the epic mining wars for union recognition and workplace safety and
the devastating consequences of industrial strip-mining. At the heart of our national
debate over climate change and the crucial transition toward clean energy is the Obama
administration's controversial pursuit of "clean coal." Biggers exposes the fallacy that
lies at the heart of this policy and shatters the Big Coal marketing myth that southern
Illinois represents the "Saudi Arabia of coal." Reckoning at Eagle Creek is ultimately
an exposé of "historicide"—one that traces coal's harrowing legacy through the great
American family saga of sacrifice, resiliency and the extraordinary process of recovering
our nation's memory. Coal will never be called clean or cheap again.
|
|
