Sustainability
ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future
by Vijay Vaitheeswaran and Iain Carson
There are already plenty of cars on the road getting 100 mpg or more, two Economist correspondents show. Basic technology for vastly more efficient vehicles is here today, and much of it's actually pretty mundane -- not fancifully high-tech at all. The problem is what's standing in the way of making such vehicles widely available: generally speaking, Big Oil and Big Auto. The authors keep that issue front-and-center, so those approaching Zoom with expectations of Popular Science-style, futuristic, silver-bullet transportation will be disappointed. On the other hand, Vaitheeswaran and Carson do a nice job of presenting the stories of some of the technological visionaries (e.g., Stanford Ovshinsky, Amory Lovins) who are pursuing new technologies. They also make the point that greater fuel efficiency isn't the ultimate objective. That would be reaching the point at which vehicles are fueled by means (such as with hydrogen fuel cells) that aim for zero carbon emissions.
The authors spoke with NPR's Anthony Brooks, with WBUR's Tom Ashbrook, and with WNYC's Leonard Lopate.
*Also available, in abridgment, on Audio CD
Zoom ... published October 1, 2007 by Twelve
Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World
by Fred Pearce
One of today's top environmental writers presents hundreds of stunning "before and after" photos that vividly depict some of humankind's transformations of the planet. Pearce organizes this handsome and powerfully captivating coffee table book with sections on Environmental Change, Urbanization, Land Transformation, War and Conflict, and Leisure and Culture. (A sixth chapter, Forces of Nature, offers some great shots, but they probably belong in a separate book since they're not anthropogenic in origin.) Many of the photos are separated by only a few decades or even years, but the changes tend to be profound. Not all's grim destruction, though. Pearce also addresses numerous examples of the earth's rebounding -- sometimes with human help, sometimes on its own -- from our devastation. Says he, "Nature is not as fragile as we think. It is resilient. ... It is we who are the fragile ones. Look at these pictures and fear not so much for nature: fear for us."
Earth Then and Now ... published September 16, 2007 by Firefly Books
*Real Goods Solar Living Source Book Special 30th Anniversary Edition: Your Complete Guide to Renewable Energy
Technologies and Sustainable Living edited by John Schaeffer
If this were only a good "solar living source book," it would still be a worthwhile volume to have on one's shelf -- but it's that and a lot more. Now in its 13th edition, it's long been the most comprehensive catalog and guidebook available for a wide array of sustainable living products -- solar and otherwise: a Whole Earth Catalog for the 21st century. The catalog's improved with successive editions, in part because the effectiveness, quality and availability of many of its products' technologies have continued to improve. It's no one-stop green residential shop, though; some of the big-ticket items in the catalog can and probably should be purchased from specialized vendors. But it's hard to imagine a better way to start learning about and using products that can miniaturize our carbon and ecological footprints. It should also be noted that green investors can buy shares in Gaiam, the company that publishes this catalog. (That's an observation, not an endorsement. Green investing can be very risky.)
*also indexed and posted at "Solar Power"
Solar Living Source Book ... published September 2007 by New Society Publishers
The Unnatural History of the Sea
by Callum Roberts
A British marine conservation biologist surveys the effects of roughly 1,000 years of over-fishing the world's oceans. Because human decimation of fisheries has taken place over dozens of generations, Roberts shows, our species has completely forgotten what the oceans were like before our ancestors starting emptying them. Drawing on research of many kinds, including centuries-old accounts of explorers, fishermen and travelers, the author shows that marine populations once were not only larger than they are today, they were many magnitudes larger -- vast beyond most people's abilities to imagine now. Among the environmentally catastrophic practices he reviews is commercial trawling, which not only indiscriminately sweeps the seas of whatever happens to get caught in trawlers' nets, but that also scours the ocean floor, wiping out entire marine ecosystems. Roberts recommends setting aside at least 30 percent of the world's oceans as marine preserves, noting that today such areas amount to less than one percent.
Also available in paperback and on Audio CD
The Unnatural History of the Sea ... published July 30, 2007 by Island Press
Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
edited by Alex Steffen
Seen by some as this era's Whole Earth Catalog, it's "600 pages of emerging innovations and solutions for building a bright green future." Al Gore wrote the forward. Says he, "[T]hese solutions present a picture of a future that is not dark or catastrophic, but one that is full of hope and within our grasp." The book's an outgrowth of WorldChanging, a popular bright green blog; it's organized into seven sections: Stuff ("topics like green design, reducing one's ecological footprint, biomimicry, sustainable agriculture, clothing, cars and emerging technologies"), Shelter, Cities, Communities, Business, Politics, and Planet. An endlessly "can-do" attitude and cheery optimism pervade the entire project. Critics of this stripe of environmentalism, however, charge that its optimism is glib and unrealistic -- that the promise of "inventing our way out of" the problems we've created is a foolishly distracting pipedream.
Worldchanging ... published November 1, 2006 by Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth by E. O. Wilson
One of the world's most revered secular humanists -- biologist E.O. Wilson -- extends a generous olive branch to primitivist Christians in this plea to save "the Creation." It will have to be done soon, if at all. Wilson says that the current species extinction rate is roughly "100 times above that prevailing before humans appeared on earth, and it is expected to rise to at least 1,000 times greater (or more) in the next few decades."
Dire circumstances notwithstanding, Wilson's entirely amiable here, eager to make common cause with people he knows well. In a recent Salon interview he said of his Alabama roots, "I grew up fundamentalist. I grew up as a Southern Baptist with strict adherence to the Bible, which I read as a youngster." So it's poignant when he says, "Darwin's reverence for life remained the same as he crossed the seismic divide that separated his religious phase and his scientific one." His honesty, too, is refreshing, as when he concedes, "I do not see how the difference in worldview between these two great productions of human striving can be closed. But, for the purposes of saving the Creation, I am not sure that it needs to be."
The Creation ... published September 5, 2006 by W. W. Norton
Vital Signs 2006-2007: The Trends that Are Shaping Our Future
by the Worldwatch Institute
The Worldwatch Institute offers a companion to its State of the Planet 2006. It's a compendium of information about human life on Earth, organized into sections focused on food and agriculture, energy and climate, economic trends, transportation and communications trends, conflict and peace, and health and society. Some of the information is apocalyptic; that concerning global warming tops the list. Fossil fuel use, and especially that of coal (the most environmentally harmful of the dominant fossil fuels), continues to rise sharply, thereby drastically increasing CO2 levels. Last year was the warmest on record. There's also good news, including the fact that the energy output of solar and wind systems is increasing faster than that of fossil fuels, and that infant mortality rates fell by 7 percent over the last five years.
Vital Signs 2006-2007 ... published July 10, 2006 by W. W. Norton
Science Magazine's State of the Planet 2006-2007
edited by Donald Kennedy, et. al.
Kennedy and other editors at Science present over 30 essays and articles relating to the state of the planet, written by some of the top environmental scientists in the world.
Among these are
Paul Portney,
Daniel Pauly,
Peter Gleick,
Robert Watson,
Hajime Akimoto,
Joel Cohen and
Thomas Karl. The book's built around an essay that Garret Hardin published in Science in 1968: "The Tragedy of the Commons" (full text, related resources). Nearly two generations ago Hardin pointedly concluded,
The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity" - and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons.
Included is a 2005 award-winner, "The Struggle to Govern the Commons," reconsidering Hardin's ideas.
Science Magazine's State of the Planet 2006-2007 ... pub'd June 17, 2006 by Island Press
The Great Turning:
From Empire to Earth Community by David C. Korten
The author of When Corporations Rule the World (1995) offers intriguing evidence that humanity is poised to embrace a different way of ordering the planet than the "play or die" capitalism of "Empire" -- Korten's term for the hierarchical, exploitive, and violent societies that have dominated most human activity for the last five millennia. As an alternative to "Empire" Korten posits the concept of "Earth Community," a far more cooperative, nurturing approach to social organization in that was widely employed by our ancestors prior to Empire's ascendancy. Coming from lesser minds than Korten's, such musings are best met with a Great Ignoring, but as visionaries go Korten's exceptionally lucid -- solidly tethered to sound intellectual and scholarly moorings. And the fan club for his latest effort is a pretty august group. If you liked The Greening of America but have since thought better of its wide-eyed innocence, Korten's the Big Idea guy for you.
The Great Turning ... published April 28, 2006 by Berrett-Koehler
Capitalism As If the World Matters by Jonathon Porritt
One of England's most influential environmentalists says that those who espouse green values need to get past vague dreams of achieving sustainability through some sort of planetary command economy that will suddenly appear when the world miraculously comes to its senses. "Capitalism is basically the only economic game in town," notes Porritt -- but it remains to be seen whether that capitalism will be sustainable or suicidal. Porritt says that environmentalists' standard litanies of dire warnings are increasingly falling on deaf ears. Those who care about the earth also need to care about tactics and quit trying to sell sustainability as some kind of unpleasant medicine that we all need to take or else. That approach has failed abysmally. Instead,
[T]he environment movement is going to have to raise its game. We have got to get better at presenting the overwhelmingly positive benefits of the proposed transition in terms of new opportunities for entrepreneurs, new sources of economic prosperity and jobs, a higher quality of life for people, safer, more secure communities, and a better work-life balance.
Capitalism As If the World Matters ... published April 2006 by Earthscan
When the Rivers Run Dry by Fred Pearce
Thanks to humankind's gross mismanagement and waste of the water we use, the world's great rivers are literally running dry; tapped to death along their courses, says a veteran environmental writer. Pearce also shows that fossil water aquifers (notably the Ogallala Aquifer, lying hundreds of feet beneath eight of the U.S. plains and mountain states) are rapidly being pumped dry. Among the main causes for our water profligacy are the fabrics we favor and the foods and beverages we fancy. Fodder used to feed beef and dairy cattle is extremely water-intensive -- as are rice, cotton, coffee, sugar, and numerous other popular commodities. Says Pearce,
Globalised markets mean that whenever you buy a T-shirt made of Pakistani cotton, eat Thai rice or drink coffee from Central America, you are influencing the hydrology of those regions -- taking a share of the river Indus, the Mekong or the Costa Rican rains. You may be helping rivers run dry.
Terry Gross interviewed Pearce on NPR's Fresh Air.
When the Rivers Run Dry ... published March 9, 2006 by Beacon Press
State of the World 2006 by Worldwatch Institute
For 23 years, the Worldwatch Institute's been issuing a State of the World report. This year's installment deals with a wide range issues, from nanotechnology to alternative energy to the safeguarding of freshwater ecosystems and a good deal more. Helpfully illustrated with a variety of graphics, the 2006 report focuses intermittently on China and India. The institute's president, Christopher Flavin, says in a preface,
Over the past year, China and India have often been blamed by politicians and the media for driving up the price of oil and other commodities. But for me, as an American, one of the most striking conclusions to emerge from our analysis is how dominant the United States still is when it comes to resources and pollution. For a range of commodities this one country not only uses 10 to 20 times as much as China or India does on a per capita basis, but twice as much as European countries that are almost as wealthy as the United States is.
State of the World 2006 ... published January 16, 2006 by W. W. Norton
Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress
and a Civilization in Trouble by Lester R. Brown
Plan A, business-as-usual, has the world on an environmental path that is leading toward economic decline and eventual collapse. If our goal is to sustain economic progress, we have no choice other than moving on to a new path -- Plan B. ... [ ¶ ]
[T]here still is no widely shared sense that we need to build a new economy -- and even less, a vision of what it might look like.
So begins Lester Brown (whom the Washington Post described as "one of the world's most influential thinkers") in this 2006 update of a volume that's won wide, high praise since its initial publication. Brown methodically lays out many of the specifics of the changes we need to make if we intend to avoid ecological and economic catastrophe. In a novel and laudable move, Brown makes his book's full text available online. While I'd think that trying to read a whole book on even a superb computer monitor would become excruciatingly painful after an hour or so, it's helpful to be able to browse a volume in its entirety -- as one would do in a bookstore. Have a look.
Plan B 2.0 ... published January 23, 2006 by W. W. Norton
Silent Snow by Marla Cone
Marla Cone, an LA Times environmental reporter for 15 years, tells some remarkable tales of her long associations and travels with Arctic hunters and reports that their PCB and DDT levels are alarmingly high. She finds that some of man's deadliest pollutants tend to migrate in various ways far beyond their origins, wending their ways inexorably toward the Arctic and into the animals and people who live there.
The title of Cone's book and part of its inspiration is from an environmental classic:
I was a kindergartner when Silent Spring author Rachel Carson issued her dire warnings about man-made chemicals -- she called them "elixirs of death" -- poisoning our world. Only much later did I learn that the Illinois suburb [Waukegan] where I spent much of my childhood had the dubious distinction of being the PCB capital of the United States.
Forty years later Cone warns, "An estimated 100,000 chemicals are in commerce today. ... One in every five high-volume chemicals lacks even basic toxicity data, while only 14 percent have good data." The pollutants pose cross-border problems, she says, that demand cross-border solutions.
Silent Snow ... published April 10, 2005 by Grove Press
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