 In Cradle to Cradle, the authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete. Recycling, for instance, is actually "downcycling," creating hybrids of biological and technical "nutrients" which are then unrecoverable and unusable. The authors, an architect and a chemist, want to eliminate the concept of waste altogether, while preserving commerce and allowing for human nature. They offer several compelling examples of corporations that are not just doing less harm--they're actually doing some good for the environment and their neighborhoods, and making more money in the process. Cradle to Cradle is a refreshing change from the intractable environmental conflicts that dominate headlines.
 Silent Spring, released in 1962, offered the first shattering look at widespread ecological degradation and touched off an environmental awareness that still exists. Rachel Carson's book focused on the poisons from insecticides, weed killers, and other common products as well as the use of sprays in agriculture, a practice that led to dangerous chemicals to the food source. Carson argued that those chemicals were more dangerous than radiation and that for the first time in history, humans were exposed to chemicals that stayed in their systems from birth to death. Presented with thorough documentation, the book opened more than a few eyes about the dangers of the modern world and stands today as a landmark work.
 "Walden" is the classic account of two years spent by Henry David Thoreau living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The story is detailed in its accounts of Thoreau's day-to-day activities, observations, and undertakings to survive out in the wilderness for two years. Thoreau's journal is an exquisite account of a man seeking a more simple life by living in harmony with nature. In today's fast-paced consumer-driven society the austere life style endorsed by Thoreau is as relevant and refreshing as ever.
 This book explains the effects on the environment from the food we eat, the products we use, the energy choices we make and how our homes are built. The best part is his very specific recommendations in each chapter. Some of the life changes are quick and easy and others require longer term planning.
 Illustrating the results of green actions with descriptive rather than numerical analyses, Rogers and Kostigen write, for example, that if everyone in the U.S. used one less paper napkin per day, in a year's time we would have saved one billion pounds of landfill waste. An outstanding resource, The Green Book offers hope and practical suggestions. Crossland, Pamela
 Luckily, the days when becoming environmentally aware entailed eating bread that tasted like dirt, wearing clothes that looked like frayed burlap sacks, and spending summer vacations assailing whaling ships with Greenpeace are passing away. It is now perfectly possible (and increasingly easy) to be well fed, well coiffed, well dressed, and well traveled while remaining deeply committed to an ecologically sustainable lifestyle.
 Available in the SCC Library!
?Worldchanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century is a groundbreaking compendium of the most innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future. From consumer consciousness to a new vision for industry; non-toxic homes to refugee shelters; microfinance to effective philanthropy; socially responsible investing to starting a green business; citizen media to human rights; ecological economics to climate change, this is the most comprehensive, cutting-edge overview to date of what?s possible in the near future ? if we decide to make it so.?
 This book collects thoughts from parents, teachers, researchers, environmentalists and others. Richard Louv argues for a return to an awareness of and appreciation for the natural world. "Not only can nature teach kids science and nurture their creativity, nature needs its children: where else will its future stewards come from?" This book is a call to action, full of warnings?but also full of ideas for change.
 Includes products ranging from simple energy-saving devices like compact flourescent lights to home-scale energy-harvesting systems that utilize the sun, wind, and water to make electricity for people living "off-the-grid." Chapters on Independent Living, Land, Shelter, Harvesting Energy, Managing Energy Systems, Heating and Cooling, Water, Energy Conservation, the Nontoxic Home, Home and Market Gardening, Mobility and Electric Vehicles, and Livelihood and Learning.
 Want to learn more about organic food? Curious about alternative power sources? Want to do your part to help save the environment? The way that you live, work, travel, eat, drink, and dress affects the earth and the environment--and this concise, eye-opening book gives you all the tools you need to live a "green" lifestyle.
 Jeffery Sachs' "The End of Poverty" is three books in one: First, it is an exploration of the world, focusing on economics but surveying wide array of topics regarding international relations and politics, and offers a portrait of the planet today. Second, it is a crash course in development economics. Finally, it is an impassioned plea for more western aid to poor countries particularly in Africa.
 While everything appears to be collapsing around us -- ecodamage, genetic engineering, virulent diseases, the end of cheap oil, water shortages, global famine, wars -- we can still do something about it and create a world that will work for us and for our children?s children. The inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio?s web movie Global Warning, The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight details what is happening to our planet, the reasons for our culture?s blind behavior, and how we can fix the problem.
BUILDING THE GREEN ECONOMY shows how community groups, families, and individual citizens have taken action to protect their food and water, clean up their neighborhoods, and strengthen their local economies. Their unlikely victories over polluters, unresponsive bureaucracies, and unexamined routines dramatize the opportunities and challenges facing the local green economy movement.
Sustainability has become a buzzword in the last decade, but its full meaning is complex, emerging from a range of different sectors. In practice, it has become the springboard for millions of individuals throughout the world who are forging the fastest and most profound social transformation of our time - the Sustainability Revolution.
Available in the SCC Library!
Ecology and economics are not doomed to be adversaries. This lively and concise book presents the exciting new insights of environmental economics as well as the three fallacies of conventional economic analysis. You Can't Eat GNP offers a blueprint for a truly sustainable economy that recognizes the natural resources (like water, air, and soil) on which we ultimately depend.
Available in the SCC Library!
Exposes how big business, the Bush administration, and environmentalists alike are preventing us from solving the problem of global warming-and offers a prescription for saving the planet. In Boiling Point, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ross Gelbspan argues that, unchecked, climate change will swamp every other issue facing us today. Indeed, what began as an initial response of many institutions-denial and delay-has now grown into a crime against humanity.
Available in the SCC Library!
Nestle walks readers through every supermarket section--produce, meat, fish, dairy, packaged foods, bottled waters, and more--decoding labels and clarifying nutritional and other claims (in supermarket-speak, for example, "fresh" means most likely to spoil first, not recently picked or prepared), and in so doing explores issues like the effects of food production on our environment, the way pricing works, and additives and their effect on nutrition.
Available in the SCC Library!
Ecotourism and Sustainable Development provides a unique and compelling look at the promise and pitfalls of ecotourism. It is the only such account of worldwide ecotourism available today, and is an important guide for students and researchers involved with international development, geography, or tourism, as well as for anyone interested in becoming a more environmentally sensitive traveller.
Available in the SCC Library!
"Whatever we once thought Nature was--wildness, God, a simple place free from human thumbprints, or an intricate machinery sustaining life on Earth--we have now given it a kick that will change it forever. Humanity has stepped across a threshold. In his free-ranging and provocative book, Bill McKibben explores the philosophies and technologies that have brought us here, and he shows how final a crossing we have made." --James Gleick, author of Chaos
Available in the SCC Library!
The first thing that Harvard University biology professor Stephen Palumbi wants you to know is that evolution is a fact, not a theory. The second is this: evolution does not require eons and eons to make its effects manifest. By tinkering with genes and rewriting the laws of natural selection, we humans have lately been "accelerating the evolutionary game, especially among the species that live with us most intimately"--not our pets, that is to say, but the food we eat, the pests that share that food, and the diseases that visit us.
Available in the SCC Library!
 Available in the SCC Library!
In Triumph of the Mundane, Hal Kane offers a unique assessment of how and why our day-to-day lives have changed, and considers the wide-ranging impacts of those changes. Using a variety of indicators of behavior-distances between family members, the things we own, and the pace of our lives-he traces the social transformations that have occurred in recent decades, and considers the profound effects of those changes on our values, relationships, and physical surroundings.
Available in the SCC Library!
Available in the SCC Library!
Available in the SCC Library!
The Weather Makers is both an urgent warning and a call to arms, outlining the history of climate change, how it will unfold over the next century, and what we can do to prevent a cataclysmic future. Along with a riveting history of climate change, Tim Flannery offers specific suggestions for action for both lawmakers and individuals, from investing in renewable power sources like wind, solar, and geothermal energy, to offering an action plan with steps each and every one of us can take right now to reduce deadly CO2 emissions by as much as 70 percent.
Available in the SCC Library!
Humanity evolved in an Ice Age in which glaciers covered much of the world. But starting about 15,000 years ago, temperatures began to climb. Civilization and all of recorded history occurred in this warm period, the era known as the Holocene-the long summer of the human species. In The Long Summer, Brian Fagan brings us the first detailed record of climate change during these 15,000 years of warming, and shows how this climate change gave rise to civilization.
Available in the SCC Library!
Available in the SCC Library!
Available in the SCC Library!
"UNLESS someone like you...cares a whole awful lot...nothing is going to get better...It's not."
Long before saving the earth became a global concern, Dr. Seuss, speaking through his character the Lorax, warned against mindless progress and the danger it posed to the earth's natural beauty.
"The big, colorful pictures and the fun images, word plays and rhymes make this an amusing exposition of the ecology crisis."?School Library Journal. Illus. in full color.
More suggested readings coming soon...
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