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Bibliography of Books on Sustainable Communities from The Center for Sustainable Communities Abstracts of Books on Sustainable Communities from The
Center for Sustainable Communities |
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Bibliography of Books on Sustainable Communities from The Center for Sustainable Communities Abstracts of Books on Sustainable Communities from The
Center for Sustainable Communities |
A Bioregional Canon -- recommendations from the <bioregional> email discussion group. In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land Stephanie Mills, 237 pages, Beacon Press 1995, Reviewed by Sarah E. Bearup-Neal “Stephanie Mills' newest and third book is an uplifting, hopeful read. It is also erudite, feeling, funny and written with such remarkable wit and civility that the reader must frequently remind herself of the books' baneful subject matter: the suicidal human compulsion to devastate its nest and everybody else's. Yet In Service is not an apocalyptic tale. Mills writes with optimism about the human capacity to redress trespasses against Nature through the good, mindful work of restoration. Restoration, Mills explains, is "the art and science of repairing damaged ecosystems to the greatest possible degree of historic authenticity." She then illustrates how people actually do just that.” This Place on Earth: Home and the Practice of Permanence, by Alan Thein Durning, Reviewed by Patrick Mazza “This Place on Earth is really two books juxtaposed with each other. One is Durning's very personal story of re-rooting in his native soil -- working his way through self-doubts about abandoning a national career track, taking his family out to rediscover a salmon stream of his youth, building community in the neighborhood by putting up a basketball hoop. The other book is a series of reports on progress toward a sustainable society in the Pacific Northwest. If that sounds Worldwatch-ish, it certainly is. Durning details numerous practical examples of ideas long advocated by Worldwatch growing on Northwest ground. And a rich turf it is.” Sense of Place A large bibliography of books relating to a sense of place, part of a large collection of environmental bibliographies called Resources for Teaching and Researching Northwest Environmental History |
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The Unsettling of America -- Culture & Agriculture by Wendell Berry “In The Unsettling of America I argue that industrial agriculture and the assumptions on which it rests are wrong, root and branch; I argue that this kind of agriculture grows out of the worst of human history and the worst of human nature. . . . Every good and perfect gift comes from politicians, scientists, researchers, governments, and corporations. Evils, however, are inevitable; there is just no use in trying to choose against them. Thus all industrial comforts and labor-saving devices are the result only of human ingenuity and determination (not to mention the charity and altruism that have so conspicuously distinguished the industrial subspecies for the past two centuries), but the consequent pollution, land destruction, and social upheaval have been 'inevitable.' . . . That is to say that what happened happened because it had to happen. Thus the apologist for the ruin of agricultural lands, economies, and communities have shown always that they did nothing to stop it because there was nothing they could have done to stop it. . . . If an utterly brainless and destructive agricultural economy has been inevitable for half a century, why should it now suddenly cease to be inevitable? . . . But if the publication of The Unsettling of America and subsequent events have shown me that throwing a rock into a frozen river does not make a ripple, they have also shown that beneath the ice the waters are strongly flowing and stirred up and full of nutrients. Beneath the cliches of official science and policy, our national conversation about agriculture is more vigorous and exciting now than it has been since the 1930s.” [from the Afterword] |
Our Stolen Future “Our Stolen Future is a scientific detective story that explores the emerging science of endocrine disruption: how some synthetic chemicals interfere with the ways that hormones work in humans and wildlife. The interference caused by hormone disruptors can have profound impacts. Their most troubling effects take place when a mother passes contamination to the growing fetus and when the contaminant interferes with the hormonal signals used by the fetus to direct its growth. When this happens, the impact can last a lifetime. Indeed sometimes the effects won't be visible until the fetus has grown and become an adult. Some of the documented impacts include: ...” |
Designer Poisons: How to Protect Your Health and Home From Toxic Pesticides. by the Pesticide Education Center (San Francisco) “A unique and authoritative guide to the hazards of home use pesticides for the general public. Designer Poisons describes nontoxic and least toxic alternatives for controlling fleas, ants, cockroaches, termites, weeds, and other common pests.” |
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Useful Guide to Understanding Where All That Stuff Comes From by Donella Meadows Thoughts about Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, by John Ryan and Alan Durning “The authors of Stuff do not intend to send us on guilt trips instead of shopping trips. They don’t expect us to unplug our computers or bury our cars or “bite into some hot, salty fries and think about farmworkers’ children with blue bay syndrome.” They just want us to understand our world, and to use its products thoughtfully.” |
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Protecting Watersheds "Protecting Watersheds Can Save Billions In Water Treatment Costs -- A New Study By The Trust For Public Land Uncontrolled Watershed Development Threatens Drinking Water Supplies and Safety" |
Corporation Nation by Charles Derber, reviewed by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman "Charles Derber, a professor of sociology at Boston College, believes that, contrary to the lessons our civics teacher taught us, it is undemocratic corporations, not governments, that are dominating and controlling society. In his most recent book, Corporation Nation (St. Martin's Press, 1998), Derber argues that the consequence of the growing power of giant corporate multinationals is increased disparity in wealth, rampant downsizing and million dollar CEOs making billion dollar decisions with little regard for average American." The Corporate Planet -- Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization by Joshua Karliner “The corporation, by its nature, is as blind as it is powerful. Spiritually blind, morally blind. As a collective entity, it is worse than any of the individuals who make it up. The intensity and importance of The Corporate Planet comes from the passion and the skill with which it opens us to a vision of how dangerous to the future of our globe is global capitalism itself.” -- Norman Mailer “In The Corporate Planet, Joshua Karliner outlines the emerging environmental conflict between corporations wanting the freedom to plunder the earth's boundaries and people who depend on the earth for their sustenance. Essential reading for all who want to be informed members of the Earth Family in the globalisation period.” -- Dr. Vandana Shiva, Research Foundation for Science, Technology & Natural Resource Policy, India Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age by Michael Shuman "Going Local details how dozens of communities are regaining control over their economies by employing three new kinds of strategies: • Investing not in outsiders, but in locally owned businesses like credit unions, cooperatives, community land trusts, municipally owned utilities, small worker-owned firms, community development corporations, and local shareholder-owned firms such as the Green Bay Packers. • Focusing on import-replacing rather than export-led development, by reducing dependence on distant sources of energy, water, food, and basic materials. • Asking the federal government for more power, not more pork, by eliminating many subsidies and changing tax and trade laws that disempower communities." Home Economics by Wendell Berry North Point Press, 1995, $11.00, paperback, 192 pp. “The essays in Home Economics present a clearly reasoned, strongly worded indictment of our present economic system and the foolish squandering of resources that it fosters.” It’s Time For A New Economic Paradigm an essay by Joe Kresse, about two books: When Corporations Rule the World, by David Korten, and The New Business of Business, edited by Willis Harman and Maya Porter “Why has our economic system become so destructive? Why does the gap between the rich and the poor continue to widen even in wealthy countries? Are such concepts as NAFTA and GATT helpful in the overall well-being of the system, or harmful? What changes in underlying principles and processes need to be made? Even though I have a degree in economics and spent a quarter of a century working in the financial world, these are questions I find hard to answer. So I was pleased recently to come across two books which help to organize and clarify the problems and possibilities in the field of economics and business.” |
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The Ads Tell The Story of The Universe: an essay by Donella Meadows about the book: The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos by Brian Swimme “Advertisements are where our children receive ... their basic grasp of the world’s meaning, which amounts to their primary religious faith, though unrecognized as such.... When one compares the pitiful efforts we employ for moral development with the colossal and frenzied energies we pour into advertising, it is like comparing a high school football game with World War II. Nothing that happens in one hour on the weekend makes the slightest dent in the strategic bombing taking place day and night fifty-two weeks of the year. It’s a simple cosmology, told with great effect and delivered a billion times each day: humans exist to work at jobs, to earn money, to get stuff...” |