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Fw: Berkeley, United States
Image by 350.org
— On Sun, 10/25/09, Carole Bennett-Simmons wrote:
Dear 350.org,
Thank you for calling for this historic day of worldwide action!
Our Book Club has seven members, old enough to be grandmothers, and we think about the younger generations facing global climate change. We wanted to take action for the 350.org International Day of Climate Awareness Action so we decided to come up with a list of books that would inspire people to change their lives to help with global climate change. We asked our friends to recommend some too. So here are some books that we hope will get people thinking and talking about how to make changes in their own lives, in their communities, and in their countries to bring the carbon dioxide level down to 350. We hope other book clubs and individuals will like the books as much as we did.
Patty, from our book club says: The most
influential book for me way back in the 70s was Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, it was the beginning of the environmental movement then and should still be read today.
Eileen’s from the book club too – My daughter left this book with me before moving to Washington DC and it is really good. Actually I would recommend it for any book club – The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. It is a very hopeful book about the environment.
Lauren, book club member – I recommend The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget (Save Money, Save Time and Save the Planet) by Josh Dorfman. This is a very practical book with tips on how to do easy small things that help. Because of this book, we turned in our minivan, under the Cash for Clunkers Program, and purchased a Honda Fit – a car that was recommended in this book. We also like it because it was given as a gift by one of our kids who aspires toward more green living herself and is always nudging us
to do so too. This book is right up our alley for it’s immediate practicality – breaking the problem down into small, doable, realistic pieces.
Mary (the book club meets at Mary’s house) –Loved the book Devils Teeth by Susan Casey, a gripping nonfiction account of life on the Farallon Islands just outside the Golden Gate in San Francisco. There, not far from our shore, is a wild world of seabirds, seals and great white sharks, whose power and beauty so close to our homes is miraculous.
Barbara, Mary’s best friend and book club member – recommends Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Just like in the book, our Barbara raises a lot of her own vegetables in her front yard and has happily kept chickens in the city for many years. She also recommends Toxic Loopholes by Craig Collins, coming out in summer 2010. This book explains how polluters get around legal environmental protections. Craig is Barbara’s
husband.
Carole, Mary’s other best friend, says – Another great book our book club read was Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It was a real education about how wasteful, polluting and unhealthy the American food delivery system is and how we can change it. No more regular hamburger for my family after that book! It’s grass fed, free range from now on.
These next four books came to us from our friends who belong to Green Sangha a local environmental group seeking environmental change through peaceful actions.
The American Earth, 2008. As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben gathers the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. Edited by Bill McKibben.
In Defense of Food, by Michael Pollan. In the book, Pollan postulates that the answer to healthy eating is simply to "Eat food. Not too
much. Mostly plants." Pollan argues that nutritionism as an ideology has overly complicated and harmed American eating habits. He says that rather than focusing on eating nutrients, people should focus on eating the sort of food that their ancestors would recognize.
Farm City, by Novella Carpenter. The desire for a simpler life in the country, filled with the excitement of living like pioneers, spurred Novella Carpenter’s parents to move away from the Bay Area in the 1970s. While their countercultural back-to-the-land experiment ultimately fell apart, the underlying idea persevered, and, in the midst of working on her master’s degree at UC Berkeley, Carpenter decides to dig a garden and start raising turkeys, rabbits and pigs. Only the difference is she’s not farming out in the middle of nowhere; she’s raising food on a vacant lot behind her apartment on 28th Street in Oakland.
The Dream of the Earth, by Thomas Berry. This
classic eco-theological work was first published in 1988. Thomas Berry, one of the leading environmental thinkers in North America, presents a vision based on courtesy and empathy for the earth and all living things. Berry celebrates the human-earth relations pioneered by Native Americans and calls for further steps in the healing of the planet. He believes that churches and universities have a role to play in helping people to see the earth as a living organism and to link evolution and ethics. This can serve as a counterpoint to the "technological trance" that has resulted from an overemphasis upon progress.
Our friend Mike is from the community garden and has been inspired by fiction. Dystopian Theme: Make change or this could be the life of your children or your own life in the near future.
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Mara and Dan – Doris Lessing
Oryx and Crake – Margaret Atwood
After the Flood – Margaret
Atwood
Friend of the Earth – T. C. Boyle
Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler,
take action into your own hands and stop development theme
Monkey Wrench Gang – Edward Abbey
Death in the Andes – Mario Vargas Llosa,
rejection or consequences of the Western exploitation theme
Dream in Polar Fog – Yuri Rytkheu
Tracks – Louise Erdrich
Jeffrey, who rides his bike everywhere and volunteers with our native plant restoration project, recommends – The Heat is On, Ross Gelbspan, of course directly related to climate and Cloning the Buddha, by Richard Heinberg, about genetic engineering
Catherine, who buys organic, plants natives, and travels by train was inspired by:
A Far Country – Daniel Mason
Jack London – Call of the Wild (and other Alaska stories).
Carol j. Adams, ed.- Ecofeminism and the Sacred
Gareth Porter and Janet Welsh Brown – Global Environmental Politics
Greenhaven Press. –
Environmental Justice
Dr. Seuss. – The Lorax
Terry Tempest Williams.- Refuge
Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis and I Am in Recovery from Western Civilization.
Riane Eisler: Sacred Pleasure.
John, from the community garden. is a prolific reader. Here are his favorites:
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Poetry of Robert Frost
Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown – Alan Watts
Turtle Island – Gary Snyder
Desolation Angels – Jack Kerouac
Silent Spring – and – A Sense of Wonder – Rachel Carson
A Sand County Almanac – Aldo Leopold
The Unsettling of America – Wendell Berry
Continuing the Good Life – Scott and Helen Nearing
Small is Beautiful – E.F. Schumacher
Gaia: A New Look at Earth – J.E. Lovelock
Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind – Theodore Roszak
The Closing Circle – Barry Commoner
Ecotopia – Ernest Callenbach
Desert Solitaire – The
Monkey Wrench Gang – Hayduke Lives! – Edward Abbey
Encounters With the Archdruid – John McPhee
Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered – Bill Devall, George Sessions
The Foxfire books
The Man Who Planted Trees – Jean Giono
Animal Vegetable Miracle – Barbara Kingsolver
This Organic Life – Joan Gussow
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan
oh, and can’t forget: The Lorax – Dr Suess
John says if I had to pick, probably Gaia: A New Look at Earth – J.E. Lovelock
opened my eyes to the earth as a living thing more than anything.
The rest reinforced and added to that notion.
Greg, an urban planner, who we met while volunteering on a habitat restoration project, says – Two immediately come to mind that I first read many years ago and have been in my collection ever since. Both concern environmental philosophy, ethics and inspiration rather than contemporary "how to."
A Sand County Almanac" by Aldo Leopold, 1949.
Some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau about a land and conservation ethic. In addition to being a renowned scientist, philosopher and teacher he was a talented writer. Leopold was a co-founder of the Wilderness Society. He was mentioned in the recent Ken Burns National Parks documentary on PBS. Following a career with the US Forest Service he was a professor at the University of Wisconsin and is credited as the founder of the science of wildlife ecology. The UW established the Department of Game Management, now Wildlife Ecology, (the first of its kind), he was appointed the first chair. Two of his sons were professors at Cal in related fields.
"The Lorax" by Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel), 1971. A masterful distillation of the fundamental point of the environmental ethic. It should be on any short list to read to children. My exposure to this book was my very first class as a new student
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After outlining the course program for the semester, the professor sat down at a reading lamp, the hall darkened, and he expressively read this book as the illustrations were projected on a screen. Class ended with sustained applause. I still remember that morning. The course was introduction to ecology.
Irene, our friend from the community garden, says – I highly recommend Peter Matthiessen’s ‘Birds of Heaven’ – about cranes and their environment worldwide – it is wonderful – such a world view – and stunning photos!
Georgia, who we also met at the community garden and who has worked as an urban forester, recommends Reclaiming the Commons, by Donahue and
Suburban Safari, by Holmes.
So there you have it, our list of inspirational books. Book clubs, community gardens, volunteering with others for habitat restoration or environmental letter writing all provide opportunities
to share ideas, concerns, get organized for positive change and have fun building community with others at the same time. Let’s do it!
Entries under “Column”
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