Books

I'm happy to say that books addressing ecology, green living etc., are starting to proliferate. There are many interesting and helpful books available and over time I will add more to my list. I'm starting out, though, by featuring books that specifically affected my life. These are books that caused me to change my behavior, affected my purchasing decisions and in other ways transformed my outlook on ecology and the environment.

To me, "green living" ideally springs out of a reverence for the earth and respect for all its inhabitants. These are not prevailing principles in this modern age and indeed, the growing emphasis on green behaviors is at present more of a defensive position rather than an affirmative philosophy. Right now, it's about "giving up things" in order to slow or halt the destruction of our environment. We struggle with what we perceive as reductions in our lifestyles and with budget issues (since many green products are more expensive than non-green counterparts). We're operating from a sense of loss, but at least there is now widespread recognition that we can't go on indefinitely damaging our environment and absorbing toxins from every direction.

For us to move beyond this negative perspective we need to become aware of and begin to address the underlying causes that have driven us to the edge of an environmental cliff. These include:

• Industrialization, which has done so much good and so much harm, and which needs to be harnessed and applied wisely.
• Unchecked corporatism: the philosophy that putting profits before every other consideration results in the greatest good, which needs to be evaluated in the light of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• Consumerism: the idea that we exist primarily to work and buy and work to buy; that our quality of life is purely a matter of how much stuff we have, and how expensive it is.
• Globalization: which, in this context, means sacrificing local economies and self-sufficiency to corporate-based agriculture and manufacturing, as well as demanding there always be people somewhere in the world who are poor enough to be willing to work for subsistence wages.

Industrialization, among other things, has resulted in an ever-widening disconnect between modern people and the earth they live on. While 5-year olds can operate computers, they (like their parents) have no idea what activities are taking place in the ground beneath them or the air around them, and how those activities sustain life. The average American has almost zero knowledge about where their food comes from, how it was produced, how pure or impure it is and what impact its purity of lack thereof has on their health and well-being.

The books outlined below address these issues from a variety of perspectives. What they have in common is respect for nature and a philosophy that people's lives matter and that people should view the world, and be viewed as, members of a connected whole. When we hurt others, we hurt ourselves. When we help others, we help ourselves.

This is a life-altering book. Barbara Kingsolver, her husband Steven, and daughters Camille and Lily embark in a year spent eating, as much as possible, locally grown food. Their reasons, and all the associated implications, are woven through a highly entertaining as well as deeply informative narrative. Many of the issues are addressed in other books and articles -- industrial food production, organic versus conventional agriculture, the state of America's family farms and America's ever-increasing waistlines, etc. But the book is far more than a restatement of these themes. One of the key subjects is America's food culture, or lack thereof. Kingsolver contrasts our can get any food from anywhere at any time - even if it's tasteless culture, to food traditions in other parts of the world that rely on local and regional foods that are in season, specific to the area and surpassingly flavorful and healthy. She reminds us of skills our forbears had about food preservation and land stewardship.

Did you know that virtually all turkeys grown and eaten in America are the result of artificial insemination followed by less than 6 months of life? When Kingsolver embarks on starting an ongoing turkey flock by keeping some of her heirloom turkeys for reproduction instead of meat, she discovers they have no idea how to reproduce. The instincts have been bred out of modern fowl. There isn't even modern information available to help as farmers and agriculturalists have also lost this knowledge. Help comes from a 50-year-old book in her husband's book collection. Using the knowledge gained she is able to shepherd her male and female turkeys through a successful natural cycle of fertilization, egg-laying, hatching and nurturing. She writes: "Our purpose for keeping heritage animals is food-system security, but also something that is less self-serving: the dignity of each breed's true and specific nature."

The loss of innate knowledge by portions of our animal population; the ongoing loss of fruit and vegetable varieties, and the movements in this country and worldwide to counteract these trends are addressed along the way. But most of all, the book emphasizes the benefits of experiencing a diet based on in-season foods. As you move through the growing season there's always something new to eat that's local, fresh, flavorful and nutritious, and if you're smart, you'll can or freeze such produce when it is at it's peak, so that you have terrific tasting and nourishing food all winter as well. It's not about deprivation, it's about celebrating foods in their glory, starting by simply tasting it. Tasting it.

Noah's Garden: Restoring the Ecology of Our Own Backyards (Out of print - can get from Amazon) by Sara B. Stein

I love this book! Sara Stein shares how she transitioned from traditional "ornamental gardener" to ecological gardener upon realizing that, once her landscaping was finished, all the butterflies, birds, toads, etc. were gone. She began recalling the animals, plants, wildflowers, insects (butterflies, lightening bugs, dragonflies) that surrounded her in her youth, and how, little by little, they had disappeared. She goes further back to historical documents that described an astonishingly rich and abundant landscape, now a shadow of its former self. So she embarks on a rebuilding project, turning her garden in Westchester County, NY, into an ecological attraction complete with a "pocket woodland", hedgerows with berries for birds and insects to eat, a meadow, a small island and pond and more.

She intersperses the story of her project with descriptions of the relationships between trees, weeds, flowers, birds, small animals, soil and all the critters that create soil and so on, and it is fascinating. She makes the natural world that surrounds us accessible and really, really interesting and provides information all of us should know and most of us don't -- I certainly didn't.

Nature, per the author, knows what it's doing and operates with an ebb and flow that ultimately maintains equilibrium. People can work effectively with nature, to the benefit of all, or can try to either outsmart or defeat nature, often with disastrous results.

Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture,

This book is enlightening and upsetting. It makes the case that our current system of food production, reliant as it is on gigantic "industrial" farms emphasizing monoculture and the heavy use of pesticides, is horrendously damaging to the foods we eat, the land it's grown on, the farming community and local economies. But it also offers alternatives (which keeps you from simply slitting your wrists on the spot) that enrich the land, sustain communities, protect food diversity and purity. The book includes essays by Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Vandana Shiva, Michael Ableman, Jim Hightower, and Alice Waters.

Here's a review (originally in the San Francisco Chronicle): "There's nothing more fundamental than food, and affluent Americans have more of it, with more variety to choose from, than anyone in history. But how many of us know where our food was actually produced, by whom, and with what resources and additives? How does the path from modern farm to kitchen affect people and the planet? Fatal Harvest is a huge work that addresses those sweeping questions. It is a beautiful, photo-laden, 5 1/2-pound treatise that might be called a coffee-table book -- if the content weren't so disturbing. Even a casual browser of these pages is warned to think twice about eating or drinking much of what is sold as food nowadays. It is an encyclopedia of what's gone wrong with how we provide food in the modern world..." Read the rest

From the back cover: "After centuries of economic activity based on extraction, exploitation, and depletion, we now face undeniable environmental threats. New business models that save or restore natural resources are critical. But how can we translate that insight into more sustainable practices? 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."

Although a compendium of success stories, this book is really a call-to-action, encouraging people to get to work in their own communities. The message is that positive change is unlikely to come from the top of our power structure, as that power structure is welded to the multi-national corporations that benefit from globalization -- the antithesis of localism. But Building the Green Economy shows that citizen-power can challenge corporations and politicians and achieve goals that actually benefit people and the environment.

From the back cover: "Gaia's Garden...describes a gardening system that combines the best features of wildlife habitat, edible landscapes, and conventional flower and vegetable gardens into a self-renewing landscape that lets nature do most of the work. Rather than mastering your garden with gas spewing rototillers and chemical fertilizers, let Toby Hemenway show you how to create a backyard ecosystem that balances the needs of humans and nature."

I don't even have a garden yet! But what I find so engaging about this book is the emphasis on working with nature instead of trying to subdue it. Similarly to Noah's Garden, this book has interesting information about how things grow, and why, and approaches you can take that will increase your output while decreasing your labor, use of pesticides, etc. Much of the emphasis is on working with vs. against the micro-environment you live in, which first means recognizing the microenvironment you live in. I'm attracted to that notion of becoming in tune with your land and the forces that shape it - that's a "skill" sorely lacking in modern America, particularly urban and suburban America.

The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry

I can't remember now whether Wendell Berry lead me to Fatal Harvest, or the reverse, but I discovered them at roughly the same time. Wendell Berry is a writer and farmer from Kentucky who writes beautiful, thoughtful and sometimes haunting essays that weave together farming, living, community, respect for land and the importance of meaningful work for quality of life, among other things.

He is a champion of the family farm, small business, local economies vs. global and quality of life NOW, not in some mythical future for which we must be willing to sacrifice our land, air, water, time and self-respect.

Wendell Berry sees the production of food as an almost sacred activity - worthy of the highest respect. He also believes the producer must, in turn, offer the highest respect to nature and the land.

Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living by Annie Berthold-Bond

This book is full of practical, useful information about non-toxic living. From cleaning to beauty to crafts for kids, there are recipes and techniques that use safe ingredients to help you dramatically reduce your exposure to toxins in your home.

Wake Up and Smell the Planet: The Non-Pompous, Non-Preachy Grist Guide to Greening Your Day, by Grist Magazine (Author), Brangien Davis (Editor), Katharine Wroth (Editor)

A fun, useful compendium of small choices that can make a big difference.

This classic book is over 30 years old but it is still relevant today. The title says it all: economics as if people mattered.

I have linked to the 25th Anniversay edition that was published in 2000. From Amazon: "This 25th anniversary edition brings Schumacher's ideas into focus for the end-of-the-century by adding commentaries by contemporary thinkers who have been influenced by Schumacher. They analyze the impact of his philosophy on current political and economic thought. Small is Beautiful is the classic of common-sense economics upon which many recent trends in our society are founded. This is economics from the heart rather than from just the bottom line."

Treehugger.com