On getting up to speed on enviro issues

04 Apr 2005

Got questions about the environment? Ask Umbra.

Dear Umbra,

I am new to the environmental movement, and I was wondering how you keep track of the major issues within it, because there are so many! Also, do you have any books to recommend on the history of the environmental movement?

Naomi
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

Ask Umbra continues below

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Dearest Naomi,

Grist, of course! In addition to the website, you can get smart, pithy, funny summaries of breaking environmental news delivered free via email on a daily and/or weekly basis (in fact, if you subscribe to one of Grist's emails this month, you could win a trip to Iceland!). I get both Daily Grist and Weekly Grist emails, just to drive certain events home. I sincerely believe that regularly reading Grist will help you reach eco-fluency within a month or two.

Woman reading books in front of computer.

Boning up on green issues.

But you need a quick intro now to get your environmental bearings. A laughingly rudimentary list of important environmental topics would include: climate change, aka global warming, which encompasses all issues related to energy generation; damage to the physical environment, which includes sprawl, habitat destruction, desertification, deforestation, toxics, and species extinction; and irresponsible human behaviors, which include overconsumption, overpopulation, and poor resource management (e.g., unsustainable logging, mining, fishing, and water use).

Obviously, these topics are all one topic seen from varying angles. If you doubt it, try to disentangle overconsumption from damage to the physical environment from climate change. It's important to understand how these systems operate as a whole, but you can still choose which parts you most want to focus on. The websites of most large environmental organizations list different versions of these broad categories, and you might find it helpful to take a look at them. Try the Sierra Club (and its Canadian arm), the Natural Resources Defense Council, and/or Greenpeace Canada.

Books. If you were to take a basic environmentalism class in the States, you would read the Herman Melvilles of the movement: Rachel Carson, Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, Frances Moore Lappe, Henry David Thoreau. Go for their major works if you like to start with the classics. For more recent books, take a look at Grist's reviews in Books Unbound, or the bookstore shelves for a title in your area of interest. Island Press publishes books with an ecological bent, and you could look through their titles for one that calls your name. One that attracted my attention was Robert Gottlieb's Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement. Apparently it places environmental history within the context of social-justice movements, which sounds like a fascinating and useful way to get an overview of the history of the movement. (I apologize for my U.S.-centric views.)

I'll also toss your question out to my oh-so-learned readers. What environmental history books and other sources would you suggest to Naomi? Post your recommendations in our blog, Gristmill.

Informatively,
Umbra

Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Please send Umbra any nagging question pertaining to the environment -- but first check out her FAQs!

The claims made in this column may not reflect the views of this magazine. Neither the magazine nor the author guarantees that any advice contained in this column is wise or safe. Please use this column at your own risk.

Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.

Comments: (28 comments)

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As the World learns

Just finished reading Paul and Anne Ehrlich's book "One with Nineveh". It covers just about every enviromental issue confronting us with several suggestions about what major changes are needed to prevent civilization's collapse.

by wolfger at 2:58 PM on 04 Apr 2005

Fiction for the Eco-Savvy

There are many good histories of the environmental movement that I'm sure several people will recommend: Sale's The Green Revolution and Dunlap and Mertig's American Environmentalism, to name two. When you want some eco-conscious fiction, though--before, during, or after your historical research--I'd suggest looking at some science fiction. Ursula K. LeGuin's The Word for World is Forest, Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up, Ernest Callenbach's Ecotopia, Sally Miller Gearhart's The Wanderground. All of these texts seem essential to the environmental movement, because they speculate on alternatives to what we have going on now (sometimes a little too fictionally, but that's science fiction; push the boundaries a lot, and they might give a little). And maybe you'll find some interesting parallels between the fiction and the non-fiction--science fiction is ultimately about us.

by ecoman at 3:01 PM on 04 Apr 2005

one must read

<please excuse spelling errors>

Paul Hawkin, Ecology of Commerce

(and the Blogs listed in Gristmill!)

by jakplihal at 3:05 PM on 04 Apr 2005

The One Book Every Environmentalist Should Read

E.F. Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful. I would recommend this as a baseline, if you don't read anything else about environmentalism, read this.

Also: Anything by Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge; Red; etc.). Lester R. Brown of Worldwatch Institute's Plan B is good (if depressing). Al Gore's Earth in the Balance is better than you might expect.

I have a particular passion for environmental issues relating to agriculture, and so would further recommend Vandana Shiva's Stolen Harvest; Wes Jackson of The Land Institute's Becoming Native to this Place; and Shattering by Cary Fowler et al.

Finally, John Muir's Mountains of California--by the man whose philosophy started the Sierra Club--is worth owning a copy of, as well.

Happy reading!

by Bobbi Katsanis at 3:22 PM on 04 Apr 2005

More eco-sci-fi

If you liked all of those, you might also really like The Fifth Sacred Thing and Walking to Mercury by Starhawk, as well as Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy. Enjoy!

by Bobbi Katsanis at 3:23 PM on 04 Apr 2005
[ Parent ]

As the World Learns

Red Sky at Morning, by James Gustave Speth
Radical Simplicty, by Jim Merkel

by Sabrina Geer at 4:20 PM on 04 Apr 2005

academic histories of environmentalism

For an intellectual history of environmental ethics/philosophy, see R. Nash's "The Rights of Nature". Nash also wrote the standard history on wilderness, "Wilderness and the American Mind." Paul Sutter's "Driven Wild" deals with key figures in the early wilderness movement. For national parks, try Runte's "The National Parks."

S. Hay's "Beauty, Health, and Permanence" is an important look at environmental politics between 1955-1985.

For an overview of important environmental thinkers, Routledge's guide, "Key Fifty Thinkers on the Environment" is easy and fun (as these things go).

To understand the historical connection between environmentalism and ecology read D. Worster's "Nature's Economy."

Finally, though not exactly a traditional history of environmentalism, W. Cronon's "Uncommon Ground" is a collection of fascinating articles. See especially Cronon's essay, "The Trouble with Wilderness," which I suspect you can find online with a little searching. Cheers.

by envirohist at 5:32 PM on 04 Apr 2005

books i like

Biomimicry by Janine Benyus
Ecological Medicine ed. Kenny Ausubel Bioneer founder.
Interesting ideas

by annkhams at 5:40 PM on 04 Apr 2005

Green Reading

David Orr's "Earth in Mind" was recommended to me in my college Environmental Studies class. He brings many issues together in his book and has a special focus on education.

For issues related to agriculture, "The Essential Agrarian Reader" contains essays by a variety of writers, from Wendell Berry to Wes Jackson to some new ones on the scene.

One of my personal favorites is Barbara Kingsolver's collection of essays, "Small Wonder," especially the essay entitled "Lily's Chickens.

by Kate at 5:56 PM on 04 Apr 2005

critter-centric

Song of the Dodo (and other books) by David Quammen for a good, incredibly entertaining overview of wildlife conservation issues.

Also- A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold and The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson.

...also (so many books, so little time!) Bill McKibben's The End of Nature.

by christine at 6:26 PM on 04 Apr 2005

basic sustainability concepts

Believing Cassandra, Alan AtKisson
I've found this book to be a good primer for basic sustainability concepts.

Bulldozer in the Countryside, Adam Rome is a good source on the rise of environmentalism in America.

by dblairgrist at 7:04 PM on 04 Apr 2005

Recommended

Although not a history of the environmental movement, I would highly recommend, Jared Diamond's new book, Collapse. A fascinating and detailed examination of past (and current) societies and how they succeeded or failed based upon environmental, social and outside influences. An excellent book that talks a lot about the past but very much details our potential future.

A new book that just came out this week, Ethics for a Small Planet. Subtitled, A Communications Handbook on Ethical & Theological Reasons for Protecting Biodiversity. This looks to be a valuable and useful tool for carrying on the conversation on why the environment and the planet is worth saving(although you think that would be obvious). Published by the Biobiversity Project. www.biodiversityproject.org

And next month one of the most important books of the year, The Long Emergency, by James Kunstler. This book talks about the decline and changes that will occur within our country as fossil fuels become more scarce and the transportation of commodities becomes more and more difficult and how our society will react and change. Think Locally!!!

by DharmaBum at 9:10 PM on 04 Apr 2005

As the world learns

Agreed on the comment re Small is Beautiful: a classic. Very close second is The Limits to Growth which came out in the early 70's. This was followed up 20 years later by Beyond the Limits, but you can now safely skip that because there is Limits to Growth: the 30-year update that just got published a couple of years ago. These books bring a systems perspective to environmentalism and sustainability, which imho is indispensible to sorting through the complexity and cross-disciplinary nature of so much of this field.

While on the subject of classics, please be sure to read Garrett Hardin's essay (not a whole book) The Tragedy of the Commons. Other stuff by Hardin is typically insightful and worthwhile, if sometimes too polemical for my taste: my own favorite is Filters against Folly which as the name implies, is more than anything an attempt to show how to think about these issues.

by Bigcat at 5:36 AM on 05 Apr 2005

green reading

It's easy to read environmental forecasting and get depressed. Some reading that educates while inspiring hope and action are two of my favorites:
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Indutrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins; and The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists by Michael Brower and Warren Leon.

melissa

by melissamccullough at 5:49 AM on 05 Apr 2005

Orion Magazine is...

among the best sources for keeping up on sustainability.

To the excellent list of books already mentioned, I would add:
Cradle to Cradle, William McDonough and Michael Braungart

by dlong25 at 7:00 AM on 05 Apr 2005

as the world learns

I think Ted Trainer gets to the heart of the matter with "Toward a Conserver Society."
For a fun and hopeful angle: "Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver.

by LauraH at 10:21 AM on 05 Apr 2005

Regarding Books

I also wholeheartedly recommend Hardin's essay Tragedy of the Commons - a classic that sets a foundation for discussions of natural resource development.

Earth Odyssey by Mark Hertsgaard - a journalist's journey around the world, exploring environmental impacts of industry in both the first world and developing communities. A terrific narrative, approachable and informative - the perfect book to lend to friends.

by Ramekin at 12:19 PM on 05 Apr 2005

Oh - another one

Collapse by Harvey Weiss (to be released in September 2005) - though I've obviously not read it, I think this will be a great book.

Weiss has argued that sudden climate change events have shaped human society - the development of agriculture, irrigation, and government all occured in response to changes in climate in mesopotamia, and climate changes have also led to several instances of societal collapse around the world. This has obvious implications to our current situation of human-mediated climate change. His article in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5504/609 ) and an overview of his research (http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Reference_Links/Empires_in_the_Dust.htm) give a good indication of what this book will address.

by Ramekin at 1:04 PM on 05 Apr 2005

don't forgert seuss

The Lorax is one of the best books on overconsumerisim and deforestation. I usually try and reread the book atleast every Earth Day.

by ecoDharma at 2:28 PM on 05 Apr 2005

Green Readings

Thanks for all theses great suggestions. "Grist" is my primary source, and links from you have led me to many other useful sources. Thank you!! A wonderful resource is the annual publication by the Worldwatch Institute, "State of the World" (www.worldwatch.org). But I also learn a great deal from newsletters from organizations such as Rainforest Alliance, League of Conservation Voters, Environmental Defence, and the Sierra Club.
Happy Earth Day on 4/22!

by Martina Leonard at 7:11 PM on 05 Apr 2005

Great Books for Reattaching to the Natural World

Any book by Ed McGaa is definitely worth reading. Perhaps his best is his latest: "Nature's Way," which discusses the ways we (who recognize that the Natural World that we depend upon is in big trouble) can make meaningful contributions. He's never written a bad book - but they each look at the world we have left in a different way.

by twood at 6:49 AM on 06 Apr 2005

To start thinking of the roots to problems

I must recommend "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. This is a fictional exploration of how we managed to get in this mess in the first place. My understanding of environmental problems would not be complete if I had not thought about the issues brought up in this book. I am grateful that one of my husband's instructors had him read this book or I may never have found it and opened my eyes to see beyond the myths of our culture.
Ishmael website: http://www.ishmael.com/index1.cfm

If for some reason you cannot get into the book due to format/storyline then you can check out "The Book of the Damned" which came first and explores the same issues in a non fiction format.

Enjoy exploring in the shadows!

by woodviolet at 11:18 AM on 06 Apr 2005

Want more science?

From a scientific perspective, try "Win-Win Ecology" by Michael Rosenzweig. The author describes how his use of the species-area relationship (a very sound ecological idea) led him to realize that there simply isn't enough space currently available to sustain all of the species we want to save. He offers a new mentality - Reconciliation Ecology - as an additional tool. The idea is to integrate conservation with human establishments rather than try to accomplish everything separately. It's very readable and he describes some great real-life examples, such as an underwater restaurant that serves as an artificial foundation for a coral reef!

Enjoy! And thanks for everyone else's fantastic suggestions!

Being a scientist is a lot like being a lawyer... facts are facts but the outcome depends a lot on how you present them.

by gypsylion4 at 11:48 AM on 06 Apr 2005

more sci-fi

This isn't the end-all and be-all of environmental fiction, but I'm reading Battlefield: Earth by L. Ron Hubbard and it's pertinent to our human condition right now. Also, a major theme of Frank Herbert's Dune series is environmental change and its effect on politics, civilization, rulers, religions, and basically all human interaction.

Visit http://www.therainforestsite.com daily!

by tinwithli at 12:51 PM on 06 Apr 2005

suggested reading

Wallace Stegner's "Wilderness Letter"

"Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner

"Culture and Agriculture" by Wendel Berry

by troutmann at 9:31 AM on 07 Apr 2005

Eco movies

When you've had enough digesting some of the sobering texts already recommended, you should try

Spirited Away or
Castle In Sky

both children's movies by popular Japanese animator Hiyao Mayazki. They cover all of the important environmental and consumer issues and can turn you into an environmentalist without even realising.

by Milo at 9:52 AM on 07 Apr 2005

some of my favorites (a partial list)

Here are some of my favorites in this field:
Classics/Historical
A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold
Mountains of California by John Muir
Lives of Game Animals by Ernest Thomas Seton (Fascinating historical reading-if you can find it!)

Radical Activism
Ocean Warrior by Paul Watson (nonfiction)
The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey (fiction)

From a Spiritual Perspective
Spiritual Ecology by Jim Nollman (nonfiction)
The River Why by James David Duncan (fictiion)

A Close Look at Wildlife
The writngs of Gerald Durrell, also Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

Love of Wilderness
The writings of Edward Abbey and Gary Snyder

The Farmer's Perspective
The writings of Wendell Berry

And, finally, Futuristic Fiction
Always Coming Home by Ursula K. LeGuin

Let the jaguars return!

by Storm Dragon at 10:14 AM on 07 Apr 2005

union of concerned scientists

I find that the Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org) does an excellent job of breaking down the issues and explaining them fully in a way that is generally accessible to the layperson. They frequently have more in-depth analyses of the issues, as well, for people who have a more complete understanding of the underlying science. They are also a very respected and effective lobbying group, because their membership is primarily people who are professionals or students of science, in some way. Many leading scientists, researchers, professors, and some Nobel Prize winners are all involved, so when they speak up, sometimes (not often enough) politicians will listen. But, most important, they base all of the positions that they take on good, hard science -- no conjecture, just policy choices that are logical extensions of things that WE KNOW FOR CERTAIN through research.

And, of course, for my environmental news, i've turned to daily Grist for four years now, and they never disappoint.

by bcherm at 11:03 AM on 07 Apr 2005

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