Which book changed your view on sustainability?

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Which book changed your view on sustainability?

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1parkbenchbruce
Jun 27, 2013, 12:55 am

Hi,
I am doing research for an idea for my sustainability course and I found your group. I have been interested in which books you remember as that book which changed you. Mine is Limits to Growth - Club of Rome.
I was interested when I saw Ray Anderson in his TED Talks http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_anderson_on_the_business_logic_of_sustainability.ht... refer to the book that changed him. It was Ecology of Commerce - Paul Hawken.
The reason is that I believe that there are key books that should be used. Which books? The ones that stand out. I saw a similar subject in your group but the question is different. I am looking at the power books - the ones with the power to change people. Are there any sustainability books in common?
I hope you find this interesting, thanks in advance...

2silverfish999
Edited: Jun 27, 2013, 3:50 am

3parkbenchbruce
Jun 27, 2013, 9:00 am

Thanks for the fast reply. A great start

4SqueakyChu
Edited: Jun 27, 2013, 9:09 am

These two books that most affected my behavior after reading them were...

1. Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock
2. Bringing nature home : how native plants sustain wildlife in our gardens by Doug Tallamy

5MaureenRoy
Edited: Jul 1, 2013, 3:32 pm

So, this may essentially be a political question, interesting. The vision that inspired me to change, one meal at a time, was Animal, Vegetable, Miracle from the American writer Barbara Kingsolver. I held off buying that book until I could buy a cheap copy at Costco; it was worth the wait! There is now a standalone website, since the book has spawned a wide interest in sustainable living: http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

On a global scale, the most influential activist, writer and teacher on sustainability I ever enountered was Masanobu Fukuoka. Here's a link to our group's thread on his life: http://www.librarything.com/topic/138758
Fukuoka was the first person I ever heard of who recommended "no-till" farming, a mind-boggling change in agricultural practices.

Keep in mind that ultimately the index of success of sustainability may be its appeal across ethnolinguistic divides. In our "Zeitgeist" thread, see the examples we include so far of materials with appeal beyond the Caucasian English-speaking world. And let us know how your project turns out. -- All the best.

Edit July 1, 2013: Not long after starting to focus on sustainability, my family and I read something, not a book but a magazine article, that is the best analysis for non-scientists so far of the subject of solar storms ... that article was an additional motivator in our family's move toward sustainability. Here is that link: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2012/06/solar-storms/ferris-text

Another non-book motivator was the Los Angeles freeway graffiti poster I saw in June 2013:

Worst Ancestors Ever

If so, it only takes some of us to start doing something about that. Margaret Mead's message reminds us about the power of small groups, etc.

ParkBenchBruce, the good news is that Barnes and Noble website (http://www.bn.com) has an inxpensive book on just your topic. The bad news is that it's a Nook book only, apparently. Title is:
Learning for sustainable living: psychology of ecological transformation
Authors: Werner J. Sattmann-Frese and Stuart B. Hill

6parkbenchbruce
Jun 29, 2013, 8:47 am

Thanks. It is not political in nature but more a question to see if one or a few books appeal to such a diverse range of sustainability active people. I always ask why. Change is difficult and for a book to produce change it must be good. The old line of you had me at hello - well I think that there are hello books. Good point about lines of divide.

7SqueakyChu
Edited: Jul 1, 2013, 11:11 pm

> 2

To expound a little bit at how these books did change my behavior...

Don't Eat This Book by Morgan Spurlock

1. I completely stopped eating at (thus financially supporting) fast food franchises.
2. I began shopping at Whole Foods once again because it provided the most affordable and best variety of organic produce.
3. I joined a CSA and now continue to have weekly deliveries of fresh, organic produce weekly to biweekly the year round.
4. I try to get others to eat healthier by articles I write for my CSA. I'm the editor. :)

Bringing nature home : how native plants sustain wildlife in our gardens by Doug Tallamy
1. I pulled invasive species of plants out of my garden.
2. I plant mostly native species of plants.
3. I plant trees on my property.
4. I watch what wildlife lives in my garden and always try to entice more species to visit.
5. I provide a birdbath, bird feeders, nesting materials and a birdhouse in my yard.
6. I avoid use of pesticides in my garden.
7. I try to teach others what I know of native species and the problematic issues of pesticides.

Call me activist, but now these ideas are very much a part of who I am. :)

8MaureenRoy
Edited: Jul 1, 2013, 3:26 pm

To all Sustainability Group members, please do your best to each give your reply to ParkBenchBruce's request. Until July 2014 I won't be online all that much.

92wonderY
Jul 1, 2013, 4:43 pm

I too thought Bringing Nature Home was a formative book. My degree was in agriculture, and I'm now seeing how limited that education was. There is so much cutting edge material now available which revolutionizes how we should be treating the world.
Others on my list are:
Genetic Roulette, which details the GMO process.
One of Michael Pollan's books, but I forget which one. He spent one chapter talking about the biology of the soil and I learned so much that was valuable.
Plastic Ocean turned me into a radical. We are in deep doo-doo if we don't change our ways.

10parkbenchbruce
Jul 1, 2013, 9:13 pm

Thanks for the support. The books are more diverse than I first thought.

I have read a chapter on Sustainability in Changing Paradigms Thomas Clarke p384 which lists 8 sustainability principles, assimilation (pollution prevention), regeneration (renewable harvests),diversification(biodiversity loss), restoration(ecosystem damage), conservation(smart buildings)dissipation(durable design),perpetuation(solar energy etc) and circulation(waste recovery).

This is not surprising given the comment in Blessed Unrest Paul Hawken about sustainability being a grassroots movement "it would be easily one of the most complex association of human beings ever assembled". No simple reason.

These hello books might each trigger one or more of these sustainability principles inside us. Squeakychu moves forward in CSA. Others each in their fields. Thanks for making me think wider than before. Also page 6 of Blessed Unrest picks up the differences around the world as mentioned by Indybooks. It is like weaving of social fabric going on of different people into one.

11parkbenchbruce
Jul 2, 2013, 12:17 am

Indybooks,
Thanks I have obtained Learning for sustainable living: psychology of ecological transformation (I believe that Stuart Hill one of the authors now teaches at Uni of Western Sydney in Australia where I live). Small world. Thanks for the edit

12MaureenRoy
Edited: Jul 2, 2013, 6:55 pm

Bruce, when you have time, take note of the subject headings for each title in the Zeitgeist thread in the Sustainability group thread list. That may at least help in your chasing down titles in the future. Absence of subject headings means that no such data were available for that title in that book as published. When I am searching for books on sustainability to list in this LT group, my chief problem is "Where do I look?" I know to look at offerings from online booksellers, and some of the usual suspects (known publishers), but the search topics are vastly wide and deep, as our Group founder noted at the top of our group page. It is an interesting problem.

I am now adding a new book from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their versa page includes title and subject headings of course, but also list a separate paragraph for keywords. The LT site advisors then told me to treat any such keyword paragraphs as tags. So I did that, but I'm not currently seeing a way to associate any given set of tags with a particular sustainability title within our LT Sustainability Group. So I asked that question of the LT site advisors ... time will tell.

13Helcura
Jul 12, 2013, 4:34 am

For me it was a book that is pretty old - The Whole Earth Catalog. It offered so many ideas and so many diverse ways of thinking about problems. Many of the tools are no longer available, but the ideas behind the tools remain transformative.

14parkbenchbruce
Jul 12, 2013, 5:40 am

Helcura,
Thanks. I remember this book. What is interesting is that there seems to be a strong memory of the book and the change. To me it is like we respond to a call for action from the book. So strong is that call that it lasts for a very long time

15Helcura
Jul 12, 2013, 8:51 am

I'd agree with that. I'd also hypothesize that because it contains many small suggestions, many people found at least one thing in it that resonated with their lives.

16MaureenRoy
Edited: Aug 7, 2013, 8:05 pm

Helcura and ParkBenchBruce,

Just when I thought I'd found all the major suppliers of titles on sustainability, I stopped by The Institute for Solar Living in Hopland, California (on the 101 freeway north of Santa Rosa and just south of Ukiah), and found handfuls of titles that were new to me, so check out the new entry in the sustainability group "Zeitgeist" thread, which lists them all. The only ones from ISL that I omitted were a few that seemed extremely redundant, in terms of the existing literature in this genre. Here is the ISL link in case you need that as well:

http://www.solarliving.org/

They also have a massive amount of ongoing workshops, so I posted that info in the sustainability "Calendar" thread. There is only one subject that the ISL bookstore avoided: Solar Electricity! I guess that's because the ISL parent company, Real Goods, makes lots of money from selling solar systems. Follow the money, I guess.

17MaureenRoy
Aug 7, 2013, 8:04 pm

To everyone in the sustainability group: If you have not yet responded to this thread, please do so ASAP. Your input is needed and appreciated!

18jljames1_79
Aug 8, 2013, 10:37 am

How about Design with Nature by Ian McHarg?

19parkbenchbruce
Aug 12, 2013, 7:41 am

Guys,
I found that Ecology of Commerce changed Ray Anderson CEO Interface. But the book sparked a desire which needed to be fulfilled. I came across this “Wow. Hunter Lovins, President of Natural Capital Solutions, is one of the pioneers and gurus in our field of sustainability in business. She advised one of the original Industry Titans, Interface, and many other companies early in their sustainability journey. Her message is one I highlight in my mini-series, Business + Sustainability: we have made good progress…and we need so much more to arrest the drastic disruption to ecosystems we see today.
http://bizplusustain.tumblr.com/post/21785024489/wow-hunter-lovins-president-of-...

So passion only gets you so far. You need thinkers.

I think that we each find books which act as a moral compass which aligns us to a new worldview. What is interesting is the variety of books. I suspect that these powerful books are not in the sustainability courses. So will a textbook change a worldview?

I think I can see where we are going wrong with sustainability training...

20MaureenRoy
Aug 14, 2013, 9:03 am

ParkBenchBruce and everyone, in the most recent thread I added - academic sustainability titles - those sample titles are just from the first 35 pages of search results from the UC library system (Univ. of Calif.). There were actually about 1200 pages of search results total, but I cried "Uncle" after analyzing 35 pages. ... There is much more to be gleaned. I sometimes suspect that sustainability will eventually repurpose our entire world.

21parkbenchbruce
Aug 15, 2013, 12:39 am

Indybooks,

I suspect that the number of books on sustainability will add to the planet's woes. There was a quote that as I read more I consume less food but the costs of lighting, the book, the use of social media to communicate starts to decrease this saving until no more saving and worse.

I starting reading 1000 books which changed my life (I found this after my question). http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Time-Out-1000-Books-Change-Your-Life-Time-Out-Gu.... A good read.

I think I am just a sucker for life changing books. Pity I like my life.

Thanks for all of your support, it has been interesting.

22MaureenRoy
Edited: Aug 30, 2013, 2:20 pm

Bruce, I admit my tendency to look for the brighter side of life. But "the number of books on sustainability will add to the planet's woes." -- Really?

First, keep in mind the late Michael Crichton's discussion about paradigm shifts in the latter part of the novel Jurassic Park -- something about "change is like death, because you can't see it until you get to the other side." If the genre of sustainability does not involve a paradigm shift, then I don't know what does.

Second, as I mentioned in one of the Sustainability threads, true, the internet is not sustainable! But there are a variety of plans afoot to change that, and in the meantime I am very selective about how much and why I spend time online.

Third, as the Economist magazine just reminded us, sitting down (as in at a computer) is not sustainable! Actually, in the cover of their recent print edition, the teaser title reads: Stand Up! Sitting Kills.

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583239-real-science-lies-...

Further, isn't a negative view of sustainability too much akin to a death wish? The problem I have with the whole death wish thing is that it's too much like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just saying.

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