June CultureCAT: Environmentalism/Conservation

June CultureCAT: Environmentalism/Conservation (including Global Warming)



I’m big on the environment and have read a lot about it. All of my suggestions are books I’ve read. I’m sure there are plenty more out there! (And I still need to figure out what I’m reading – haven’t yet taken time to do that!) Also, in case anyone is interested, there is also a group here on LT called “Sustainability”.

And back to our June theme: I’ll start with a few definitions.

Environmentalism: “Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment… Environmentalism advocates the lawful preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism)

Conservation: “Conservation is an ethic of resource use, allocation, and protection. Its primary focus is upon maintaining the health of the natural world, its fisheries, habitats, and biological diversity. Secondary focus is on materials conservation, including non-renewable resources such as metals, minerals and fossil fuels, and energy conservation, which is important to protect the natural world..”
{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_(ethic))

Global Warming: “Global warming, also referred to as climate change, is the observed century-scale rise in the average temperature of the Earth's climate system and its related effects.”
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming)

Suggestions:

Fiction
Sick Puppy / Carl Hiaasen
The Lorax / Dr. Seuss
Prodigal Summer / Barbara Kingsolver
The Day the Falls Stood Still / Cathy Marie Buchanan

Nonfiction:
Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental… / Heather Rogers
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe… / James Hansen
Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution… / Thomas L. Friedman
Sea Sick: The Global Ocean in Crisis / Alanna Mitchell
The World Without Us / Alan Weisman
The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for… / Tim Flannery
Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds / Claire Hope Cummings
The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World / Steven Kazlowski

What Can We Do (and/or what others have done):
Living Like Ed: A Guide to the Eco-Friendly Life / Ed Begley Jr.
No impact man : the adventures of a guilty liberal who attempts to save… / Colin Beavan
Pets Gone Green: Live a More Eco-Concious Life with Your Pets / Eve Adamson
The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating / Alisa Smith
Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener… / Diane MacEachern
Organic Housekeeping / Ellen Sandbeck
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals / Michael Pollan

And I’ll throw a few in about animal conservation:
Jaguar: Struggle and Triumph in the Jungles of Belize / Alan Rabinowitz
In the Kingdom of Gorillas: Fragile Species in a Dangerous Land / Bill Weber, Amy Vedder
The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the… / Peter Heller
Tigers In The Snow / Peter Matthiessen

And if you like biographies, here’s one autobiography that fits:
David Suzuki: the Autobiography / David Suzuki

Don't forget to update the wiki:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/2017CC_CultureCAT#June

Ok, I have TONS to choose from! (I guess I shouldn't be surprised.)

Plastic: a Toxic Love Story / Susan Freinkel
Your Water Footprint / Stephen Leahy
Native Tongue / Carl Hiaasen
The Elephant Whisperer / Lawrence Anthony
Eye of the Whale / Douglas Carlton Abrams
Seal Wars / Paul Watson
Through a Window / Jane Goodall
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind / William Kamkwamba

The one I'd most like to get to is "Plastic", but I was going to get that from the library I work at and we are doing renovations. The book is packed up. It should be unpacked in June, so it's possible.

Also, "Seal Wars", but I don't think my public library has it, so it would have to be an ILL.

The ones that I think have been on my tbr longest are "Your Water Footprint" and "Eye of the Whale" (which is fiction, and I might want to focus on nonfiction for this one). We'll see.

I may end up counting The Right to Be Cold, by Sheila Watt-Cloutier, for this one, whenever my hold comes in!

>3 rabbitprincess: Oh, that's also one I want to read!

>3 rabbitprincess: - I would also like to read that one, though I think I have a few others in my house that will qualify. I have already read a few on the list of suggestions.

I've got so many choices, and I fear I'm going to take a lot of book bullets from this thread, but my plans include The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches from a Vanishing World, which just came in the mail from an Early Reviewer Giveaway. I'm also planning on getting to A Friend of the Earth. Honestly, I've meant to read this second one for ages... but there's a dead frog on the cover, and each time I've thought about it, the cover has put me off :( But, I'm going to turn it upside down when I put it down, and leave it upside down, and finally get around to it!

I've got lots of choices for this one too! I had planned on reading George Monbiot's How Did We Get Into This Mess?, but looking at the contents yesterday I think it's much wider than environmentalism/conservation and goes into capitalism, politics etc (which I know are relevant, but as I have other books which are closer to this theme I will go for them instead). I'm going to start off with Hope on Earth: A Conversation which is a conversation between two eminent environmental scientists, and if I have time I also have Green Gone Wrong and both the original Last Chance to See and the updated Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams on my TBR. I have some others too, but they are top of the list!

>6 whitewavedarling: I know what you mean about offputting covers. A couple of years ago I read Sex, Politics and Putin and would have much preferred a picture of a dead frog on the cover! Urgh urgh urgh.

I've got tons that fit as well. And a recommendation for something completely different: Climate Changed by Philippe Squarzoni explains it all in graphic novel format. Very well done, great use of the format to lay out complex issues without overly simplifying.

>9 sushicat: Oooh, I like the idea of a graphic novel for this! I won't read it this time around, but I'm going to look into it for another time.

>9 sushicat: >10 LibraryCin: Ha! Apparently it is already on my tbr...

I just finished Heat and Light, which fits this category. It's a novel about the effects of fracking on a Pennsylvania town.

Your Water Footprint: The Shocking Facts About How Much Water We Use to Make Everyday Products / Stephen Leahy
4 stars

The subtitle pretty says what the book is about. The first and last two chapters (the introduction, conclusion and “Water Saving Tips”) are more text, while the rest of the chapters are made up, primarily, of infographics to make it easier to visualize how much water is used on making those everyday products.

This was interesting. I think the graphics really help to understand the measurements a bit better than just a giant number in litres or gallons. The chapters that were all text did get a bit bogged down, so parts were a little bit dry. There was just a lot of information, but I think the book (and particularly, the infographics) helps open our eyes to how dire the situation is and may become. The “Water Saving Tips” at the end does help provide suggestions of things we can all do to help.

Paul R. Ehrlich & Michael Charles Tobias' Hope on Earth: A Conversation was a free ebook I got last year from the University of Chicago Press (they do a different free ebook every month). The authors are, respectively, a professor in population studies and conservation biology, and an ecologist/film-maker, and this book is in the form of a conversation between the two on the ethical issues around climate change and ecology. I found it really unsatisfying until very close to the end, and actually nearly gave up on it, but I'm glad I stuck with it because the last 3 chapters were what I was hoping for in the whole book. What let the book down, in my view, was the conversational structure - it was pretty much the transcript (with a few details such as book titles and suchlike presumably added later) of conversations, so it was really bitty and I found it difficult to pin down at times what they were actually trying to say (not helped by the second author's constantly banging on about vegetarianism, which I found really distracting). Throughout I thought that a much better format would have been for both authors to have written separate essays and then written a response to each other. The last 3 chapters pretty much ditched the conversation structure and were more long-form, including a 3rd academic, John Harte, detailing a particular experiment he has been involved with for many years in Colorado measuring the effects of global warming. If the whole book had been like this it would have been brilliant. As it was, the final 3 chapters brought it up to a 3 star total for me - if it had continued in the conversational format I would have given it a much grumpier 2 stars.

While this book mostly looks at Gender and its effect on society, it also looks at environmental effects; The Left Hand of Darkness by Urusala K. Le Guin.

Finished A Friend of the Earth, which was totally appropriate... but I still can't figure out quite how I feel about it. I do want to read more by the author, though, which I suppose is a good sign. There is a full, somewhat ranting, review written.

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe / Jane Goodall
4.5 stars

This was originally written in 1990, 30 years after Jane Goodall went to Gombe National Park in Tanzania to study chimpanzees My edition was published in 2010, so there is even extra info with a preface and an afterword written by Jane in 2009. This continues/updates her first book on the chimps of Gombe, In the Shadow of Man.

I read In the Shadow of Man a number of years ago, but I loved revisiting the same chimps and their offspring, and following them later in the their lives! Jane is also an adamant activist/conservationist, so at the end of the book, after all the extra chimp information and updates (which really is the bulk of the book), she writes a little bit about human-raised chimps, chimps used in experiments, chimps losing their habitat, etc. There are a number of photos of the chimps included, as well. Overall, I really really enjoyed reading this!

I read All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders. Environmental destruction and how to avoid it are major themes in this book.

Finished The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches from a Vanishing World tonight. The title itself gives you the subject, but the beginning of the book also serves as something of a memoir, chronicling how the author came to care about the natural world, endangered species, and endangered cultures, which made it a bit unlike other books I've read. I suspect that this early portion will either make the book more engaging or less engaging for separate readers, depending on why they come to the book and how much they enjoy memoirs in general.

For me, I think I would have enjoyed the book more from the beginning if I'd known to expect the sort of personal/memoir-ish build-up, as I was anxious to read about Borneo, but all told, I found the book really worthwhile, and I'm glad to have read it. Full review written...

The July CultureCat Thread on Violence, Crime & Justice can be found here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/259649#6080313

I finished Judas Unchained last week and after looking at this thread again, I realized that this book fits. It's the conclusion of an alien invasion series and the alien involved moves from planet to planet killing every other living thing, growing and multiplying, and creating huge industrial facilities that completely pollute the environment. It doesn't seem to have any awareness of the damage it's causing, although it can see that the pollution hurts its own kind. It is just completely accepting of the outcomes along as it serves the purpose to grow and expand without end. Maybe sounds familiar?