Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers – Laura Mazur and Louella Miles
January 12, 2010 by Bookman
Filed under New Books, People and Education
Conversations with Green Gurus introduces various environmental pioneers from different sectors, including business, government, academics and non-governmental organisations:
- Ray Anderson (Founder of Interface, Inc)
- James Cameron (Founder, Executive Director and Vice-Chairman of Climate Change Capital)
- Paul Dickinson (CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project)
- John Elkington (Founding Partner and Director of Volans)
- John Grant (Author of The Green Marketing Manifesto)
- Denis Hayes (President and CEO of The Bullitt Foundation)
- Gary Hirshberg (President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm)
- Tony Juniper (Former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland)
- Professor Sir David King (Former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government)
- Amory B. Lovins (Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute)
- Professor Wangari Maathai (Founder of the Green Belt Movement and Nobel Peace Prize Winner)
- Ricardo Navarro (Founder and Director of the Salvadoran Centre for Appropriate Technology)
- Dr Vandana Shiva (Physicist, Environmental Activist and Author)
- Jeffrey Swartz (President and CEO of Timberland)
- Sir Crispin Tickell (Diplomat, Academic and Environmentalist)
These leaders share insights on their professional and personal lives, and their current views on sustainability. The book gives a concise overview of how these green gurus started their green journey, and their wish to see a more sustainable world.
Here’s some thoughts from the gurus:
Well, it’s easiest to start with the first principle of natural capitalism: radical resource efficiency. Just look for muda, that wonderful Japanese word that means waste, purposeless and futility. Look for any measurable input that produces no customer value, and set a goal of reducing it to zero. – Amory B. Lovins
So sustainability really can and should be at the core of what companies are now planning, in terms of, for example, where markets will go and what will be some of the future risk factors. At that fundamental level sustainability, for a company, is about being able to continue in business. – Tony Juniper
The beautiful thing about business is that it doesn’t have any ideology except to make money. If you can demonstrate that you make more money by saving the world, then businesses will save the world really quickly. And so all we have to do is wake up the consumer to stop putting money into their own endangerment. And that shouldn’t be very difficult. – Paul Dickinson
I think the biggest problem, which I must admit I’m still dealing with, is the fact that very many people do not see the environment as something that is integral to our daily lives. It tends to be seen as an outside issue, often associated with scientists and academics, but in fact it is very, very central to our lives. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat – all these things that we cannot live without. – Professor Wangari Maathai
Related Info
Watch this short introduction video of the book:
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The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth – E. O. Wilson
December 23, 2009 by Bookman
Filed under People and Education, Science and Nature
A sincere plea by Edward O. Wilson for an alliance between science and religion to save Earth’s biodiversity.
From Amazon
The Creation is E. O. Wilson’s most important work since the publications of Sociobiology and Biophilia. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, it is a book about the fate of the earth and the survival of our planet. Yet while Carson was specifically concerned with insecticides and the ecological destruction of our natural resources, Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, attempts his new social revolution by bridging the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of fundamentalism and science. Like Carson, Wilson passionately concerned about the state of the world, draws on his own personal experiences and expertise as an entomologist, and prophesies that half the species of plants and animals on Earth could either have gone or at least are fated for early extinction by the end of our present century.
Astonishingly, The Creation is not a bitter, predictable rant against fundamentalist Christians or deniers of Darwin. Rather, Wilson, a leading “secular humanist,” draws upon his own rich background as a boy in Alabama who “took the waters,” and seeks not to condemn this new generations of Christians but to address them on their own terms. Conceiving the book as an extended letter to a southern Baptist minister, Wilson, in stirring language that can evoke Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” tells this everyman minister how, in fact, the world really came to be. He pleads with these men of the cloth to understand the cataclysmic damage that is destroying our planet and asks for their help in preventing the destruction of our Earth before it is too late. Never a pessimist, Wilson avers that there are solutions that may yet save the planet, and believes that the vision that he presents in The Creation is one that both scientists and pastors can accept, and work on together in spite of their fundamental ideological differences.
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The World Without Us – Alan Weisman
December 22, 2009 by Bookman
Filed under Cities and Buildings, People and Education
A fascinating look at a world without humans.
From Amazon
In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.
Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.
The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us.
Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.
From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn’t depend on our demise. In posing a provocative concept with gravity in a highly readable presentation, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.
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No Impact Man: Saving the Planet One Family at a Time – Colin Beavan
December 17, 2009 by Bookman
Filed under Lifestyle and Wellness, New Books, People and Education, Resources and Waste
The No Impact Man project by Colin Beavan is a funny and sincere experiment to find out whether individuals can live without leaving any environmental impact.
From Amazon
In the growing debate over eco-friendly living, it seems that everything is as bad as everything else. Do you do more harm by living in the country or the city? Is it better to drive a thousand miles or take an airplane? In NO IMPACT MAN, Colin Beavan tells the extraordinary story of his attempt to find some answers – by living for one year in New York City (with his wife and young daughter) without leaving any net impact on the environment.
His family cut out all driving and flying, used no air conditioning, no television, no toilets…They went from making a few concessions to becoming eco-extremists. The goal? To determine what works and what doesn’t, and to fashion a truly ‘eco-effective’ way of life. Beavan’s radical experiment makes for an unforgettable and humorous memoir and an attempt to answer perhaps the most important question of all: What is the sufficient individual effort that it would take to save the planet? And what is stopping us?
Related Info
Check out Colin Beavan’s blog to read his thoughts and adventures during the No Impact Man project. The project is also made into a film, watch the trailer here:
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Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century – Alex Steffen
December 17, 2009 by Bookman
Filed under Business and Economics, Cities and Buildings, Design and Technology, Energy and Climate, Government and Politics, Lifestyle and Wellness, People and Education, Recommended Books, Resources and Waste, Science and Nature
This book compiles the bright green solutions that are found in the Worldchanging website.
From Amazon
Worldchanging is packed with information, resources, reviews, and ideas that give readers access to the tools they need to build a better future. Written by a diverse collaborative of innovators, Worldchanging demonstrates that the means for making a difference lie all around us.
This team of top-notch writers, brought together by Worldchanging.com founder Alex Steffen, includes Cameron Sinclair, founder of Architecture for Humanity, Geekcore founder Ethan Zuckerman, and sustainable food expert Anne Lappé, among many others.
Each chapter offers practical answers to important questions, such as: Why does buying locally produced food make sense? What steps can we take to influence our workplace toward sustainability? How can we travel, live, work, and learn in world-changing ways? How, in short, can we participate in building a better future locally and globally?
Worldchanging proves that a life that is sustainably prosperous, thoughtful and democratic, dynamic and peaceful, is not just possible, it’s here.
Related Info
Visit Worldchanging.com for more bright green solutions. Or watch this TED Talk by Alex Steffen on Inspired Ideas for a Sustainable Future:
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