Conservation Books - Page 6

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Elizabeth Royte

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

An incisive, intrepid, and habit-changing narrative investigation into the commercialization of our most basic human need: drinking water.
Having already surpassed milk and beer, and second now only to soda, bottled water is on the verge of becoming the most popular beverage in the country. The brands have become so ubiquitous that we’re hardly conscious that Poland Spring and Evian were once real springs, bubbling in remote corners of Maine and France. Only now, with the water industry trading in the billions of dollars, have we begun to question what it is we’re drinking and why.
In this intelligent, eye-opening work of narrative journalism, Elizabeth Royte does for water what Eric Schlosser did for fast food: she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that bring it from nature to our supermarkets. Along the way, she investigates the questions we must inevitably answer. Who owns our water? What happens when a bottled-water company stakes a claim on your town’s source? Should we have to pay for water? Is the stuff coming from the tap completely safe? And if so, how many chemicals are dumped in to make it potable? What’s the environmental footprint of making, transporting, and disposing of all those plastic bottles?
A riveting chronicle of one of the greatest marketing coups of the twentieth century as well as a powerful environmental wake-up call, Bottlemania is essential reading for anyone who shells out two dollars to quench their daily thirst.

The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift

Andres R. Edwards

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Sustainability has become a buzzword in the last decade, but its full meaning is complex, emerging from a range of different sectors. In practice, it has become the springboard for millions of individuals throughout the world who are forging the fastest and most profound social transformation of our time-the sustainability revolution.

The Sustainability Revolution paints a picture of this largely unrecognized phenomenon from the point of view of five major sectors of society:

Community (government and international institutions)
Commerce (business)
Resource extraction (forestry, farming, fisheries etc.)
Ecological design (architecture, technology)
Biosphere (conservation, biodiversity etc.)

The book analyzes sustainability as defined by each of these sectors in terms of the principles, declarations and intentions that have emerged from conferences and publications, and which serve as guidelines for policy decisions and future activities. Common themes are then explored, including:

An emphasis on stewardship
The need for economic restructuring promoting no waste and equitable distribution
An understanding and respect for the principles of nature
The restoration of life forms
An intergenerational perspective on solutions

Concluding that these themes in turn represent a new set of values that define this paradigm shift, The Sustainability Revolution describes innovative sustainable projects and policies in Colombia, Brazil, India and the Netherlands and examines future trends. Complete with a useful resources list, this is the first book of its kind and will appeal to business and government policymakers, academics and all interested in sustainability.

Andrs R. Edwards is an educator, author, media designer and environmental systems consultant who has specialized in sustainability topics for the past 15 years. The founder and president of EduTracks, an exhibit design and fabrication firm specializing in green building and sustainable education programs for parks, towns and companies, he lives in northern California.

Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization

Derrick Jensen

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

a bit silly 2 out of 5 stars.
8 of 19 people found this review helpful.

I have read most of derrick jensen's books, and he makes good arguments but they are handpicked.....he pulls down civilisation with all its ills and injustices, but offers no better solution.....He himself eats salmon but bemoans its demise....he himself likes to gamble....eat meat.....travel by car and plane etc.....yet criticises a society and its people for doing the same thing.....no example is set or put into practice.....it is easy to pull apart something, but alot harder to replace or rebuild.....in the end the feeling is; whats his point and it all seems abit silly to rage against the machine that he himself embraces and benefits from.....a good read but shallow at the same time.....walk the talk jensen and you'll add some meat to the words written....rod simpson...australia

Editorial Review:

"Derrick Jensen is a rare and original voice of sanity in a chaotic world. He has wisdom and wit, grace and style, and is a wonderful guide to a good life beautifully lived."-Howard Zinn

The companion piece to Derrick Jensen's immensely popular and highly acclaimed works A Language Older Than Words and The Culture of Make Believe, Endgame stands to become Jensen's most influential book. Building on a series of simple but increasingly provocative premises, Jensen leaves us hoping for what may be inevitable: a return to agrarian communal life via the disintegration of civilization itself.

Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change

Elizabeth Kolbert

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 47 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Poetry when we need science 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This is another famous book on global warming. It is not as lightweight as Al Gore's book, which is basically a rock video put down on paper. This book is a series of stories and vigenttes. It certainly reads easily. Kolbert is a talented writer, and has produced a very easy to read book.

But this is not really a subject where we need more easy to read books. Kolbert's underlying assumptions are the same as Al Gore's. First, global warming is an absolute fact, it is caused by human CO2 emissions and, if we do not stop it, life as we know it will come to an end. Second, the reason that we do not act to stop this danger is that people are idiots, who can not understand science. So, if we talk real slow, and have lots of pictures, maybe we can teach these idiots to save themselves.

Kolbert does not go to Gore's coffee-table extremes. While she does not have any honest to goodness footnotes, she does actually cite us to eight pages of sources at the end. If Gore's book is basically a comic book, her book is about the level one would expect in a middle-brow monthly magazine. It is serious, but not very.

Here is the problem, Al and Ms. Kolbert. Many of us are not persuaded that the world is coming to an end. Many of us would like to see hard, well-reasoned science on the subject. Many of us would like to see the thoughts of skeptics taken seriously instead of brushed aside or mocked. This book does none of those things. It basically tells a bunch of stories, and makes no effort to make a serious, sustained and logical argument. It is possible that Gore and Kolbert are right, but it is going to take a much more serious scientific argument to persuade me.

I am less persuaded then I might be, because, even with my scanty knowledge on the issue, I can see her consciously tilting the evidence her way. Example. At one point, she talks about Greenland. She gives us a very short history of Greenland, noting that there were Norse settlers there for 400 years, who "scraped" out a living and then just kind of disappeared for reasons that Kolbert does not attempt to explain. These Norse settlements were founded at the height of the Medieval Warming -- when conditions were fairly nice -- and they died out due to the Little Ice Age, when it got so cold they could not survive. Kolbert knows that, because she refers to both the Medieval Warming and the Little Ice Age at other parts of the book.

BUT she also knows that issues are very controversial. Those who argue for the global warming thesis support their view by arguing that it is much warmer now than it has been for a very long time. Skeptics counter, by pointing to the existence of the Medieval Warming period, among other times. Thus, supporters of the global warming theory have recently taken to either denying that the Medieval Warming period occurred, or seeking to minimize it in some way.

So, by very carefully not mentioning the climatic reasons why the Norse colony on Greenland died out, Kolbert is consciously slanting her evidence to support her theory. Again, this does not prove that she is wrong. It does, however, prove that you can not trust her to present the facts in an unbiased manner.

Editorial Review:

Long known for her insightful and thought-provoking political journalism, author Elizabeth Kolbert now tackles the controversial and increasingly urgent subject of global warming. In what began as groundbreaking three-part series in the New Yorker, for which she won a National Magazine Award in 2006, Kolbert cuts through the competing rhetoric and political agendas to elucidate for Americans what is really going on with the global environment and asks what, if anything, can be done to save our planet. Now updated and with a new afterword, Field Notes from a Catastrophe is the book to read on the defining issue and greatest challenge of our times.

The Firecracker Boys: H-bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement

Dan O'Neill

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 225 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Stunning, moving, richly detailed 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I read this book a few summers ago, and I couldn't put it down. O'Neill's exhaustive research--including many personal interviews--helps solidify this book's place in the pantheon of great historical non-fiction of the 20th century. "The Firecracker Boys" picks up after World War II when the United States government, eager to find peaceful uses for nuclear power, proposed building a harbor near the remote Alaskan village of Point Hope using megaton nuclear explosions in a plan called "Project Chariot." The ambitious plan, which supporters felt could redeem nuclear weapons before the very eyes of a generation who saw its horrific power demonstrated on Japan, met fierce resistance among biologists, anthropologists, and most importantly local Alaska Native villagers of the region. These opponents feared radiation, debris fallout, and that the government continued to deny or downplay dangers of Project Chariot. O'Neill charts, in beautiful detail, the high-minded idealism of Project Chariot supporters against the burgeoning grassroots resistance which demanded fair recognition of Project Chariot's irreversible damage.

While Project Chariot first arrived, and met its doom, in a remote quarter of the globe, this story is firmly fixed on the world stage. This is not the anecdotal story of a failed gimmick; rather, this is the genesis of the movement towards limiting nuclear power, recognizing environmental impact, and treating Alaska Natives as more than haphazard bystanders to industrial progress. People, personalities, subplots, and larger impacts for the whole of humanity enliven this story and give Project Chariot a rich context. I whole-heartedly recommend this book.

Editorial Review:

In 1958, Edward Teller, father of the H-bomb, unveiled his plan to detonate six nuclear bombs off the Alaskan coast to create a new harbor. However, the plan was blocked by a handful of Eskimos and biologists who succeeded in preventing massive nuclear devastation potentially far greater than that of the Chernobyl blast. The Firecracker Boys is a story of the U.S. government's arrogance and deception, and the brave people who fought against it--launching America's environmental movement. As one of Alaska's most prominent authors, Dan O'Neill brings to these pages his love of Alaska's landscape, his skill as a nature and science writer, and his determination to expose one of the most shocking chapters of the Nuclear Age.

Last Chance to See

Douglas Adams, Mark Carwardine

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 177 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Bittersweet Goodbye 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

One of my favorite people in the world is the late author, Douglas Adams, best known for being the creative genius behind the wacky, madcap series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a "trilogy in five parts"). Those books have brought me an immense amount of joy -- but the chance to know Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox and the rest of the colorful (and arguably insane) characters making up Adams' Galaxy, are only part of why I love him so.

Though he made his name as a science-fiction comedy writer, Douglas Adams was so much more than that. He was obsessed with technology (especially all things Mac-related), a self-described "radical atheist," a pathological procrastinator and a passionate proponent of environmental and animal conservation. And it was this, his devotion to the earth and its creatures, which lead him to write the book he was most proud of in his career: a quiet, little title that few have heard of called Last Chance To See.

Last Chance... is an elegy to the endangered species struggling for survival in our world. It chronicles Adams' journey across various continents in search of amazing, but nearly extinct creatures such as the silverback mountain gorilla in Zaire, a flightless bird called the kakapo in New Zealand, and the half-blind baiji dolphin in China.

Adams' trademark humor is evident on every page, but there's also an enormous sense of melancholy present in what he writes:

"I suddenly felt, well, terribly old as I watched a mudskipper hopping along with what now seemed to me like a wonderful sense of hopeless, boundless naive optimism. It had such a terribly, terribly, terribly long way to go. I hoped that if its descendant was sitting here on this beach in 350 million years' time with a camera around its neck, it would feel that the journey had been worth it."

I highly recommend Last Chance To See to every human being inhabiting this planet. It's a funny, moving farewell to the animals we've lost, and a call to action for the ones we're about to lose.

Editorial Review:

"Very funny and moving...The glimpses of rare fauna seem to have enlarged [Adams'] thinking, enlivened his world; and so might the animals do for us all, if we were to help them live."
THE WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD
Join bestselling author Douglas Adams and zooligist Mark Carwardine as they take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures. Hilarious and poignant--as only Douglas Adams can be--LAST CHANCE TO SEE is an entertaining and arresting odyssey through the Earth's magnificent wildlife galaxy.

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff

Fred Pearce

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A global journey to find the sources of all the stuff in one man's life—and its social and environmental footprint

Where does everything in our daily lives come from? The clothes on our backs, the computers on our desks, the cabinets in our kitchens, and the spices behind their doors? Under what conditions—environmental and social—are they harvested or manufactured?

In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce shows us the hidden worlds that sustain a Western lifestyle, and he does it by examining the sources of everything in his own life; as an ordinary citizen of the Western world, he, like all of us, is an "eco-sinner." In conversational and convivial prose, Pearce surveys his home and then starts out on a global tour to track down, among other things, the Kenyans who grow and harvest his fair trade coffee (which isn't as fair as one might hope), the women in the Bangladeshi sweat shops who sew his jeans, and the Chinese factory cities where the world's computers are made. It's a fascinating portrait, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world's more than 6 billion inhabitants—all eating, consuming, making—have on our planet, and of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.

"In tracing the lineage of his "stuff," Fred Pearce's graceful and engaging book illuminates the invisible ways in which our ordinary possessions connect us to workers we will never know and forests we will never explore. Starting at the intersection of environmental threats, excessive consumption and exploited workers, Confessions points us toward a far more nurturing, meaningful and humane future."
—Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat Is On and Boiling Point

"Required reading for anyone who's ever worn a t-shirt, used a cell phone or computer, sipped a cup of coffee, or taken out the garbage. Pearce travels beyond the carbon footprint of our consumer society to explore the forgotten social footprint, bringing us to the unlikely and sometimes unseemly places where our stuff is born, and where it goes to die."
—William Alexander, author of The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

"More and better stuff - the promise of our age. But where does it come from and what does it cost, ecologically and in human suffering? Fred Pearce decided to find out and the story is compelling but not pretty. With any luck, this brilliant book will change our insatiable demand for more material goods and guide us, and our planet, to spiritual and eco health."
—Maude Barlow, author of Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water

Grave Matters: A Journey Through the Modern Funeral Industry to a Natural Way of Burial

Mark Harris

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

By the time Nate Fisher was laid to rest in a woodland grave sans coffin in the final season of Six Feet Under, Americans all across the country were starting to look outside the box when death came calling.

Grave Matters follows families who found in "green" burial a more natural, more economic, and ultimately more meaningful alternative to the tired and toxic send-off on offer at the local funeral parlor.

Eschewing chemical embalming and fancy caskets, elaborate and costly funerals, they have embraced a range of natural options, new and old, that are redefining a better American way of death. Environmental journalist Mark Harris examines this new green burial underground, leading you into natural cemeteries and domestic graveyards, taking you aboard boats from which ashes and memorial "reef balls" are cast into the sea. He follows a family that conducts a home funeral, one that delivers a loved one to the crematory, and another that hires a carpenter to build a pine coffin.

In the morbidly fascinating tradition of Stiff, Grave Matters details the embalming process and the environmental aftermath of the standard funeral. Harris also traces the history of burial in America, from frontier cemeteries to the billion-dollar business it is today, reporting on real families who opted for more simple, natural returns.

For readers who want to follow the examples of these families and, literally, give back from the grave, appendices detail everything you need to know, from exact costs and laws to natural burial providers and their contact information.

The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Third Edition

Joseph C. Jenkins

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Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great for the environment 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Due to a plumbing fault in the house, my family have been composting in the back garden on a daily basis for over a year. What a bonus to stumble upon this book and find out that our actions have been helping to preserve the future of our planet! A number of residents in our street have complainined that the local environment has been suffering from some kind of unpleasant air pollution of late, so we feel proud to be putting something back.

Editorial Review:

There are almost seven billion defecating people on planet Earth, but few who have any clue about how to constructively handle the burgeoning mountain of human crap. The Humanure Handbook, third edition, will amuse you, educate you, and possibly offend you, but it will certainly pertain to you—unless, of course, your bowels never move.
This new edition of The Humanure Handbook is:

The Tenth Anniversary Edition

Richly illustrated with eye-candy artwork

Perfect for reading while sitting on the “throne”

Revised, improved, and updated

256 pages of crap

The Whale Warriors: The Battle at the Bottom of the World to Save the Planet's Largest Mammals

Peter Heller

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Editorial Review:

For the crew of the eco-pirate ship the Farley Mowat, any day saving a whale is a good day to die. In The Whale Warriors, veteran adventure writer Peter Heller takes us on a hair-raising journey with a vigilante crew on their mission to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the stormy, remote seas off the forbidding shores of Antarctica. The Farley is the flagship of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and captained by its founder, the radical environmental enforcer Paul Watson. The Japanese, who are hunting endangered whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary, in violation of several international laws, know he means business: Watson has sunk eight whaling ships to the bottom of the sea.

For two months, Heller was aboard the vegan attack vessel as it stalked the Japanese whaling fleet through the howling gales and treacherous ice off the pristine Antarctic coast. The ship is all black, flies under a Jolly Roger, and is outfitted with a helicopter, fast assault Zodiacs, and a seven-foot blade attached to the bow, called the can opener.

As Watson and his crew see it, the plight of the whales is also about the larger crisis of the oceans and the eleventh hour of life as we know it on Earth. The exploitation of endangered whales is emblematic of a terrible overexploitation of the seas that is now entering its desperate denouement. The oceans may be easy to ignore because they are literally under the surface, but scientists believe that the world's oceans are on the verge of total ecosystem collapse. Our own survival is in the balance.

With Force 8 gales, monstrous seas, and a crew composed of professional gamblers, Earthfirst! forest activists, champion equestrians, and ex-military, the action never stops. In the ice-choked water a swimmer has minutes to live. The Japanese factory ship is ten times the tonnage of the Farley. The sailors on board both ships know that there will be no rescue in this desolate part of the ocean. Watson presses his enemy while Japan threatens to send down defense aircraft and warships, Australia appeals for calm, New Zealand dispatches military surveillance aircraft, the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence issues a piracy warning, and international media begin to track the developing whale war.

For the Sea Shepherds there is no compromise. If the charismatic, intelligent Great Whales cannot be saved, there is no hope for the rest of the planet. Watson aims his ship like a slow torpedo and gives the order: "Tell the crew, collision in two minutes." In 35-foot seas, it is a deadly game of Antarctic chicken in which the stakes cannot be higher.