Environmentalism
18 Jan 2004 12:05
Polluting ourselves out of house and home is a Bad Thing, and certainly an ugly one; ditto indiscriminate destruction of wild-life and environments. However, I like people --- some, anyway --- and don't much fancy dying at thirty after a life at hard labor, ignorance and crushing social control, so getting rid of industrial civilization is also a Bad Thing. (Hobbes was right about "nasty, poor, brutish and short," but wrong, alas, about "solitary.") Nature is not sacred, and if it was a person would be wasteful and cruel; but it isn't, and so can't even be indifferent. In the words of the Whole Earth Catalog, "We are as gods, and had better get good at it."
- Recommended:
- Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies
- Stephen Budiansky, Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management [Review: Heaven and Earth Are Not Benevolent]
- Martin Lewis, Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism
- Richard White, Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Colunbia River
- To read:
- Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well [Just like "The Old Dope Peddler" in the Tom Lehrer song]
- Robert U. Ayres and Udo E. Simonis (eds.), Industrial Metabolism: Restructuring for Sustainable Development
- Peter Barnes, Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons [Favorable review in Nature]
- Michael Bess, The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960--2000
- Samir B. Billatos and Nadia A. Basaly, Green Technology and Design for the Environment
- Fikret Berkes et al (eds.), Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change
- Anna Bramwell, Ecology in the 20th Century. [Means environmentalism]
- Jason Coburn, Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice
- Livio D. DeSimone and Frank Popoff, Eco-Efficiency: The Business Link to Sustainable Development
- W. H. Drury, Chance and Change: Ecology for Conservationists
- Steven M. Gelber and Martin L. Cook, Saving the Earth: The History of a Middle-Class Millenarian Movement
- T.L. Goedeke and S. Rikoon, "Otters as Actors: Scientific Controversy, Dynamism of Networks, and the Implications of Power in Ecological Restoration", Social Studies of Science 38 (2008): 111--132
- Garrett Hardin, Nature and Man's Fate
- Hawken, Lovins and Lovins, Natural Capitalism
- Ann E. Hajek, Natural Enemies: An Introduction to Biological Control
- Jack M. Hollander, The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy
- R. Bruce Hull, Infinite Nature
- Andrew G. Kirk, Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism
- Steve Lerner, Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor
- David L. Levy and Peter J. Newell (eds.), The Business of Global Environmental Governance ["theoretical and empirical accounts of the role of business in shaping international environmental policies"]
- Emily Klancher Merchant
- Building the Population Bombb
- "Environmental Malthusianism and demography", Social Studies of Science forthcoming (2022)
- Kenton R. Miller, Balancing The Scales: Guidelines For Increasing Biodiversity's Chances Through Bioregional Management
- Arthur P. J. Mol, Globalization and Environmental Reform: The Ecological Modernization of the Global Economy
- Mary O'Brien, Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment ["Instead of asking how much of a hazardous activity is safe (which translates into how much damage the environment can tolerate), alternatives assessment asks how we can avoid or minimize damage while achieving society's goals."]
- Elinor Ostrom and Harini Nagendra, "Insights on linking forests, trees, and people from the air, on the ground, and in the laboratory", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 103 (2006): 19224--19231
- Phillips, Tracking the Vanishing Frogs
- Seth R. Reice, The Silver Lining: The Benefits of Natural Disasters
- Walter V. Reid, Sarah A. Laird, Carrie A. Meyer, Rodrigo Gamez, Ana Sittenfeld and Daniel H. Janzen, Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Genetic Resources for Sustainable Development
- Natalie Smith, "Are Indigenous People Conservationists? Preliminary Results from the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon", Rationality and Society 13 (2001): 429--461
- Bron Raymond Taylor, Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism
- David Wheeler (writing as "The World Bank"), Greening Industry
