TreeHugger Picks: Required Reading
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 12.11.06
TreeHugger covers a lot of books, and have picked out ten page-turning tomes that'll make great gifts this year. While they're all worthwhile reading, there are a few that stick out in scope and subject matter that make it on to our required reading list this winter. If you've got some free time between holiday parties, gift-giving and carol-singing, we recommend picking up at least one of the following:
1) Natural Capitalism profiles the next industrial revolution and proposes that it will be thoroughly green and pro-business.
2) Cradle to Cradle proposes that waste = food, and suggests that things should be made from either biological nutrients, which decompose naturally, and technical nutrients, which are designed for upcycling.
3) The Eco-Design Handbook is full of pictures and key info about sexy, green furniture, transportation, materials, clothing, and more: it’s the bible of green design.
4) The Solution is You! is Laurie David's handy pocket guide to curbing climate change that's part autobiography and part activist’s toolbox.
5) An Inconvenient Truth (the book) won a Quill Book Award and offers Gore's slideshow in page-turning form.
Three excellent books I would highly recommend to treehugger’s are;
A short history of progress, by Ronald Wright
http://www.anansi.ca/titles.cfm?pub_id=231
The weather makers, by Tim Flannery
http://www.theweathermakers.com/
The upside of down, by Thomas Homer-Dixon http://www.theupsideofdown.com/?gclid=CJ2V6K3Wi4kCFQtHYAodSxaB3g
Yes, the first two are good.
You seriously need to check out Dan Dagget's new book though:
Gardeners of Eden: Rediscovering our important To nature.
http://www.amazon.com/Gardeners-Eden-Rediscovering-Importance-Nature/dp/096662291X/sr=1-1/qid=1165963483/ref=sr_1_1/103-5549627-5152668?ie=UTF8&s=books
You can read some reviews on-line as well.
This has been described as promoting new environmentalism.
Wendell Berry likes it, Hunter Lovins likes it, Gary Nabhan likes it. Check it out.
Bill McKibben's The End of Nature should definitely be required reading.
I guess we all love to suggest books, and I am not the one that will resist jumping on that particular bandwagon.
"The Omnivore's Dilemma." Pollan.
I am the inhouse "story teller" for a small group called VisionGym in Melbourne and was hoping you bloggers could help me. The group are taking the sustainability journey with their businesses and some are new and some are extending their own policies. I like to think of it as a book club on steroids :)
We have set a "curriculum" or "thought journey" and participants are able to request their own topics. My role is to provide provactive material of about 30 mins in length. Participants receive the "primer" before each session to fuel the discussions and each session is geared to activate tangible ideas for leadership action.
The first session was Purple Elephants- the Role of Business in Society. I used an extract from Natural Capitalism that examined the cornerstones of captilism and then mixed it with a telstra blog excerpt on CSR and a speech from the CEO of BP that looked at the role of business in society.
Can anyone suggest any good material to get people passionate and activated on the following!!!???
Further topics are
- "Scandinavian Innovation" - social, design etc...
- Ethical Investment and Behaviour,
- Gen Y and the Evolving Workplace
- Future Techs - Biomimicry, Nanontechnology,
Carbon trading etc..
- Local Business and Climate Change.