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  • From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lflondon AT mindspring.com>
  • To: market-farming
  • Subject: Agriculture bibliography Part 26
  • Date: Sat, 04 Mar 2000 01:11:29 -0500




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Environmental Values in American Culture
by James S. Boster, Willett M. Kempton, Jennifer Hartley (Contributor)
Our
Price:
$17.50 Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Paperback
(November 1996)
MIT
Press; ISBN: 0262611236 ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.74 x 8.89 x 5.94
Reviews: Booknews, Inc. , June 1, 1995 An anthropological study of
how
Americans
view global warming and other environmental changes, drawing on
interviews and
surveys of the general public as well as members of groups ranging
from Earth
First!
to laid-off Oregon sawmill workers. Among the findings are that the
public and
scientists have completely different understandings of some critical
environmental
problems and proposed policy solutions, that environmental values have
already
become intertwined with other American values, and that an
environmental view of
the
world is more universal than previous studies have suggested.
Annotation
copyright
Book News, Inc. Portland, Or. --This text refers to the hardcover
edition of
this
title
Customer Comments : A reader , June 27, 1996 What do Americans really
think
about
environmental issues? Kempton has done a real service to students and
activists
on
all sides of environmental issues, by going out to find out what
people "in the
street" really think. With surveys and interviews, presented simply
and clearly
(without a jungle of tables and graphs) this study shows us just how
deeply
environmental values have penetrated the national consciousness. This
book shows
that environmental conservation is a majority, mainstream issue in the
USA
today.
Americans from all walks of life, even people who make their living
from cutting
down forests and fishing our lakes and rivers, are now
"environmentalists." And
most
are willing to make economic sacrifices to improve the state of the
natural
environment. The book has already had an impact on Washington. After
this book
came
out, the Republican party suddenly dropped its anti-environmental
rhetoric
(though
not its policies), and stopped trying to gut the EPA. --This text
refers to the
hardcover edition of this title
A reader : Tells you what Americans really think about the
environment. This
book
should give pause to the Republicans in Congress who are trying to
dismantle the
major environmental legislation of the 1970s. The people are not
behind them.
Not at
all. Until recently we knew surprisingly little about what Americans
think and
believe about the environment and conservation. There were only a few
opinion
polls
and a lot of anecdotes. Most of the data came from interest groups
with axes to
grind. A group of anthropologists set out to get better information,
mainly by
sitting down and talking at length with a lot of different people,
from various
places in the middle of the road to the extreme groups on the fringes
of pro-
and
anti-environmentalism, including laid-off sawmill workers in Oregon.
They also
talked with scientists, and conducted their own statistical survey.
This book
describes the cultural models, myths, and emotions that shape the way
Americans
think about global warming, animal rights, fuel taxes, and a host of
other
issues.
The real voices of citizens come through loud and clear, pushing out
among
enough
tables and statistics to satisfy the hardest-nosed political
strategist. The
good
news is that three quarters of Americans consider themselves
environmentalists,
and
most of them are willing to give up a lot for clean air and water,
energy
conservation, and preserving endangered species. There is an amazingly
high
level of
support out there for the core beliefs of the environmental movement,
which have
now
become part of American cultural values in general. The bad news is
that most
Americans have no idea what is causing global warming or ozone
depletion, and
they
are not too clear on who is doing the polluting either. Now that there
is such
strong consensus on basic environmental issues, how do we mobilize
more activism
and
better policies? This book can help plan the way. p. 223 "Our analysis
of
American
values suggested that environmental advocates are missing an
opportunity by
basing
their arguments primarily on utilitarian grounds (i.e., protect the
rainforest
because it has potential medicines). The only utilitarian value we
found with
real
emotional force held that the earth should be preserved for our
children and
subsequent descendants. Two additional value bases for
environmentalism are held
by
significant proportions of the population but are not now addressed by
environmental
activists: traditional religious teachings and an emerging
biocentrism. Although
these values are not as universal as utilitarianism, for those that
hold them,
they
are stronger and more emotionally held." p. 225 "...current
environmental values
represent a major change in how our culture conceives of the
relationship
between
humanity and nature. The speed of this change is stunning---it has
surely
occurred
since the end of the nineteenth century and perhaps mostly over the
last thirty
years, since Rachel Carson published Silent Spring." from an interview
with a
coal
truck driver in West Virginia (p. 277) "The environment is just, like
dying. Its
just like your mother or whatever. You never go visit your mother or
your father
because you're busy doing this, you're busy doing that, you're working
this and
that. And then when they die, you say "Oh, I wished I would have done
this, I
wished
I'd done that." An interview with a retired fireman (p. 66) ""Have you
heard
about
the greenhouse effect?" Is that what they're talking about the ozone
layer?
...That
last year...created the hot spell?...But I couldn't understand that,
last year
we
had it, what made it change this year? We don't have it quite as
severe...." A
retired science teacher (p. 92) "You're never nearer the Lord than
when you're
outdoors...out in the country or at night with the stars shining down
in the
pure
air and so forth...The most restful and calming and healing process a
human
being
can undergo is to be out in the natural, quiet place of
nature...Nature and
human
beings should be in perfect harmony. It just gives you an ethereal
feeling to
look
into the starlight or to look at a sunset or see a flower that's
perfect or
something. Its just unbelievable what nature can do and how it can
revitalize
everything in you."

***************************************************

Earth's Insights : A Survey of Ecological Ethics from Mediterranean
Basin to the
Australian Outback
by J. Baird Callicott, Tom Hayden List Price: $16.95 Our Price:
$13.56 You
Save:
$3.39 (20%) Availability: Usually ships within 24 hours. Paperback -
292 pages
Reprint edition (December 1997) Univ California Press; ISBN:
0520085604 ;
Dimensions (in inches): 0.71 x 8.87 x 6.05

***************************************************

State of the World 1999 : A Worldwatch Institute Report on Progress
Toward a
Sustainable Society (Serial)
by Lester R. Brown Our Price: $13.95 Usually ships in 24 hours
Paperback -
(January
1999) 256 pages
Reviews : Book Description The newest volume in the series that has
become the
bible of the global environmental movement-and has sold over one
million copies.
This State of the World Millennium Edition provides national leaders
and
concerned
citizens with a comprehensive framework for the global debate about
our future
in
the twenty-first century. This annual survey by the award-winning
Worldwatch
Institute has become an indispensable analysis of negative
environmental trends
and
a guide to emerging solutions. State of the World 1999 takes an
insightful look
at
the sweeping changes of the last one hundred years and the challenges
we face in
the
next century to build a sustainable economy that reuses and recycles
materials,
is
powered by renewable energy sources, and has a stable population.
Written in
clear
and concise language, with easy-to-read charts and tables, State of
the World
1999
presents a view of our changing world that we, and our leaders, cannot
afford to
ignore. Synopsis The latest edition of this bible of global
environmental
facts
provides a comprehensive framework for the debate about man's future
in the 21st
century. Tables & figures.
The author, dbell AT worldwatch.org , January 27, 1999 A guide to the
challenges of
the
21st century. (Adapted from Worldwatch Press release) NEW CENTURY TO
BE MARKED
BY
GROWING THREATS, OPPORTUNITIES The bright promise of a new century is
clouded
by
unprecedented threats to the stability of the natural world, according
to a
special
millennial edition of the State of the World report, released by the
Worldwatch
Institute today. "In a globally interconnected economy, rapid
deforestation,
falling water tables, and accelerating climate change could undermine
economies
around the world in the decades ahead," said Lester Brown and
Christopher
Flavin,
lead authors of the new report. During the past century, world
population grew
by
more than 4 billion-three times the number of people when the century
began. At
the
same time, the use of energy and raw materials grew more than ten
times. "These
trends cannot continue for many more years," said the authors. "As the
21st
century
approaches, the big question is whether we can muster the ingenuity to
change-and do
so rapidly enough to stave off environmentally-based economic decline.
The one
thing
we can say for sure is that the 21st century will be as different from
the 20th
as
that one was from the 19th." Since our emergence as a species, human
societies
have
continually run up against local environmental limits that have caused
them to
collapse, as local forests and cropland were overstressed. But the
advances in
technology that have allowed us to surmount these local limits have
transferred
the
problem of environmental limits to the global level, where human
activities now
threaten planetary systems. Among the problems we now face:
* World energy needs are projected to double in the next several
decades, but
no
credible geologist foresees a doubling of world oil production, which
is
projected
to peak within the next few decades.
* While protein demands are projected to also double in the century
ahead, no
respected marine biologist expects the oceanic fish catch, which has
plateaued
over
the last decade, to double. Eleven of the 15 most important oceanic
fisheries
and 70
percent of the major fish species are now fully or over-exploited,
according to
experts. And more than half the world's coral reefs are now sick or
dying.
* Growing stress can also be seen in the world's woodlands, where the
clearing
of
tropical forests has contributed recently to unprecedented fires
across large
areas
of Southeast Asia, the Amazon, and Central America.
* Environmental deterioration is taking a growing toll on a wide range
of living
organisms. Of the 242,000 plant species surveyed by the World
Conservation Union
in
1997, some 33,000, or 14 percent, are threatened with
extinction-mainly as a
result
of massive land clearing for housing, roads, and industries.
* The atmosphere is also under assault. The billions of tons of carbon
that have
been released since the Industrial Revolution have pushed atmospheric
concentrations
of carbon dioxide to their highest level in 160,000 years-a level that
continues
to
rise each year. As scientists predicted, temperatures are rising along
with the
concentration of carbon dioxide. The latest jump in 1998 left the
global
temperature
at its highest level since record-keeping began in the mid-19th
century.
* The early costs of climate change may already be evident:
weather-related
economic
damages of $89 billion in 1998 exceeded losses for the decade of the
1980s. In
Central America, 11,000 people were killed by Hurricane Mitch, and
Honduras
suffered
losses equivalent to one-third of its annual GDP.
* Human societies may also face growing stress in the new century. In
Africa,
for
example, where populations have doubled in the last three decades,
economic
growth
is already failing to keep up with human needs. Several African
countries,
including
Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where 20-25 percent of the adult
population is
now
HIV-positive, are expected to lose one-fifth or more of their people
within the
next
few decades. This could undermine their societies in the same way the
plague did
those of Europe in the Middle Ages.
"Our analysis shows that we are entering a new century with an economy
that
cannot
take us where we want to go," said Worldwatch President Lester Brown.
"Satisfying
the projected needs of 8 billion or more people with the economy we
now have is
simply not possible. The western industrial model-the
fossil-fuel-based,
automobile-centered, throwaway economy that so dramatically raised
living
standards
in this century-is in trouble." The shift to an environmentally
sustainable
economy
may be as profound a transition as the Industrial Revolution. The
foundation of
such
a system is a new design principle-one that shifts from the one-time
depletion
of
natural resources to an economy that is based on renewable energy and
that
continually reuses and recycles materials. A sustainable economy will
be a
solar-powered, bicycle/rail-based, reuse/recycle economy, one that
uses energy,
water, land, and materials much more efficiently and wisely than we do
today.
In
the absence of a concerted effort by the wealthy to address the
problems of
poverty
and deprivation, building a sustainable future may not be possible.
Growing
poverty,
and the political and economic chaos that can be provoked by it,
reverberate
around
the world, as was seen in 1998 with the Asian economic meltdown, which
pushed
tens
of millions of people below the poverty line in just a few months.
One key to
reversing environmental degradation is to tax the activities that
cause it,
according to the report. By putting a price on these activities, the
market can
be
harnessed to spur progress. If coal burning is taxed, solar energy
becomes more
economically competitive. If auto emissions are taxed, cleaner forms
of
transportation become more affordable. The effort to replace today's
unsustainable
economy with one that is suited to the demands of the 21st century
will create
some
of the new century's largest investment opportunities. "No challenge
is
greater,
or more satisfying, than building an environmentally sustainable
global economy,
one
where economic and social progress can continue, not only in the 21st
century,
but
for many centuries beyond," the authors conclude.

***************************************************

The Ecology of Commerce : A Declaration of Sustainability
by Paul Hawken Our Price: $11.20 You Save: $2.80 (20%) Usually ships
in 24 hours
Paperback - (August 1994) 272 pages
Reviews : Nature and Ecology Editor's Recommended Book Paul Hawken,
the
entrepreneur behind the Smith & Hawken gardening supplies empire, is
no ordinary
capitalist. Drawing as much on Baba Ram Dass and Vaclav Havel as he
does on
Peter
Drucker and WalMart for his case studies, Hawken is on a one-man
crusade to
reform
our economic system by demanding that First World businesses reduce
their
consumption of energy and resources by 80 percent in the next 50
years. As if
that
weren't enough, Hawken argues that business goals should be redefined
to embrace
such fuzzy categories as whether the work is aesthetically pleasing
and the
employees are having fun; this applies to corporate giants and
mom-and-pop
operations alike. He proposes a culture of business in which the real
world, the
natural world, is allowed to flourish as well, and in which the
planet's needs
are
addressed. Wall Street may not be ready for Hawken's provocative brand
of
environmental awareness, but this fine book is full of captivating
ideas.
>From Kirkus Reviews , October 15, 1993 It's not easy being green but,
here,
Hawken
(Growing a Business, 1987, etc.) proposes a utopian scheme that, for
all its
good
intentions, could make the process even harder. Proceeding from the
assumption
that
the environmental depredations of profit-making enterprises ``are
destroying
life on
earth,'' the author offers grim warnings on the status quo's
presumptive perils.
Among other vague and unsourced claims, he asserts: ``Given current
corporate
practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness or indigenous culture
will
survive
the global economy.'' Bolstering his worst-case scenario with evidence
that's
longer
on anecdotal vignettes than scientific data, Hawken goes on to present
a
three-point
program in aid of what he calls a ``restorative'' economy. Among other
recommendations, he calls for eliminating waste by recycling all
resources;
mandating the use of solar energy over fossil fuels; and encouraging
diversity.
Informed by an apparent antipathy toward big business, conspicuous
consumption,
mass
production, and other of capitalism's hallmarks, the Hawken agenda
envisions
some
decidedly radical solutions to the problems of an advanced industrial
society.
Cases
in point range from cutting Fortune 500 companies down to size through
imposing
controls on markets (which, though effective at setting prices, fail
in Hawken's
view to reckon costs like pollution); nurturing smaller firms with
government-supplied incentives; and levying penalty taxes on, say,
farmers who
use
chemical (as opposed to organic) means of cultivation. Nor does Hawken
much care
for
competition (``expensive and degrading for all involved''), advocating
instead
an
interdependent private sector ``that co- evolves with the natural and
human
communities it serves.'' High-minded--if sometimes
highhanded--prescriptions
that
will appeal to Hawken's large readership--as well as to, no doubt,
Chicken
Littles
everywhere. -- Copyright 1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved.
--This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis : Provides a visionary blueprint for a marketplace where
businesses and
environmentalists work together, showing companies how to redesign and
manufacture
products in innovative ways, reeducate customers, and work closely
with
government
toward a profitable, productive, and ecologically sound future.
Reprint.
Synopsis : A revolutionary program of restorative economics explains
how
businesses
can change their methods and use their power and social responsibility
to
reconstruct and repair Earth's social, environmental, and commercial
problems.
100,000 first printing. $100,000 ad/promo. --This text refers to an
out of print
or
unavailable edition of this title.
Synopsis : The bestselling author of Growing a Business presents a
visionary new
program which businesses can follow to help restore the planet. "A
daring,
urgent
vision of a kind of 21st century Canaan that Hawken yet believes we
can
reach."--San
Francisco Chronicle.
Customer Comments : A reader from Pacfic Northwest... , November 1,
1998
Thoughtful and optimistic, but it won't happen... Mr. Hawken is
absolutely
correct
that the GDP must account for the true costs to the environment.
Unfortunately,
he
presents a hopelessly unworkable solution from a political and
economic
perspective.
There are myriad reasons why Mr. Hawken's suggestions will not work.
However, I
offer my appreciation for his attempts to redefine the debate and
offer
unconventional solutions to what are certainly difficult challenges.
jason.hyman AT ey.com from Atlanta, GA , October 23, 1998 Optimistic,
realistic
analysis/guide for business & ecology. An in-your-face analysis of
the current
business/environmental landscape coupled with an optimistic blue print
for the
future. Perhaps the most sobering AND uplifting book I've read
regarding either
business or the environment. A must read for any influential business
person,
environmentalist, or concerned citizen. Paula James
(pjames AT prismnet.com
from
Austin, Texas , July 16, 1998 thorough, well-written, convincing,
well-documented.
This is a compelling, well-documented, and riveting account of the
take-over of
national economies by corporations whose only guideline is profit. The
result is
environmental devastation, rampant disease, and spiritual bankruptcy.
Hawkens,
himself a successful entrepreneur, is not anti-capitalism; rather, he
insists
that
corporations bear the true cost of creating and disposing of their
products so
that
society can make informed choices and prices are rationally related to
their
long-term effects. The market cannot work properly if price is
artificially low
due
to society's picking up the tab for a product's environmental impact.
jwbecker AT aol.com from Austin, Texas , May 29, 1998 Superb,
thought-provoking
and
long overdue. Hawken comes at the environmental crises not from the
perspective
of
someone worried about saving animals and beautiful spaces (although he
clearly
loves
those things), but as an economist who sees our system as inherently
unsustainable.
The resources for our lifestyle are quickly running out, and the
result will be
global catastrophe. He bravely points the finger at the root cause of
it all,
laissez-faire capitalism, our culture's sacred cow. Though this is not
a new
suggestion, Hawken goes further than anyone I've ever read to describe
realistic
ways of fixing the problems. The key to accomplishing this is to get
as many
young
people as possible aware of the truth (minus corporate propaganda), so
that the
next
generation might work toward some of the changes Hawken proposes.
Another good
writer on this subject is Daniel Quinn, whose book "Ishmael" is
excellent.
Stefan.M.Haney AT ac.com from Chicago, Illinois , January 27, 1998
Please
incorporate
in MBA curriculums The author questions the fundamental principles
that
managers
use to make decisions. In a day where corporations are too large for
any one
individual to be aware of ALL corporate actions, this self examination
is key.
Hawken offers another voice upon which corporate processes can be
redefined. A
reader , June 28, 1996 Essential Reading for anyone who hopes for a
future on
earth. The Ecology of Commerce is not easy reading, not because
Hawken's prose
or
style is difficult, but because it is difficult to remain optimistic
or hopeful
in
the face of the overwhelming case made by him about the certainty with
which our
current system of business is doomed to destroy us. The changes he
proposes are
both
incredibly simple, yet incredibly unlikely to be implemented or even
paid
attention
to in the next twenty to thirty years. It will take virtual
eco-collapse in the
Industrialized nations before the wise words of Hawken and his
colleagues will
be
heeded. And of course it will be much, much too late. Should you have
the
stomach
for it however, you will find the Ecology of Commerce an extremely
well crafted
argument for some simple logical principles that could save the life
that we
love
and actually improve business and our standard of living in the
process.
Lawrence F. London, Jr. Venaura Farm
intergarden.com InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden InterGarden
metalab.unc.edu/permaculture PermaSphere
metalab.unc.edu/intergarden/orgfarm AGINFO
lflondon AT mindspring.com london AT metalab.unc.edu



  • Agriculture bibliography Part 26, Lawrence F. London, Jr., 03/04/2000

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