Sustainablog

Despite having agreed to review Queenelle Minet’s In Memory of Central Park: 1853 - 2022, I really wasn’t that excited about reading it. Described as “a thought-provoking work combining insight into the mind of a therapist, a poignant love story, and a commentary on both right-wing politics and our troubled environment” in press materials accompanying the book, I thought “Oh, no — fiction with an agenda. That almost never works.”

I was wrong.

In Memory of Central Park follows in the tradition of the great works of dystopian fiction: Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. Set in New York City in 2050, the novel’s protagonist and narrator Noah is a psychotherapist with plenty of issues of his own. He’s in love with his brother’s wife Margaret. He struggles with unresolved resentment about his relationship with his deceased father. And he, along with the other characters, live in a city that’s not only seceded from the United States, but has also encapsulated itself in a huge dome in order to protect itself from terrorism and other outside threats.

As you might imagine in this environment, Noah stays pretty busy with his psychotherapy practice. Though skilled at helping other resolve some of their own emotional problems, he’s distant from those around him.  His eventual affair with Margaret fails because he’s unwilling to allow her to leave Adam, her successful and politically-connected husband, and move in with him (Noah, like many of the residents of the city, lives in a single room). He’s frustrated because, despite his best efforts, he can’t seem to help a difficult patient who’s obviously dying. And he just doesn’t get the ideas underlying “clown show” performances by an underground street theater group that seems to pop up everywhere.

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We need to start using the R-words more and D-words less.

More restoration, revitalization, renovation, and remediation, and much less development, depletion, or degradation — those directives of the 20th Century that have wrought incredible damage on both the planet and its inhabitants.

That’s the message delivered by author and international speaker, Storm Cunningham, in his latest book, reWealth! It’s his follow-up to the acclaimed Restoration Economy, the first book to document the eight giant, fast-growing industries in the “restoration economy” that are renewing our natural and built environments.

Given the widespread destruction of healthy ecosystems and therefore, healthy integrated communities, we need to move beyond the status quo of simply conservation or “sustainability” to establish both the process and program of building reWealth in the restoration economy, advises Cunningham.

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Tips, tips, tips, tips… everyone’s got ‘em (including us). Yesterday, our friends at AboutMyPlanet.com went boldly where few of us in the green web have gone before with the publication of their Go Green Revolution ebooks. Your Life and My Office Handbook bring together a wealth of tips and practices and create (according to AMP) “an easier way for people to see how they can go green.”

I just got copies of the books yesterday, so have only had a chance to flip through them. Fortunately, they’re organized to make such flipping a useful activity: while either book could be read from cover to cover, the division of chapters in each makes it easy to find the exact information you want.  I particularly like the layout of Your Life, as it combines substantive sections on greening your home (inside and out) and lifestyle with short, self-explanatory tips set off in text boxes. My Office Handbook doesn’t just look at paper and energy use at work, but uses the framework of the typical workday: getting ready in the morning, traveling to work, and even eating lunch. The information I read looks solid, and I can definitely see the advantages (especially for “green newbies”) of having all of this information centralized in one place.

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OK, I admit it: I’m a book whore (hardly a shocking confession for a former English professor). I’m most vulnerable to impulse buying in a book store. When a publishing PR rep contacts me about a book for review, I jump on it like an addict desperate for that next fix.

But, of course, I also know that book publishing takes a fairly heavy environmental toll: as our friends at EcoLibris have pointed out, “more than 30 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.” The WorldWatch Institute notes that the average American uses over 300 kilograms (or over 660 pounds) of paper annually. And Erika Engelhaupt, in Environmental Science & Technology, observes:

Reducing paper use does more than save trees. Pulp and paper mills are also a major source of pollution. They release into the air CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), carbon monoxide, and particulates, which contribute to global warming, smog, acid rain, and respiratory problems. In addition, bleaching paper with chlorine can produce dioxin, which is known to cause cancer. Paper mills also produce large amounts of solid waste and require a lot of water. The industry is trying to clean up, but anyone who’s driven past a paper mill has smelled the challenge.

Yep, that book addiction has quite the footprint. There are numerous approaches to dealing with this impact: “cradle to cradle” book design, Ecolibris-style offsets, used of recycled and non-toxic materials, and, of course, ebooks.

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Editor’s note: John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist, the authors of Ecopreneuring: Putting Purpose and the Planet Before Profits, are both contributors to sustainablog and other GO Media network blogs. Despite our relationship, I was excited about their new book, and agreed to write a review. I’ll try not to let me relationship with John and Lisa get in the way of a fair and impartial assessment.

Ditch high-paying (and high-stress) corporate careers for a Wisconsin farm house, a more sustainable lifestyle, a portfolio of small businesses, and much less money. Sound idyllic to some… and crazy to others. As I noted in my review of their earlier book, Rural Renaissance: Renewing the Quest for the Good Life, John Ivanko and Lisa Kivirist made the jump from Chicago ad executives to rural bed and breakfast owners… and have never looked back. Their newest book, ECOpreneuring, focuses on how they continue to bring in income while creating a life centered on home, family, and environmental restoration, and provides guidance for others that want to recenter their careers and lifestyles around their environmental values.

Already, you should be able to tell that this is no ordinary business book — in fact, I’m not even sure I’d call it a “business book.” ECOpreneuring contains plenty of advice on starting a small, eco-conscious business, but the authors focus primarily on how entrepreneurial efforts can incorporate values and priorities beyond the bottom line. Lifestyle choices trump profit motives, but neither have to be sacrificed in order to create meaning and income.

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From the back cover of “Dry Spring”:

As it warms, our world is running out of fresh water - fast. Lakes, aquifers and rivers are disappearing, but we consume more water than ever. What will this mean for North America?

Veteran author and Canadian journalist Chris Wood has had a varied career contributing to national and regional publication including the CBC, Global and Mail, The Tyee, The Walrus, and many others. Chris is also co-author of the bookBlockbusters and Trade Wars: Popular Culture in a Globalized World.

In an interview with Wood last month, I asked how he came to write his latest book Dry Spring. He told me that throughout his writing career his focus has been, as he put it, “People and societies in their place”. This interest, combined with his acute awareness of the pressing environmental issues facing society, led him his work on the world’s fresh water supply, most particularly that of North America.

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What a scary thought. Why would anyone ever want to ban The Lorax? In 1989, the Laytonville, CA Unified School District tried to do just that. They challenged the book based on someone’s belief that it criminalizes the foresting industry.

Why am I bringing you 20 year old news? There’s two reasons.

The first is that the American Library Associations Banned Books Week starts this Saturday, September 27th. Banned Books Week

emphasizes the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.

What does book banning have to do with sustainability. A whole lot.

Many times people want to ban books that scare them. Or they want to ban books that go against their agenda. Or they want to ban books that contradict their religious beliefs.

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Quick: What is your favorite ungulate? If Monte Hummel and Justina C. Ray have their way, you will answer with one resounding word: “CARIBOU!”

In Caribou and the North: A Shared Future, Hummel and Ray use their expertise on these cold-loving herbivores and on the science of conservation to provide a fact-filled, highly persuasive bio-graphy of caribou and the “North” they inhabit. (Hummel is President Emeritus of the World Wildlife Life Fund-Canada, and Ray is Executive Director of the Wildlife Conservation Society.) Even if you are not an ungulate lover or prefer tropical warmth to boreal chill, Caribou and the North is an engaging introduction to these animals and how crucial they are to their environment.

Hummel and Ray begin with the biology of caribou, giving readers a head-full of distinguishing facts. For example, they make clear that there is not just one type of caribou but instead three “ecotypes,” classified by their habitat: migratory tundra, boreal forest, and mountain. While sharing the qualities that make caribou unique, such as a diet consisting mostly of lichens and the reuse of particular calving grounds each year, the different ecotypes each have special characteristics, habits, risk statuses, and sensitivities.

But whatever their differences, the three ecotypes of caribou all share an essential, symbiotic relationship with the places and peoples of the North (i.e., Canada and Alaska). Hummel and Ray do a beautiful job of presenting this symbiosis through both data and anecdotes from a wide spectrum of Northerners. As the authors note, caribou “sustain people, but they are revered for more than the essentials of life, such as food and clothing. Caribou weave their way through stories of creation, values, and respect for the land itself.”1 Because “caribou have both shaped and been shaped by the North,” the two do indeed have “a shared future,” being “inseparable, braided together by the larger forces of nature that have produced both” (38).

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When it comes to the environment, I’m all about doing. I try not to worry about the things I’m not doing yet or judge others for the things they’re not doing. My theory, since I started making changes has been A Little Greener Every Day. Start where you’re at, and grow greener daily.

David Suzuki’s Green Guide written by ecologist David Suzuki and environmental lawyer David R. Boyd is a book all about what individuals can do, starting right where they’re at, to be greener.

The blurb on the front cover of the book reads, “How to find fresher, tastier, healthier food, create an eco-friendly home, make sustainable transportation choices, reduce consumption, and be a green citizen.”

I would describe the book as “Greening Your Life 101 for Regular Folk.” Chapter 1 begins with the question “What Can I Do?” and the book goes on to discuss what people can do, what others already are doing, and lists lots of resources.

It starts out, as any book on changing environmental habits should, with explaining the environmental problems that are prevalent today. Focusing on America’s contributions to the problem, it calls for a reduction of North Americans’ ecological footprint by at least 75% if a sustainable future is to be obtained. That’s a tall order.

The guide is hopeful though, and says that “after a destructive period of human arrogance” we are now in a “time of transition between the industrial era and the sustainability era.” I like the sound of that. The authors believe that “people’s values are evolving rapidly” and provide a blueprint so that people’s actions can reflect their rapidly evolving values.

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For someone to appreciate a book (or any expressive work for that matter), to “enter into” it fully the way William Blake described the process, there has to be some connection made between the work and the person. Even if the writer is as gifted a storyteller as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, or Stephen King, the work will never speak to you if it does not hook your interest somehow. If you are not open to what it has to say, you will never hear its message.

The same holds true for nature. If you are preoccupied or in a bad mood, a spectacular sunrise will not set you on fire, a wood thrush’s haunting song will go in one ear and out the other, and a vortex of wind-whipped winter snow will not set your spine a-tingling. If some place or thing does not “do it” for you, or if your “doors of perception” are not “cleansed” and open (Blake again), then you will remain blind to nature’s wonders.1

Now, this essential requirement of “mutual affinity” can either save or damn a book. And the best thing about a collection of nature essays like When the Wild Comes Leaping Up: Personal Encounters with Nature is that you have many different doorways to enter into the work and then connect with it. Or you will end up walking down a lot of dead-end hallways.

Editor David Suzuki brings together very personal pieces from some heavy hitters in the eco-literary world, including Diane Ackerman, Bill McKibben, Wade Davis, and Margaret Atwood. Each author explores some important way that he or she has connected with nature, leading to the reflective musing that is the stock in trade of nature writing. Sometimes these stories will draw you in and hold you breathless; other times they will leave you wondering why some people bother to share their ramblings with the world…and get paid for it!

When the Wild Comes Leaping Up, then, is as variegated and dappled as nature itself. Some pieces will strike you as arid deserts devoid of life while others will be like tropical rainforests teeming with more species than you can count.

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