James Barilla, My Backyard Jungle: The Adventures of an Urban Wildlife Lover Who Turned His Yard into Habitat and Learned to Live with It (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013).
Subhankar Banerjee, ed., Artic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012).
Akiko Busch, The Incidental Steward: Reflections on Citizen Science, illustrated by Debby Cotter Kaspari (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("How we have become estranged from place is well documented; it has become part of our cultural profile. The Census Bureau reports that one in six Americans moves each year. And certainly where we live, local newspapers have all but banished. As the postal service continues to be besieged by fiscal troubles, small post offices across rural America close, another landmark of community gone. Regional architecture exists largely as nostalgic remnants; the mom-and-pop store on the corner has long been replaced by a national franchise with a generic metallic mansard roof that could just as well be in Wisconsin or California. Communications technology, for all its miracles of connectivity, can further dilute our sense of place; because cell phones, text messages, email, and Skype all facilitate our route away from where we happen to be, it is easy for our allegiance to where we are now to fray. And global positioning systems readjust our spatial frame of reference. Whereas a conventional map situates the user within given landmarks and boundaries, with the user shifting position as passage is made across the printed page, global positioning systems place the viewer at the center of the screen. The relocation diminishes our sense of geographical context, undermining our ability to form the cognitive maps of place that traditional printed roadmaps help us to build. 'Break you GPS, and you may find yourself lost,' says one psychologist studying how our sense of space is affected by this technology." "Ecopsychology is a branch of psychology that suggests there is a connection between the health of the individual and the health of the natural world; that the psyche needs the textures, rhythms, and cycles of the natural world to remain intact; and that when the relationship between the human mind and nature has broken down, a pathology results." Id. at 133-14.).
Melanie Challenger, On Extinction: How We Became Estranged from Nature (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2012).
George Church & Ed Begis, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves (New York: Basic Books, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "In Regenesis, Church and Regis explore the possibilities--and perils--of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. Until now, nature has been the exclusive arbiter of life, death, and evolution; with synthetic biology, we now have the potential to write our own biological future. Indeed as Church and Regis show, it even enable us to revisit crucial points in the evolution of life and, though, synthetic biological techniques, chose different paths from those nature originally took." Also, listen to Loudon Wainwright III's song "1994"; it is on the Grown Man cd.).
Peter Crane, Ginkgo: The Tree That Time Forgot, with a foreword by Peter Raven (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("The international approach that resulted in the CBD [Convention on Biological Diversity], with its parochial emphasis on benefits and commoditization, brings into sharp focus fundamental questions about our currently unsatisfactory relationship with the natural world. Does it really make sense to try to manage the global environment on a country-by-country basis? Are we comfortable with a view that so clearly asserts that nature is simply there for human benefit? Is it morally or ethically right for the demands of people always to trump long-term survival of species of plants and animals? And is it really in our long-term interest to further extend our hegemony over nature? The ways in which such questions are answered will be important for the future of all of humanity. If we take a broader view of the history of our planet, and recognize that we have evolved over millennia as part of complex global system of which we still have only limited knowledge, placing humans so explicitly at the center seems arrogant, shortsighted. It might also be risky. To borrow a phrase from my friend Paul Falkowski, 'Our destiny lies in understanding that humility leads to enlightenment and that hubris leads to extinction.'" Id. at 271.).
Peter Dauvergne & Jane Lister, Eco-Business: A Big-Brand Takeover of Sustainability (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: MIT Press, 2013) ("What we call 'eco-business'--taking over the idea of sustainability and turning it into a tool of business control and growth that projects an image of corporate social responsibility--is proving to be a powerful strategy for corporations in a rapidly globalizing economy marked by financial turmoil and a need for continual strategic repositioning. It is also enhancing the credibility and influence of these companies in states, in civil society, in supply chains, and in retail markets. And it is shifting the balance of power within the global political arena from states as the central rule makers and enforcers of environmental goals toward big-brand retailers and manufacturers acting to use 'sustainability' to protect their private interests." Id. at 2. "Can eco-business halt the rise and the harmful social consequences of global ecological loss? The answer is this book is a forceful 'no.' Eco-business is fundamentally aiming for sustainability of big business, not sustainability of people and the planet. It is not about absolute limits to natural resources or waste sinks; nor is it about the security of communities or family businesses. [I]t is largely about more efficiently controlling supply chains and effectively navigating a globalizing world economy to increase brand consumption." Id. at 2-3.).
Clive Hamilton, Earthmasters: The Dawn of the Age of Climate Engineering (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "This book goes to the heart of the unfolding reality of the twenty-first century: international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have failed and before the end of the century Earth is now projected to be warmer than it has been for 15 million years. The question, 'can the crisis be avoided?' has been superseded by a more chilling one, 'what can be done to prevent the devastation of the living world?' And the disturbing answer, now under wide discussion both within and outside the scientific community, is to seize control of the climate of Earth itself." "Clive Hamilton begins by exploring the range of technologies now being developed in the field of geoengineering--the intentional, enduring, large-scale manipulation of Earth's climate system. He lays out the arguments for and against climate engineering, and reveals the extent of vested interests linking researchers, venture capitalists and corporations. He examines what it means for human beings to be making plans to control the planet's atmosphere, probes the uneasiness we feel with the notion of exercising technological mastery over nature, and challenges the ways we think about ourselves and our place in the natural world.").
Dieter Helm, The Carbon Crunch: How We're Getting Climate Change Wrong--and How to Fix it (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("I have written this book because in almost a quarter of a century virtually nothing of substance has been achieved in addressing climate change." Id. at ix. "How then do we persuade people that they must cut back on their consumption, and do so in ways sufficient to fund all the investments required to tackle climate change? We cannot avoid the costs ultimately falling on the public--as taxpayers or consumers. That cost is the (global) damage their carbon consumption causes. Economists tend to be very keen on introducing a carbon price to reflect this damage. The case is extremely powerful. The price influences the choices every household, business and government makes. It has a substitution effect (it incentivizes us to switch away from carbon-intensive goods) and an income effect (it reduces our ability to consume). It allows the market to find the cheapest ways of reducing emissions, free from all the lobbying and vested interests; and it bears down on governments when they are foolish enough to try to pick winners. There is no hiding from price." Id. at 214.).
Jonathan Kahn, Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age (New York: Columbia U. Press, 2013) ("[B]eyond particular cases or practices, the intersection of race, law, and commerce in the domain of biomedicine have broader political implications for how we, as a society, conceive and approach health disparities and racial injustice. Racial disparities in health are real and significant. Their causes are complex and varied. Do genes play a role? Yes, certainly; genes play a role in just about everything having to do with health. If we are interested in genetics, the question is (or should be): 'What role do genes play in disparities relative to other forces such as social conditions, environment, economics status, political power, etc.?' Posed in that manner, it is clear that while genetics may play a very significant role in many diseases, it plays a diminishingly small role in actual health disparities. Yet, one corollary of race-specific medicine has been a concerted drive to locate the causes of disparities at the molecular level in the purportedly defective genes of racialized individuals. The implications of this focus are many. Most immediately, it diverts attention and resources away from the broader social and political causes of disparities that are deeply embedded in our nation's troubled history of racial injustice. It promises a neat technological fix for what are inescapably difficult (and messy) problems of racism, political power, and socioeconomic status." Id. at 18-19.).
Stephen R. Kellert, Birthright: People and Nature in the Modern World (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2012) ("Unfortunately, modern society has become adversarial in its relationship to nature. This antagonism has engendered an array of profound environmental and social challenges: large-scale loss of biological diversity, widespread resource depletion, extensive chemical pollution, degradation of the atmosphere and the specter of catastrophic climate change, and a host of related health and quality of life problems--even a crisis of the human spirit. These challenge have been spawned by a contemporary society that has lost its bearing in relation to the world beyond itself." Id. at xi.).
Barbara J. King, How Animals Grieve (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2013).
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, edited by Curt Meine (New York: Library of America, 2013) (From A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There: "I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land. Signatures of course differ, whether written with axe or pen, and this is as it should be." Id. at 1, 63. From "The Conservative Ethic": "The complexity of cooperative mechanisms increased with population density, and with the efficiency of tools...." "At a certain stage of complexity, the human community found expediency-yardsticks no longer sufficient. One by one it has evolved and superimposed upon them a set of ethical yardsticks. The first ethics dealt with the relationship between individuals.... Later accretions dealt with the relationship between the individual and society. Christianity tries to integrate the individual to society. Democracy to integrate social organization to the individual." "There is as yet no ethic dealing with man's relationship to land and to the non-human animals and plants which grow upon it. Land . . . is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations." "The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is, if we read evolution correctly, an ecological possibility" Id. at 325, 325-326. From "Selected Letters": "Have you seen the article 'Eagle Shooting in Alaska' in the February, 1935, Rifleman? I have just read it, and I confess to a feeling of sadness that a man like Mr. Burch, evidently a keen, intelligent, and decent sportsman in other respects, should be naive enough to boast about his wholesale killing of eagles as 'the purest of all rifle sports.' [] My main plea, however, is that young enthusiants like Mr. Burch take time off to do some straight old-fashined thinking on the ethics of owning and shooting guns. I would infinitely rather that Mr. Burch shoot the vases off my mantelpiece than the eagles out of my Alaska. I have a part ownership in both. That the Alaska Game Commission elects to put a bounty on the eagle, and not on the vase, has nothing to do with the sportsmanship of either action." Id. at 701, 790-791.).
Gerald Markowitz & David Rosner, Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America's Children (Berkeley & Los Angeles: U. of California Press; New York: Milbank Memorial Fund, 2003) (This book "attempts to show how, in the case of lead, growing scientific understanding of the effects of the grand experiment has to the 'Lead Wars' of the title--sharp contests among advocates for children's well-being, the lead industry and other interests that have played out in federal, state, and local government; the media; the courts; and the university. These contests have involved everything from the meaning of disease, primary prevention, and abatement to who should bear responsibility for risk and poisoning in the nation. For a century, children, poisoned primarily by leaded gasoline fumes and lead paint in their homes, have borne the overwhelming burden of this grand experiment in the form of permanent brain damage, school failure, loss of intelligence, and even death." "In these contests over lead exposure the public health profession has played a critical role, and it accordingly has a prominent position in this book; the struggles within it offer a microcosm of the contending forces as they have played out in the larger society over how best to regulate our environment and how to protect our children. [T]he lead industry ensured that children would be forced, as one physician put it, 'to live in a lead world.' But the task of protecting children was left to a public health profession divided within itself that, despite some remarkable successes, has neither the resources nor the authority to do what's needed on its own. The remedies that do exist have so far proven to be politically unfeasible. In the meantime, the nation continue to sacrifice thousands of children yearly, deeming them not worthy of our protection." Id. at xvi.).
John McPhee, Oranges (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966, 2000).
David Quammen, Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic (New York & London: Norton, 2012) (From the bookjacket: "The next big murderous [Can diseases be 'murderous? What kind of mens rea is a disease capable?] human pandemic, the one that kills us in millions, will be caused by a new disease--new to humans, anyway. The bug that's responsible will be strange, unfamiliar, but it won't come from outer space. Odds are that the killer pathogen--most likely a virus--will spill over into humans from a nonhuman animal." "In this age of speedy travel between dense human populations, an emerging disease can go global in hours. But where and how will it start? Recent outbreaks offers some guidance, and so Quammen traces the origins of Ebola, Marburg, SARS, avian influenza, Lyme disease, and other bizarre cases of spillover, including the grim, unexpected story of how AIDS began from a single Cameroonian chimpanzee.).
