Article by Cool Australia
In much of Australia, it's been getting really cold lately, so what better time to get together your winter reading list? Cool Australia has picked out five books that should interest, inspire and inform. If you have any book suggestions, please feel free to leave them in the 'Comments' section at the bottom of this page.
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story
Author: Susan Freinkel
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The author says, 'We’ve produced more plastic in the last decade than the entire previous century. Yet a lot of it is going to trivial one-time uses, which is an incredible waste of a very valuable resource—and one that could be very useful in helping us address the problems posed by climate change. But I also think how we use plastic is symptom and symbol of significant issues, like our dependence on finite fossil fuels, or our daily exposure to hazardous chemicals. Something like the fight over the plastic shopping bag might seem trivial, yet when we grapple with the plastic shopping bag, we’re grappling with our whole throwaway culture—and the environmental problems that culture of convenience has created. Talking about plastics is really a conversation about just how deeply we want to transform the natural world, what kind of legacy we want to leave to the generations that succeed us'. (Quote: Amazon)
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Deep Future
Author: Curt Stager
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Curt Stager says of global warming 'I was used to thinking about huge climatic changes of the distant past, and I also wasn't convinced by what was then the available evidence that humans are driving most of today's trend. But now so many excellent studies clearly demonstrate our central role in the warming of the last 30-40 years that I've moved on from "is it really happening" mode to "what does it mean" and "what can we do about it?" Another factor was a project [I was] asked to do in support of one of your articles several years ago - to study the weather records in our home region in and around northern New York and Vermont. The latest data show that much of this area is actually warming faster than the global average, and ice stays on our lakes two weeks less in an average winter than it did a century ago. Because of all this, I suppose you could say that I'm a "reformed climate skeptic" now'. (Quote: Amazon)
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Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization
Author: Steven Solomon
Publisher: Harper Perennial
This sprawling text reconstructs the history of civilization in order to illuminate the importance of water in human development from the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and the Indus River Valley to the present. Solomon (The Confidence Game) advances a persuasive argument: the prosperity of nations and empires has depended on their access to water and their ability to harness water resources. The story he tells is familiar, but his emphasis on water is unique: he shows how the Nile's flood patterns determined political unity and dynastic collapses in Egypt. He suggests that the construction of China's Grand Canal made possible a sixth-century reunification that eluded the Roman Empire. Finally, he attributes America's rise to superpower status to such 20th-century water innovations as the Panama Canal and Hoover Dam. Solomon surveys the current state of the world's water resources by region, making a compelling case that the U.S. and other leading democracies have untapped strategic advantages that will only become more significant as water becomes scarcer. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
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Arctic Sanctuary: Images of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Author: Laurie Hoyle
Photographer: Jeff Jones
Publisher: University of Alaska Press
Guided by photographer Jeff Jones's sure and well-developed vision, Arctic Sanctuary leads the reader on a remarkable journey that few of us will ever take in real life: a trek deep into Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. By turns celebratory and contemplative, emotionally evocative and beautifully fierce, this collection of lyrical essays and stunning panoramic photographs pays homage to a vast and remote land that remains untamed by technology and undisturbed by human development. A rare window into a world that is whole, ecologically intact, and still driven by ancient evolutionary energies, Arctic Sanctuary invites us to examine our own ideas of the wilderness ethic in the modern world.(Amazon)
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The Fate of Nature: Rediscovering Our Ability to Rescue the Earth
Author: Charles Wohlforth
Publisher: Picador
Are we, by nature, like hermit crabs, wearing discarded snail shells as armor against other hermit crabs, whom they attack in hopes of getting a better shell? This wide-ranging book confronts the competitive paradigm to contend that stronger than our greed and materialism, most of us feel a connection to other people, to animals and wild places, and when we're faced with a choice between meaning and material gain, we prefer fairness and the bonds of the heart over getting ahead. Wohlforth, L.A. Times Book Prize winner (The Whale and the Supercomputer) and lifelong Alaskan, takes readers on a heart-wrenching journey through the tumultuous history of the state and its fragile land and seascape, from the complex, mysterious culture of killer whales through the clash of Native worldview and Hobbesian self-interest with the arrival of Europeans, the origins of the conservation movement and its ongoing battle with development, and the devastating Valdez oil spill. Wohlforth concludes, optimistically, provocatively, but convincingly, that stepping off the material treadmill isn't denial, it's freedom. (Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)
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