http://bactra.org/notebooks Cosma's Notebooks en http://bactra.org/notebooks/2004/01/18#environmentalism <P>Polluting ourselves out of house and home is a Bad Thing, and certainly an ugly one; ditto indiscriminate destruction of wild-life and environments. However, I <em>like</em> people --- some, anyway --- and don't much fancy dying at thirty after a life at hard labor, ignorance and crushing social control, so getting rid of industrial civilization is also a Bad Thing. (Hobbes was right about "nasty, poor, brutish and short," but wrong, alas, about "solitary.") Nature is not sacred, and if it was a person would be wasteful and cruel; but it isn't, and so can't even be indifferent. In the words of the <cite><a href="whole-earth.html">Whole Earth Catalog</a>,</cite> "We are as gods, and had better get good at it." <P>See also: <a href="ecology.html">Ecology</a>; the <a href="left.html">Left</a> <ul>Recommended: <li>Daniel Botkin, <cite>Discordant Harmonies</cite> <li>Stephen Budiansky, <Cite>Nature's Keepers: The New Science of Nature Management</cite> [<a href="../reviews/natures-keepers/">Review: Heaven and Earth Are Not Benevolent</a>] <li>Martin Lewis, <cite>Green Delusions: An Environmentalist Critique of Radical Environmentalism</cite> </ul> <ul>To read: <li>Terry L. Anderson and Donald R. Leal, <citE>Enviro-Capitalists: Doing Good While Doing Well</cite> [Just like <a href="http://wiw.org/~drz/tom.lehrer/revisited.html#peddle">"The Old Dope Peddler"</a> in the Tom Lehrer song] <li>Robert U. Ayres and Udo E. Simonis (eds.), <cite><a href="http://www.unu.edu/hq/unupbooks/80841e/80841E00.htm">Industrial Metabolism: Restructuring for Sustainable Development</a></cite> <li>Peter Barnes, <cite>Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons</cite> [<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/446613a">Favorable review</a> in <cite>Nature</cite>] <li>Michael Bess, <cite>The Light-Green Society: Ecology and Technological Modernity in France, 1960-2000</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15811.ctl">Blurb</a>] <li>Samir B. Billatos and Nadia A. Basaly, <cite>Green Technology and Design for the Environment</cite> <li>Fikret Berkes et al (eds.), <cite>Navigating Social-Ecological Systems: Building Resilience for Complexity and Change</cite> [<a href="http://cambridge.org/9780521061841">blurb</a>] <li>Harvey Blatt, <cite>America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade?</cite> [2004. <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262025728">Blurb, sample chapter</a>] <li>Anna Bramwell, <cite>Ecology in the 20th Century.</cite> [Means environmentalism] <li>Jason Coburn, <cite>Street Science: Community Knowledge and Environmental Health Justice</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262532723">blurb</a>] <li>Livio D. DeSimone and Frank Popoff, <cite>Eco-Efficiency: The Business Link to Sustainable Development</citE> <li>W. H. Drury, <cite>Chance and Change: Ecology for Conservationists</cite> <li>Steven M. Gelber and Martin L. Cook, <cite>Saving the Earth: The History of a Middle-Class Millenarian Movement</cite> [<a href="http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1870045n">Online</a>] <li>T.L. Goedeke and S. Rikoon, "Otters as Actors: Scientific Controversy, Dynamism of Networks, and the Implications of Power in Ecological Restoration", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312707077363"><cite>Social Studies of Science</cite> <strong>38</strong> (2008): 111--132</a> <li>Garrett Hardin, <cite>Nature and Man's Fate</cite> <li>Hawken, Lovins and Lovins, <cite>Natural Capitalism</cite> [<a href="http://www.natcap.org/sitepages/pid20.php">online</a>] <li>Ann E. Hajek, <cite>Natural Enemies: An Introduction to Biological Control</cite> <li>Jack M. Hollander, <cite>The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy</cite> [<a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9208.html">Blurb and first chapter</a>] <li>R. Bruce Hull, <cite>Infinite Nature</cite> [<a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/175605.ctl">Blurb</A>] <li>Andrew G. Kirk, <cite>Counterculture Green: The Whole Earth Catalog and American Environmentalism</citE> <li>Steve Lerner, <citE>Diamond: A Struggle for Environmental Justice in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor</cite> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262122731">Blurb</a>] <li>David L. Levy and Peter J. Newell (eds.), <cite>The Business of Global Environmental Governance</cite> ["theoretical and empirical accounts of the role of business in shaping international environmental policies"] <li>Kenton R. Miller, <cite>Balancing The Scales: Guidelines For Increasing Biodiversity's Chances Through Bioregional Management</cite> <li>Arthur P. J. Mol, <cite>Globalization and Environmental Reform: The Ecological Modernization of the Global Economy</citE> [<a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0262632845">Blurb</a>] <li>Mary O'Brien, <cite>Making Better Environmental Decisions: An Alternative to Risk Assessment</cite> ["Instead of asking how much of a hazardous activity is safe (which translates into how much damage the environment can tolerate), alternatives assessment asks how we can avoid or minimize damage while achieving society's goals." <a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/0-262-65053-3">Blurb</a>] <li>Elinor Ostrom and Harini Nagendra, "Insights on linking forests, trees, and people from the air, on the ground, and in the laboratory", <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0607962103"><cite>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</cite> (USA) <strong>103</strong> (2006): 19224--19231</a> <li>Phillips, <cite>Tracking the Vanishing Frogs</cite> <li>Seth R. Reice, <cite>The Silver Lining: The Benefits of Natural Disasters</cite> <li>Walter V. Reid, Sarah A. Laird, Carrie A. Meyer, Rodrigo Gamez, Ana Sittenfeld and Daniel H. Janzen, <cite>Biodiversity Prospecting: Using Genetic Resources for Sustainable Development</citE> <li>Natalie Smith, "Are Indigenous People Conservationists? Preliminary Results from the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon", <cite>Rationality and Society</cite> <strong>13</strong> (2001): 429--461 <li>Bron Raymond Taylor, <cite>Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism</cite> <li>David Wheeler (writing as "The World Bank"), <cite>Greening Industry</cite> </ul>