sustainability
Design, Planning, and the Earth
Climate change and the environment are among the most important issues we face. If we do not control our greenhouse gas emissions, the next generation will face rising sea levels, food shortages, and many other problems, some of them impossible to predict.
Changing our lives and our way of life need not mean the end of civilization, but it will mean doing things differently. We will have to rethink our personal consumption, the design of our communities, and our transportation policies, along with much that we now take for granted. We can make a start by looking at the design of the places we live—which is why the list below begins with one of the classic works on city planning. By better planning and use of technologies that we already have, we can make a good start toward a more sustainable civilization. By themselves they will not be enough, but they will be important steps toward a solution.
Jane Jacobs
The Death and Life of Great American Cities
$10.85
The early classic on the way cities and neighborhoods work has influenced architects and city planners ever since and remains both relevant and readable today.
Sonia Labat and Rodney R. White
Carbon Finance: The Financial Implications of Climate Change
$53.55
Thorough and hopeful discussion of how dealing with climate change might affect the economy.
George Monbiot
Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning
$7.04
A radical critique of fossil-fuel-based civilization and proposals to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by changes in our way of life and policies.
Elizabeth Kolbert
Field Notes from a Catastrophe
$11.16
Detailed presentation of the evidence for and the possible effects of global warming.
James Howard Kunstler
$10.20
The first of two related volumes, this presents Kunstler's searching critique of the suburban life in the United States and its implications for the environment, city planning, and the human spirit.
James Howard Kunstler
$10.20
The second in Kunstler's series on suburbia, this book seeks ways to redesign the suburbs and our cities to make them more liveable and sustainable for the future.
Barbara Kingsolver
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life
$16.17
Lively account of one family's decision to live for one year on locally-grown foods, and the joys, pitfalls, and consequences of their decision.
