Worcester, MA
Read It and Reap by Ann Connery Frantz
Understanding environmental
concerns is necessary to prepare for the issues emerging in political contests.
Human rights, social justice, environmental action and animal rights are part
of our world; this column considers books on the environment, and common efforts
to "be the change."
There are so many books available,
in so many directions, that it's difficult to select one for your book group. Technological
change makes keeping current a challenge. Many of these books, then, are recent
or new releases.
Stuart Smith's memoir, "Crude
Justice: How I Fought Big Oil and Won, and What You Should Know about the New
Environmental Attack on America" (2015) concerns his work as a young,
inexperienced lawyer confronting well-funded opposition after the discovery of poisoned
water in Laurel, Mississippi.
Pollution, often linked to the
weak and defenseless populations, is part of "Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of
Pollution Travel and Environmental Justice," by Phaedra Pezzullo.
In "The Grid: The Fraying
Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future" Gretchen Bakke deals with our
aging energy system, which interferes with solar and wind alternatives. Competing
interests and political units need to cooperate toward achieving conversion to
a more intelligent, economical system. Bakke's focus is on how Americans
are changing the grid, sometimes with gumption and big dreams and sometimes
with legislation.
"Engineering Eden: The True Story of a Violent Death, a
Trial and the Fight over Controlling Nature," by Jordan Fisher Smith,
takes on the difficult balance between America's natural resource management
and human use of parks. Sparked by a bear-caused death in Yellowstone Park, a
civil suit exposed the government's resource management practices, weighing
preservation against human exploration. At issue: How much should parks do to
protect either side?
Ken Ilgunas's study of the Keystone Pipeline, "Trespassing
Across America," is an informative yet humorous account of his foot
journey along the 1,900-mile long Keystone XL pipeline route. He reflects on climate
change, the natural world, and the extremes to which we can push ourselves.
Readers may enjoy its colorful characters and strange encounters—reminiscent, I
think, of William Least Heat Moon's "Blue Highways."
Climate scientist Michael E. Mann and illustrator Thomas
Toles, one of my favorite editorial cartoonists, have paired up in a book being
released in September. "The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our
Politics, and Driving Us Crazy" takes a satiric look at the
attempts of climate-deniers and corporate interests to bury protest and further
pollute the planet. Together, they expose the fallacies being argued. For a lively
book that even "I-don't-read-science books" members will like, try
this one.
Due in November, David Biello's "The Unnatural World:
The Race to Remake Civilization in Earth's Newest Age" argues that
civilization is at a critical point, requiring the efforts of science, powerful
resources and common folks like us to alter the future. Biello argues we are
the Earth's gardeners, but we are not in control of our creation. Survival, he says,
depends on these gardeners and evolving solutions.
Vandana Shiva has written many times about environmental
crises, energy mis-use, food, and the like. "Earth Democracy: Justice,
Sustainability and Peace, "Soil Not Oil," "Stolen Harvest: The
Hijacking of the Global Food Supply" and "Staying Alive: Women,
Ecology, and Development" are all Shiva's work. Now, in "Who Really
Feeds the World?" she writes about how to feed the world without
destroying it, revealing agricultural practices that result in a starving
world, rather than a well-fed population. This physicist-environmentalist also refutes
genetic modification.
Finally, "What We Think About When We Try Not to Think
About Global Warming" is by Norwegian Per Espen Stoknes, who appeals to
the heart as well as the mind regarding global warming. People can make needed
changes simply, he believes, and he argues that persuasively.
