There is a wide range of books relating to the sustainability movement from diverse authors covering a myriad of topics. Reading is crucial to understanding theories and concepts behind movements, as well as practicing empathy to grasp other people’s experiences. Besides, you should be staying inside reading anyways due to COVID-19. Here are a few for the months of July and August to check out!
This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
One of the most recent, incredibly critical books about climate change, Naomi Klein throws out the idea that climate change is the result of our individual actions and can thus be reversed in the same way. Klein explains that our capitalist economic system is rooted in extraction and exploitation for profit, this cannot be changed. The laissez-faire (free market) system must be fundamentally changed if we are to save ourselves from existential crisis. The book synthesizes sciences and social ideologies to create a riveting read, paired with its own documentary film.
Endgame by Derrick Jensen
Endgame is a two-volume work by Jensen, who argues that civilization is inherently unsustainable and should be dismantled. This may seem appalling at first glance, but Jensen carefully argues his side through a set of 20 premises that all support this notion. The book is a sobering look at how far we have come, and how much we have lied to ourselves throughout time. The series consists of Volume 1: The Problem of Civilization and Volume 2: Resistance.
Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming
Drawdown, written by a group of scientists, researchers, and policymakers lists the top 100 actions we can take as a planet to reverse climate change. For each solution detailed “we describe its history, the carbon impact it provides, the relative cost and savings, the path to adoption, and how it works.” The authors are clear that each step that can be taken is already in place somewhere in the world, but if expanded collectively, can reap huge benefits. Drawdown has created the most comprehensive and hopeful list for climate action that can be easily comprehended by the average reader.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
In this nonfiction narrative, Kingsolver and her family members “sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in their own neighborhood, grow it themselves, or learn to live without it.” While you travel through the memoir of a family doing a complete 180 in their life, the book creates a strong case for returning to a way of living with locally or self-grown food at the center. Equal parts entertaining and informative!
The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
In The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben pulls back the curtain on how trees function in very human ways. Trees and their families share nutrients and resources, communicate with each other, and support others to create a resilient ecosystem. Pulling from scientific research as well as human experiences, a holistic view on the life of trees is created. A truly eye-opening book enlightening us to the complexity of the natural world.
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