David reads books

Ecological books

My mother recently asked me to suggest some books to read to better understand global environmental problems. Here is the text of the e-mail I sent to her.

I have been thinking about a good book for you about the environment. While there are lots of good environment books I can't think of one in particular that gives a good overview of the problem.

I suspect Al Gore's book that accompanies the movie [An Inconvenient Truth] would be an excellent introduction to climate change. I haven't read it though. There is another recent book about climate change called Heat by George Monbiot which would probably also be good.

There is a book called The Great U-Turn by Edward Goldsmith which is probably the closest to what you might want. Although it was written about thirty years ago it does a very good job of outlining the greatest environmental problems facing the Earth. It may be difficult to find in a bookshop or library, but it is available to read for free on the internet.

A couple of other books which have influenced me a lot are Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge and Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher. They offer an alternative way of looking at the world and explain some of the roots of the environmental crisis. Books by Vandana Shiva are also very good, especially for understanding how women and the poor bear a greater burden of many environmental problems. [some articles by Vandana Shiva are available here]

Technorati tags: books | ecology | environment

Labels: books, environment

posted by David @ 8:20 PM