Hmmm...the overall theme here is All Humans must DIE to "save" the earth. Yes, lets all imagine a "World Without Humans".

Perhaps the author of this article would like to GO first? Or maybe just your family so you can enjoy a nicer world. How about your next door neighbors? Or just the kids should DIE so they wont bread more earth destroyers? Your parents dieing is a no brainer since they'll never break their consumer habits and are a drain on the health care system....yeah, they should definitely DIE.

So who gets to make the death list? I vote for Democrats since I trust them more then Republicans. We better hope the Democrats retain control of Congress so they can control the "House Sub-Committee on Human Removal and Bio-Recycling" which will control the Death List and decide what to do with the bodies (fertilizer for the community gardens?)

Oh yeah, this will be fun and so good for our future too. Yippee, Let's all DIE for the good of our future!!!

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Good list--but I would add two more:
1. David Rothkopf's "Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making
2. The free ebook series "And Gulliver Returns --In Search of Utopia-- (http://andgulliverreturns.info) While its major thrust is on controlling population it looks at a number of other social problems and solutions including human motivations, both psychological and ethical. It is done in an interesting combination of science fiction and non-fiction.

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You should read (or alongside these)SACRED DEMISE, by Catherine Baker. It sets the stage and gives the raison d'etra for everything else. Good luck.

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Instead of V1agr4, we get books that not enough folks are buying to make writing them profitable.

Can I add one?

Subscribe* to Elsvier, so you can read more about the real world around you!

*which is my major complaint about the way that scientific findings, in general, is promulgated. Then again, most folks don't give a tin shat about reality, anyway, much less want to pay for access to research that belongs to them.

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... but if I have to pick just one to add to your list, his 1995 classic "When Corporations Rule the World," because in order to promote real change you have to understand why things are the way they are.

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Here are my picks for the reworking of the theory of economy in conformity with the need for production, which is governed by the laws of thermodynamics:
All Production is Joint Production: A Thermodynamic Analysis
Introduction: Joint Production and Ecological Economics
International Society for Ecological Economics: Joint Production
Conference for Economic De-Growth, Paris, April, 2008

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As long as you are including Michael Pollen's "Omnivore's Dilemma," which concerns itself with the backstory of four very different meals, factory farmed, commercial large-scale organic, locavore, and foraging, you should read his even more informative and helpful followup, "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto." This book goes beyond Omnivore's Dilemma and is filled with information and strategies to help the reader recognize and avoid toxic foodstuffs and eat a more healthy diet.

He starts the book with this simple advice: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." and then expands on a food-based view of eating, instead of the sterile nutritionalism that rules today.

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The only way any government or non-terrorist based organization could wipe out numbers is by limiting birth rates, and/or spreading disease without knowledge of their intent (swine flu anyone?).


That being said, I would definitely be in favor of the first option. Those clowns who have 5+ children are greedy bastards who are either too rich and forgot how to share, or are too stupid and forgot how to count.

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I'd add 'Walden' by Henry David Thoreau. Long ago, he combined love of nature, simplicity, and respect for the rights of all others. Wish I would simplify things more myself.

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our economy by design!!!

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"Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlossher. Does Mc donalds and Burger King have a place in a better world?

"Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenreich, You cant have a healthy world if you pay the waitress and housecleaners crap wages.

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E.F. Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered." Read it when I was 13, and it still informs my ideals today.

Then again, I got my politics from reading Doonesbury! LOL

Good Luck!

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This "feel good" list is nice as far as it goes, but it omits texts that would serve as a good orientation to the true dimensions of our ecological predicament.

Thus I would recommend Overshoot by William R. Catton, Jr., and The Long Descent by John Michael Greer. In those two books, you will get an unvarnished treatment of our present situation. And you'll come to realize that the fix we're in goes far deeper than most people--including the self-described ecologically conscious--understand.

For that reason, Catton's and Greer's books are for mature audiences only.

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A little known must read, especially for men, Riddley Walker by Russel Hoban, is the greatest book ever written in something approximating the English language (And in my mind, the best book I've yet read). In addition to its strong environmental themes, it also deals with nuclear war and the destruction war and progress can have on our homes and our minds. Even for a post-epoch, its a truly unique and stand alone piece.

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Collapse and Last Child in the Woods. The second one I think is SUPER important. It's great for all of us as adults to read these books and comprehend what we can do to make the world a better place, but if we don't invest early on in the next generation, then we are truly screwed. LCINW talks about how to instill a reverence for nature and the world in children to ensure that they will be good stewards when they grow up.

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How you could overlook Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is beyond me - this is the book that started the entire environmental movement.

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Ishmael
The Story of B (my favorite)
My Ishmael
Beyond Civilization
and more.

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Loving What Is
Question Your Thinking, Change the World (my favorite)
and more.

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So many books, so little time...
"Shock Doctrine", Naomi Klein--how governments capitalize on disasters to optimize their power and wealth.
"A Paradise Built in Hell", Rebecca Solnit--newly published, on my must-read list--the real ways we humans respond to disasters, not what we have been led to believe.
"An Agricultural Testament", Sir Albert Howard--the basis for the organic movement, a fitting companion to "Silent Spring"
"The Unsettling of America"(1977), "In the Presence if Fear"(2001), "Citizenship Papers"(2003),"Home Economics"(2009)--Wendell Berry--rebuilding a sense of place.
"Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms & Fertility Matters", Woody Tasch--goes along with David Korten's and Wendell Berry's thinking.

There are many more but I have found these listed titles useful to suggest ways to heal our place in the world.

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End Game vols. I and II.
Culture of Make Believe


So many of the books on this thread focus on how to have some sort of economy while claiming to be "sustainable". There is no such thing as sustainability for a consumptive culture. I invite anyone not familiar with Jensen's work to check out any of his books from the library. Shocking, informative, ground-breaking, crushing, and inspiring all at the same time.

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I can't believe you didn't include The Long Descent (John Michael Greer)! I've been reading it every time I take a trip to my local bookstore and it is one of the most amazing pieces on the end of the industrial age I have read in a long time.

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Why omit the foundation for all of this?

SILENT SPRING by Rachel Carson

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I find Omnivore's dilemma interesting. I'll try to check this out in our nearby book store. It's nice to read books that tackle so many things about our world and how to live with it. Things that can really change our lives.

conversational hypnosis

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I submit a book that has had a profound affect on me: Thomas Berry's "The Great Work." Berry gives us many insights into our human-centered view of the universe, our isolation from the natural world, our belief that the only value in nature is in our exploitation of its resources. Far from our need to fuel the industrial world, our lasting survival depends on the "quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all the lives that grow upon the Earth." Berry believes we need "to reinvent the human at the species level because the issues we are concerned with seem to be beyond the competency of our present cultural traditions." Reading Berry gives meaning to the more practical discussions of our current situation.

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Best book re environment: J. Speth & P. Haas, "Global Environmental Governance" (2009).

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Another interesting book about privacy issues, and how "public" our public spaces are, or should be, or will be, whether we like it or not, and ideas on how we might get a handle on it.

It explores the eternal "security vs. liberty" dilemmas in any "free" society in the modern "information age". It's a few years old, but is probably more relevant than ever.

Tiny cameras could be anywhere...is this useful or intrusive, or both? Depends on who gets to look, who doesn't, and why.

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In "The World Without Us," a "suddenly depopulated Manhattan" is among the themes explored. Well, I can tell you that it would still be impossible to get a cab on a rainy day. But on the bright side, getting an apartment with some space----say on Fifth Avenue near Central Park----would be a cinch.

And yet on the other other hand: just try scoring a hot pastrami on rye at three in the morning! Oy. One might as well be in Akron, Ohio.

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"Omnivore's Dilemma" is an appropriate must, but no less so is Deidre Barrett's, "Waistland", a book of significant historical worth, as well as a common sense approach to nutrition. We tend to look mostly at nutrition/historical agriculture in terms of health, and this list does so, and it's glaring absence is anything touching physical activity/health. I highly recommend Dr. John Ratey's "SPARK,The Revolutionary Science of Exercise and The Brain." You will learn much and greatly benefit personally, from this highly acclaimed book.

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Or is that "not relevant" anymore?
Living the Good Live-Nearing

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"Last Chance to See" by Douglas Adams, especially the fable at the end.

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As previously mentioned in another post, Overshoot and Bottleneck by Bill Catton are the indispensable books among those suggested, although the latter book might be tough sledding for some readers.

Other relevant books would include

Herman Daly
Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development
Beacon Press, 1996
http://tinyurl.com/e3mmk

Mike Davis
In Praise of Barbarians: Essays against Empire
Haymarket Books, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/4puf3o

Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich
One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future
Island Press, 2004
http://tinyurl.com/aa2fc

Richard Heinberg
Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines
New Society Publishers, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/yqaodk

Richard E. Leakey
The Sixth Extinction
Doubleday, 1995
http://tinyurl.com/7jvl4m

Pentti Linkola
Can Life Prevail? - A Radical Approach to the Environmental Crisis
Integral Tradition Publishing, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/ldxl8a

Mark Lynas
Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
National Geographic Press, 2008
http://tinyurl.com/nfaquy

William Ophuls, Stephen Boyan
Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity Revisited: The Unraveling of the American Dream
W. H. Freeman & Co., 1992
http://tinyurl.com/24k8bh

Fred Pearce
When the Rivers Run Dry: Water - The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century
Beacon Press, 2007
http://tinyurl.com/272r7h

Peter Ward
The Medea Hypothesis: Is Life on Earth Ultimately Self-Destructive?
Princeton University Press, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/n7gjau

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we know the DoD, which will eat up 21% of our gdp ($515 billion) is the largest polluter on the planet, engaging in the most un-ecological and unsustainable practices. and here's a well-documented, authoritative account of how America's supreme foreign policy institution, the CIA, has wreaked havoc on our planet:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II. William Blum

here are some reviews from Amazon.com:

Review
"A valuable reference for anyone interested in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy." -- Choice, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"A very valuable book. The research and organization are extremely impressive." -- A.J. Langguth, author and former New York Times bureau chief, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"Each chapter I read make me more and more angry." -- Helen Caldicott, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"Far and away the best book on the topic." -- Noam Chomsky, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"I enjoyed it immensely." -- Gore Vidal, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"The single most useful summary of CIA history." -- John Stockwell, former CIA officer and author, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

Product Description
Is the United States a Force for Democracy? From China in the 1940s to Guatemala today, William Blum provides the most comprehensive study of the ongoing American holocaust. Covering U.S. intervention in more than 50 countries, KILLING HOPE describes the grim role played by the U.S. in overthrowing governments, perverting elections, assassinating leaders, suppressing revolutions, manipulating trade unions and manufacturing "news."

About the Author
William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam.

Mr. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-73, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing around the world.

In the mid-1970s he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.

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- Green Island http://www.rudemacedon.ca/greenisland.html

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It seems their are few who do both. Some say one thing and do another.

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Talk about cultural amnesia! Any list on this subject is a incomplete without the inclusion of Small Is Beautiful by B. F. Schumacher; Silent Spring by Rachel Carson and Sand Country Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

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I submit a book that has had a profound affect on me: Thomas Berry's "The Great Work." Berry gives us many insights into our human-centered view of the universe, our isolation from the natural world, our belief that the only value in nature is in our exploitation of its resources. Far from our need to fuel the industrial world, our lasting survival depends on the "quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all the lives that grow upon the Earth." Berry believes we need "to reinvent the human at the species level because the issues 90210 subtitles 90210 how i met your mother s05e03 subtitles heroes subtitles three rivers s01e01 hdtv.xvid-fqm english subtitle smallville subtitles house m. d. s06e03 subtitles californication s03e02 hdtv.xvid-fqm english subtitles house.m.d.s06e02.hdtv.real.xvid-fqm subtitles desperate housewives s06e02 hdtv.xvid-2hd english gossip girl subtitles gossip girl seropol5 we are concerned with seem to be beyond the competency of our present cultural traditions." Reading Berry gives meaning to the more practical discussions of our current situation.

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