The United Nations has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity: “a celebration of life on earth and of the value of biodiversity for our lives.” Its goal is to raise global awareness of the rich variety of life on Earth, the complex relations among living things and their environments, and the role biodiversity plays in sustaining the systems upon which all life, including humanity, depends. Biodiversity plays a crucial role in services including purifying air and water, detoxifying waste, stabilizing climate, moderating floods, renewing soil fertility, and ensuring that life has the ability to adapt to change. This complex combination of life forms and their interactions with each other and the environment makes Earth a uniquely habitable place. But human activity, especially the destruction of habitats resulting from the expansion of populations and development, is causing diversity to be lost at an accelerated rate. Estimates are that species are becoming extinct at a thousand times the natural rate, and once gone, such losses are irreversible. The International Year of Biodiversity is an opportunity to highlight the achievements that have been made in conserving biodiversity and to focus on the urgency of the problem.Part of the challenge is that biodiversity is a complex, scientific subject. Different definitions exist, and new knowledge is added to our understanding of the concept every day. People are also constantly testing new strategies to conserve diversity. Here are some books from the library collection that are useful introductions, and we have others if you really want to dig into the science and the practices of conservation. While complex, at heart, biodiversity is about the amazing and sometimes surprising connections between you and the world around you.E.O. Wilson. The Future of Life. (2002)Harvard biologist and Pulitzer Prize winner Edward Wilson draws on two decades of research on biological diversity to describe vividly the richness of our biosphere and the damage humankind has caused and increasingly continues to cause to it. Emphasizing the need to understand fully the biodiversity of our planet and the value of the ecosystem services it supports, as well as making the case to adopt a global land ethic, he proposes a variety of strategies that seek common ground between economic progress and conservation. Although the challenges are large, he is ultimately optimistic that Earth's living history can be preserved.Yvonne Baskin. The Work of Nature: How the Diversity of Life Sustains Us. (1997) “How many species can be lost before the ecological systems that nurture life begin to break down?” While not always readily obvious, the complex relationships of biodiversity are crucial to maintaining the basic life support systems of our planet in the ways they provide clean air, pure water, and fertile soils, among other things. Science journalist Yvonne Basking surveys the work of leading ecologists and explains clearly the practical consequences of biodiversity loss for the health, stability, and functioning of ecosystems, as well as the extraordinary challenges involved in ecological restoration.
Niles Eldredge. Life in the Balance: Humanity and the Biodiversity Crisis. (1998)Paleontologist and Curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History, Niles Eldredge brings an evolutionary perspective to the present-day biodiversity crisis in which the yearly loss of species is approaching the scale of the mass global extinctions of the distant past. Written for a general audience, he focuses on four questions: “What is biodiversity?”, “Why should we care about biodiversity?”, “What threatens biodiversity?”, and “What can we do?” An appendix listing animal species that have become extinct since 1600 is a sobering indicator of how human activity had radically transformed the ecosystems of the planet.
E.O. Wilson & Frances M. Peter, eds. Biodiversity. (1988)
This book collects papers from the National Forum on BioDiverstiy, held in Washington, D.C., on September 21-24, 1986, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences and Smithsonian Institution. The forum featured over 60 leading biologists, economists, agricultural experts, philosophers, representatives of assistance and lending agencies, and other professionals, and it did much to popularize the concept. It is a comprehensive overview of the science, still relevant today, and an urgent warning about the rapid alteration and destruction of the environments that have fostered the diversity of life forms on the planet for more than a billion years.
Bruce A. Stein, Lynn S. Kutner, & Jonathan S. Adams, eds. Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. (2000)
This work is a joint project of The Nature Conservancy, the Association for Biodiversity Information, and natural heritage programs in all fifty states, collecting together for the first time ever over twenty-five years of research and information gathered by state biodiversity inventories. With over 200,000 species of animals, plants, and microbes, the United States is biologically rich and has the most diverse flora and fauna of any largely temperate zone nation. However, up to one-third of these species are at risk and more than 500 have already disappeared, largely as a result of habitat destruction. To address these threats, the authors review the fundamental strategies underlying most biodiversity conservation efforts and suggest a blueprint for the future.Jack Ahearn, Elizabeth Leduc, and Mary Lee York. Biodiversity Planning and Design: Sustainable Practices. (2006)
This work explores the role of landscape architects and planners in influencing land use decisions for the promotion of biodiversity conservation, particularly with regard to minimizing habitat loss and degradation. Drawing on a wide range of case studies from around the United States, the authors examine the issues, concepts, and methods involved, and illustrate how an interdisciplinary approach led by planners and designers working with conservation biologists, restoration ecologists, and natural and social scientists can advance sustainable practices.
When: Thursday, January 28, 12:30pm – 1:30pmWhere: 1014 Torney Ave, Pacific Room at Tides, Presidio, SF
Presenter: Carol Villano
Demos is a non-partisan public policy research and advocacy organization founded in 2000. Headquartered in New York City, Demos works with advocates and policymakers around the country in pursuit of four overarching goals:
• a more equitable economy with widely shared prosperity and opportunity;
• a vibrant and inclusive democracy with high levels of voting and civic engagement;
• an empowered public sector that works for the common good;
• and responsible U.S. engagement in an interdependent world.
Carol will give a brief overview of Demos’ programs, talk about some of the latest projects they’re working on in each program, and spend some time focusing on their work in California helping to reframe the debate on the role of government and California’s fiscal crisis.
This month we are highlighting a few of the books that generous donors have added to the library collection in the past few months covering a variety of topics including climate change, multicultural history, green design, Web 2.0, genetic engineering, industrial agriculture, and the distribution of wealth. Join us at the Thoreau Center Craft Fair on Wednesday, December 9 from 11:30 to 1:30. Purchase a delicious homemade brownie and your donation will help us provide more library resources to serve your interests. And, if you have books sitting around your office or at home that you’d like to donate to the library, please do. The library can help circulate and share such resources with our Thoreau Center community.
Orrin H. Pilkey & Rob Young. The Rising Sea. (2009)
Geologists Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young examine the causes and effects of vanishing glaciers, melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, and retreating shorelines worldwide. While not immediately perceptible to all today, global warming is currently altering coastal environments and their human and biological communities, and scientists anticipate that its impacts on our densely developed shorelines will only become more catastrophic in the decades to come. The authors make the case for taking a long-term view and making the hard choices now needed to shape development in a direction more in harmony with nature.
Ronald Takaki. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Revised Edition). (2008)
The revised edition of Ronald Takaki's landmark study of the making of multicultural America, recounting the economic and political history of non-Anglo peoples of the United States: African Americans, Asian Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Mexican Americans, Muslim Americans, and Native Americans. A complex and sobering examination of ethnic identity and the question of what it means to be an American, Takaki also brings to life the words, stories, and feelings of ordinary people through the use their folk songs, poetry, letters, and memoirs.
George M. Woodwell. The Nature of a House: Building a World that Works. (2009)
George M. Woodwell, founder and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, recounts the challenges faced by that organization as they transformed a nineteenth century mansion and its nine acres into their new office building and campus while staying true to their ecological principles by using "state-of-the-shelf" green building techniques and materials. For Woods Hole, it was the opportunity to demonstrate the transitions that need to be made in our thinking about how we design, reuse, and live in the built environment in response to the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation.
Claire Hope Cummings. Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds. (2008)
Focusing on the plight of seeds as the common heritage of all humanity, Cummings condemns the use of biotechnology in agriculture, arguing that the development of patented and genetically altered seeds perpetuates the ills of today's industrialized food system and undermines the autonomy of farmers, all within an inadequate regulatory framework that does little to ensure the safety of genetically engineered foods for the consumer. As the alternative, she presents the stories of local communities that are using organic farming and other methods to produce food and fuel sustainably while preserving and restoring the integrity of both natural and cultural systems.
David Bollier. Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own. (2008)
David Bollier is a journalist, activist, and public policy analyst as well as Editor of Onthecommons.org and cofounder of Public Knowledge. In this book, he has written a narrative history of the emergence over the past decade of the electronic "free culture" movement, an eclectic and global collection of techies, lawyers, artists, musicians, scientists, and businesspeople building a digital commons committed to freedom and innovation. In resistance to centalized control, hierarchies of credentialed experts, and draconian intellectual property rights, this movement has worked to create a radically different order based on open access, decentralized creativity, collaborative intelligence, and cheap and easy sharing.
Gar Alperovitz & Lew Daly. Unjust Deserts: How the Rich are Taking our Common Inheritance. (2008)
The distribution of income and wealth in the United States is more unequal today than at any time since the 1920s. In this examination of wealth creation, the authors argue that research demonstrates that much of the success of the wealthiest individuals in fact results from the unjust appropriation of inherited knowledge owned by society at large. They articulate a new political case for the redistribution of wealth, based on the understanding that the source of that wealth is society itself.
Henry David Thoreau is probably best known for his work as a nature writer and for the intense commitment to the wild he displayed in his work, a radical view which influenced generations of writers to come. Nature writing has a long history in American literature, and this list presents some books about the genre and some major works that are in the library collection. It represents a small slice of the diversity of the genre, as nature writers have been inspired by countless different places and things in highly individual ways. Combining observation, scientific insight, and imaginative interpretation, at its heart nature writing is about enriching our experiences of the world by opening our perceptions to an ecological and holistic way of seeing and by forcing us to consider the ethical implications of our relationship with the land and wildlife. For more books, visit the catalog online at library.thoreau.org.
Thomas J. Lyon, ed. This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing. (1989)
An analytical history and comprehensive anthology of American nature writing from the sixteenth-century to the modern day, highlighting the diversity of responses, perspectives, and forms within the genre. Twenty-two authors are represented, including Thomas Nuttall, Thoreau, John Burroughs, Joseph Wood Krutch, Edward Abbey, Barry Lopez, and John Hay.
Corey Lee Lewis. Reading the Trail: Exploring the Literature and Natural History of the California Crest. (2005)
Lewis offers new ways of exploring the intersection of ecology and literature in this survey of the works of John Muir, Mary Austin, and Gary Snyder, three authors whose writings have been significant in shaping America's environmental consciousness and which are deeply connected to particular ecological regions of California along the Pacific Crest Trail. By combining literary analysis with field studies of the places they wrote about, he delivers new insights and demonstrates the continued relevance of their ideas to today's discussion of ecological values.
John Muir. The Mountains of California. (1894)
Published two years after he founded the Sierra Club, this is the first collection of essays by John Muir, a pioneer in the field of literary natural history and one of the country's leading environmental activists. His energetic and precise writings celebrate the wildness and complexity of the Sierra Nevada mountains he dedicated his life to saving, and have shown to generations of readers the necessity of experiencing and preserving our natural heritage.
Aldo Leopold. A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There. (1949)
Forester, wildlife ecologist, environmental philosopher, and educator, Leopold articulated ideas in this writing that have come to be at the core of environmental ethics and aesthetics today. Building from insightfully written accounts of his own encounters with the wild in Sand County, Wisconsin as well as from experiences earlier in his life, it is a call for a fundamental reform in humankind's relationship to the land, one that extends our ethical sensibilities to encompass the whole of nature.
Rachel Carson. The Sea Around Us. (1950, rev. ed. 1961)
Combining a rigorous scientific perspective with rich and lyrical language, Carson's book is a guide to the world's oceans and the life in them. Hers is a holisitc view, concentrating on relationships and linkages, describing vast and complex natural systems, and dramatically illustrating how powerful natural forces continue to shape the rhythms of life on our planet: "a water world, a planet dominated by its covering mantle of ocean, in which the continents are but transient intrusions of land above the surface of the all-encircling sea."
Annie Dillard. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (1974)
Over the course of a year, the author walks alone through the land surrounding Tinker Creek, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. Observing closely the changing of the seasons and the effects on the plants and animals there, her reflections on the nature of the world open into profound themes of life, death, meaning, identity, and the spiritual complexity of the universe. It is a testament to the challenge of experiencing the world in all its variety.
Wendell Berry. Recollected Essays, 1965-1980. (1981)
A pioneer on the subjects of sustainable agriculture and slow food, novelist, poet, essayist, and farmer, Wendell Berry here revisits some of his earlier writings in these eleven essays collected from The Long-Legged House, The Hidden Wound, A Continuous Harmony, The Unforseen Wilderness, and The Unsettling of America. Largely based on his life on his farm in rural Kentucky, he presents insights into humankind's relationship with the natural world, arguing for the need to learn from the complex patterns of nature and to pay attention particularly to local ways and wisdom as an alternative to the extractive and destructive practices of large scale agribusiness and of contemporary American culture.
David Mas Masumoto. Letters to the Valley: A Harvest of Memories. (2004)
David Mas Masumoto grows organic peaches and grapes on his farm in Del Rey, in the San Joaquin Valley of California. The essays in this collection originally appeared as a column in the Fresno Bee and take the form of letters to his family, friends, neighbors, and others. In them he writes about his experiences of the connections between food, work, family and place, experiences that illustrate the values needed to realize a sustainable society and to preserve a way of life in the rapidly changing context for family farms.
Thursday, November 19, 12:30p
Pacific Room at Tides
An official selection at the Sundance Film Festival, Prom Night in Mississippi tells the story of senior students of Charleston High who rally in preparation for the school’s first-ever integrated prom. In 1997, Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman made an historic offer to the high school in his hometown of Charleston, Mississippi: He would foot the bill for the school’s senior prom—on condition that both black and white students be allowed to attend. Even though the students shared classes and every other aspect of school life, they had a tradition of holding two proms—one white, one black. Freeman’s offer was ignored. In 2008, he made it again. This time, the school accepted and history was made, but not without significant opposition.
Brown Bag: Equality Now Mobilizes to End Injustice to WomenThursday, November 5, 12:30PM to 1:30PMPacific Room at Tides
Equality Now works to end violence and discrimination against women and girls around the world through the mobilization of public pressure. Thoreau Center and the New Field Foundation will host four Equality Now activists who will highlight their recent successes and talk about Equality Now’s new exciting project. The presenters include Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai activist working to end FGM and early marriage in Kenya, Kadidia Sidibe, a women's rights champion in Mali, West Africa for over three decades, Fanta Camara, and a young Malian FGM survivor-turned-activist Taina Bien-Aimé, ex-oficio, Equality Now Board of Directors (USA).
Art Opening ReceptionThoreau Gallery and The Seed Gallery of Photographic Art
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, SF
Thursday, November 5, 5:00PM to 7:00 PM
Artists: Elizabeth Ennis + Steven Hight
Observing dogs unleashed, painter Elizabeth Ennis captures their fierce joy in their pure state of being in her exhibit Dog Play. Photographer Steven Hight uses vintage effects to engage us in his San Francisco landscapes display Photographs in the Fog.
The exhibits run from November 5 through January 8, 2010.
