Top 8 Books to Read on Sustainability
As I’ve shared in this post on “Books to Read on Sustainable Fashion,” we can’t consume our way to a more sustainable Earth, but I do believe that the consumption of knowledge is something that we should never stop pursuing.
A more sustainable lifestyle is rooted partially in practice and partially in education. As an advocate for this movement, there’s a responsibility for you to do your research and educate yourself on the complex ideas and systems that have created the current climate crisis. Only when we begin to look at the root cause of it, can we fully appreciate and stay committed to our daily practices of doing better.
I’m sure that your booklist has been filled with anti-racist works in light of the George Floyd murder and while I’m personally also working through a similar list, a big part of what I’m interested in exploring is that intersection between environmental justice and social justice. My reading strategy going into the rest of 2020 is to balance books on anti-racism and environmentalism with a heavy focus on books written by BIPOC.
I hope that you’ll join me in reading these 8 books on sustainability.
1. Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation Of The Land by Leah Penniman
Leah Penniman is a Black Kreyol farmer who has been organizing for an anti-racist food system for over fifteen years. She works primarily in the northeast to provide programs that train Black, Latinx, and Indigenous aspiring farmer-activists to radicalize the way the food system has been organized.
“Farming While Black is the first comprehensive ‘how-to’ guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture.”
100% of the profits from this book are donated to Black Farmers.
Book Description:
“‘Revolution is based on land. Land is the basis of all independence. Land is the basis of freedom, justice, and equality.’—Malcolm X
Some of our most cherished sustainable farming practices have roots in African wisdom. Yet, discrimination and violence against African-American farmers has led to their decline from 14 percent of all growers in 1920 to less than 2 percent today, with a corresponding loss of over 14 million acres of land. Further, Black communities suffer disproportionately from illnesses related to lack of access to fresh food and healthy natural ecosystems. Soul Fire Farm, cofounded by author, activist, and farmer Leah Penniman, is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. Through innovative programs such as the Black-Latinx Farmers Immersion, a sliding-scale farmshare CSA, and Youth Food Justice leadership training, Penniman is part of a global network of farmers working to increase farmland stewardship by people of color, restore Afro-indigenous farming practices, and end food apartheid.
And now, with Farming While Black, Penniman extends that work by offering the first comprehensive manual for African-heritage people ready to reclaim their rightful place of dignified agency in the food system. This one-of-a-kind guide provides readers with a concise “how-to” for all aspects of small-scale farming, including:
Finding Land and Resources
Writing a Farm Business Plan
Honoring the Spirits of the Land with Planting and Harvesting Rituals
Restoring Degraded Land through No-Till and Biological Tillage
Crop Planning for Vegetables, Fruits, and Herbs
Preserving the Harvest and Saving Seed
Raising Animals Sustainably and Humanely
Urban Farming, including a guide to laws and land access
Movement Building through education, direct action, & policy change
Throughout, Penniman includes ‘Uplift’ sidebars to elevate the wisdom of the African Diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described, as well as an honest and transparent look at the real work being done at Soul Fire Farm every day.”
2. Black Faces, White Spaces by Carolyn Finney
Carolyn Finney is the assistant professor of geography at the University of Kentucky. This book addresses the question that we’ve been wondering: ”Why are Black people so underrepresented in environmentalism?”
Book Description:
“Why are African Americans so underrepresented when it comes to interest in nature, outdoor recreation, and environmentalism? In this thought-provoking study, Carolyn Finney looks beyond the discourse of the environmental justice movement to examine how the natural environment has been understood, commodified, and represented by both white and black Americans. Bridging the fields of environmental history, cultural studies, critical race studies, and geography, Finney argues that the legacies of slavery, Jim Crow, and racial violence have shaped cultural understandings of the ‘great outdoors’ and determined who should and can have access to natural spaces.
Drawing on a variety of sources from film, literature, and popular culture, and analyzing different historical moments, including the establishment of the Wilderness Act in 1964 and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Finney reveals the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America. Looking toward the future, she also highlights the work of African Americans who are opening doors to greater participation in environmental and conservation concerns.”
3. Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence by John Francis Ph.D.
Dr. John Francis is an environmental activist who vowed to stop using motorized vehicles after witnessing the 1971 oil spill in San Francisco. On his 27th birthday, he took on an additional vow of silence after being fed up with the arguments that his decision created.
During that time, he’s walked across the US, sailed through the Caribbean and South America, founded a non-profit environmental awareness organization (Planetwalk), and obtained a B.S., a Masters's degree, and a Ph.D. in Land Resources.
Book Description:
“When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, he took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young African-American man, walking across the country in the early 1970s, his idea of "the environment" expanded beyond concern about pollution and loss of habitat to include how we humans treat each other and how we can better communicate and work together to benefit the earth.
Through his silence and walking, he learned to listen, and along the way, earned college and graduate degrees in science and environmental studies. An amazing human-interest story with a vital message, Planetwalker is also an engaging coming-of-age pilgrimage.”
4. A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind by Harriet A. Washington
This book addresses exactly how environmental injustices directly impact BIPOC at disproportionate levels. Science writer, Harriet A. Washington dives into environmental racism and how the presence of heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and pathogens have impacted the wellbeing and success of marginalized communities.
Book Description:
“Did you know...
Middle-class African American households with incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 live in neighborhoods that are more polluted than those of very poor white households with incomes below $10,000.
When swallowed, a lead-paint chip no larger than a fingernail can send a toddler into a coma -- one-tenth of that amount will lower his IQ.
Nearly two of every five African American homes in Baltimore are plagued by lead-based paint. Almost all of the 37,500 Baltimore children who suffered lead poisoning between 2003 and 2015 were African American.
From injuries caused by lead poisoning to the devastating effects of atmospheric pollution, infectious disease, and industrial waste, Americans of color are harmed by environmental hazards in staggeringly disproportionate numbers. This systemic onslaught of toxic exposure and institutional negligence causes irreparable physical harm to millions of people across the country-cutting lives tragically short and needlessly burdening our health care system. But these deadly environments create another insidious and often overlooked consequence: robbing communities of color, and America as a whole, of intellectual power.
The 1994 publication of The Bell Curve and its controversial thesis catapulted the topic of genetic racial differences in IQ to the forefront of a renewed and heated debate. Now, in A Terrible Thing to Waste, award-winning science writer Harriet A. Washington adds her incisive analysis to the fray, arguing that IQ is a biased and flawed metric, but that it is useful for tracking cognitive damage. She takes apart the spurious notion of intelligence as an inherited trait, using copious data that instead point to a different cause of the reported African American-white IQ gap: environmental racism - a confluence of racism and other institutional factors that relegate marginalized communities to living and working near sites of toxic waste, pollution, and insufficient sanitation services. She investigates heavy metals, neurotoxins, deficient prenatal care, bad nutrition, and even pathogens as chief agents influencing intelligence to explain why communities of color are disproportionately affected -- and what can be done to remedy this devastating problem.
Featuring extensive scientific research and Washington's sharp, lively reporting, A Terrible Thing to Waste is sure to outrage, transform the conversation, and inspire debate.”
8 Books to read on sustainability braiding sweetgrass
5. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmere
Robin Wall Kimmere is an indigenous woman and botanical scientist who blends the wisdom of her different identities into this gentle and beautiful book. Braiding sweetgrass is a collection of reflections that prompt us to reconnect with nature and honor the wisdom that it has to offer us.
Book Description:
“Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings―asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass―offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.”
6. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. The Climate by Naomi Klein
You’ve seen the images comparing cities before and during COVID-19 lockdowns. It’s pretty clear that slowing down has directly impacted environmental wellbeing for the better. Klein builds on this idea by diving into the relationship between capitalism and climate change, and what we as a society must do to address this wakeup call.
Book Description:
“In short, either we embrace radical change ourselves or radical changes will be visited upon our physical world. The status quo is no longer an option.
In This Changes Everything Naomi Klein argues that climate change isn’t just another issue to be neatly filed between taxes and health care. It’s an alarm that calls us to fix an economic system that is already failing us in many ways. Klein meticulously builds the case for how massively reducing our greenhouse emissions is our best chance to simultaneously reduce gaping inequalities, re-imagine our broken democracies, and rebuild our gutted local economies. She exposes the ideological desperation of the climate-change deniers, the messianic delusions of the would-be geoengineers, and the tragic defeatism of too many mainstream green initiatives. And she demonstrates precisely why the market has not—and cannot—fix the climate crisis but will instead make things worse, with ever more extreme and ecologically damaging extraction methods, accompanied by rampant disaster capitalism.
Klein argues that the changes to our relationship with nature and one another that are required to respond to the climate crisis humanely should not be viewed as grim penance, but rather as a kind of gift—a catalyst to transform broken economic and cultural priorities and to heal long-festering historical wounds. And she documents the inspiring movements that have already begun this process: communities that are not just refusing to be sites of further fossil fuel extraction but are building the next, regeneration-based economies right now.
Can we pull off these changes in time? Nothing is certain. Nothing except that climate change changes everything. And for a very brief time, the nature of that change is still up to us.”
7. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson
An oldie but a goodie, Silent Spring was one of the first books that brought the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use to the attention of the mass public. In the book, Carson gives concrete examples of how pesticides have caused environmental and human harm and how the government played a huge part in that damage.
Book Description:
“First published by Houghton Mifflin in 1962, Silent Spring alerted a large audience to the environmental and human dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, spurring revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. "Silent Spring became a runaway bestseller, with international reverberations . . . [It is] well crafted, fearless and succinct . . . Even if she had not inspired a generation of activists, Carson would prevail as one of the greatest nature writers in American letters" (Peter Matthiessen, for Time"s 100 Most Influential People of the Century). This fortieth-anniversary edition celebrates Rachel Carson"s watershed book with a new introduction by the author and activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new afterword by the acclaimed Rachel Carson biographer Linda Lear, who tells the story of Carson"s courageous defense of her truths in the face of ruthless assault from the chemical industry in the year following the publication of Silent Spring and before her untimely death in 1964.”
8. As Long as Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker
More and more environmental activists are looking towards indigenous communities for insight on how we can better restore and steward the land. Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the complexities and challenges of environmental justice from an indigenous perspective and this book makes a compelling case for why contemporary environmental justice needs to accommodate the unique experience of people whose sovereign existence in North America preceded the United States Constitution.
Book Description:
“The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism
Through the unique lens of ‘Indigenized environmental justice,’ Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.
Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.”
Do you have any additional recommendations for books on sustainability? Leave them in the comments below!
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