Earth Day Booklist

View near Hudson., Digital ID 54459, New York Public Library

The first Earth Day was proclaimed on April 22, 1970 by one of its principal founders, Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin. Already frustrated by the attitudes of big business, Senator Nelson, as the chairman of the White House Conference on Small Business, wisely noted that "the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around." He became greatly influenced by John McConnell, a grassroots organizer from San Francisco and Harvard graduate student, Denis Hayes. He asked the latter to organize nationwide events on college and public school campuses that would bring awareness to the environmental crises facing the world. As a result many environmental and conservation organizations were born and the Environmental Protection Agency was created.

We still have a long way to go. While some things have improved, we still have much to do. Economic interests continue to bring enormous pressure on the environment i.e., the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the current nuclear crisis in Japan.

To learn more you might like to take out some of the following titles available in the branch libraries:

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson

Houghton Mifflin, 2002

 

 

The Eco Lifestyle Handbook

Sarah Callard, et al.

Carlton, 2010

 

 

Constructed Climates: a Primer on Urban Environments

William G. Wilson

University of Chicago Press, 2011

 

 

Power Trip: the Story of America's Love Affair with Energy

Amanda Little

Harper Perennial, 2010

 

 

The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth

John Bellamy Foster, et al.

Monthly Review Press, 2010

 

 

Lights Out!: Ten Myths About (and Real Solutions to) America's Energy Crisis

Spencer Abraham

St. Martin's Press, 2010

 

 

Alternative Energy

Brian Black

Greenwood, 2010

 

 

The Global Carbon Cycle

David Archer

Princeton University Press, 2010

 

 

Written in Water: Messages of Hope for the Earth's Most Precious Resource

Irena Salina, ed.

National Geographic Society, 2010

 

 

Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps

Peter Douglas Ward

Basic Books, 2010

 

 

Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can do to Save Them

Ted Danson

Rodale, 2011

 

 

Four Fish: the Future of the Last Wild Food

Paul Greenberg

Penguin Press, 2010

 

 

Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution

Caroline Fraser

Metropolitan Books, 2009

 

 

Soul of a Lion: One Woman's Quest to Rescue Africa's Wildlife Refugees

Barbara Bennett

National Geographic Society, 2010

 

 

100 Heartbeats: the Race to Save the Earth's Most Endangered Species

Jeff Corwin

Rodale, 2009

 

 

Stolen World: a Tale of Reptiles, Smugglers, and Skulduggery

Jennis Erin Smith

Crown Publishers, 2011

 

 

Winged Obsession: the Pursuit of the World's Most Notorious Butterfly Smuggler

Jessica Speart

William Morrow, 2011

 

 

Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives

Thomas French

Hyperion, 2010

 

 

Driven to Extinction: the Impact of Climate Change on Biodiversity

Richard G. Pearson

Sterling, 2011

 

 

Second Nature: the Inner Lives of Animals

Jonathan P. Balcombe

Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

 

 

The Great White Bear: a Natural and Unnatural History of the Polar Bear

Kieran Mulvaney

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011

 

For further reading and research, you can access GreenFILE and the Left Index, two EBSCO databases, at select library locations.

Comments

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This is a great list! I

This is a great list! I especially like how the books are mostly all from 2010 and 2011!

Constructed Climates

Thanks for mentioning my new book! FYI all of the content is available online at http://www.constructedclimates.org