Best of
Sustainability

1992

Pat Welsh's Southern California Gardening: A Month-by-Month Guide


Pat Welsh - 1992
    This completely revised and updated edition includes 40 new color photographs plus new information on perennials, ornamental grasses, geraniums, and more. Monthly chapters discuss relevant gardening topicsclimate, plant selection, soils, fertilizers, and wateringand are accompanied by handy checklists to help gardeners stay organized. An assortment of sidebars and rules of thumb will prove useful to gardeners in any region. Beautifully photographed and written in Pat Welsh's warm and practical style, this is an indispensable guide for every southern California gardener.

Becoming Native to This Place


Wes Jackson - 1992
    Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson, a respected advocate for sustainable practices and the founder of The Land Institute, seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both.Foreword / Richard C. Edwards --1. The problem --2. Visions and assumptions --3. Science and nature --4. Nature as measure --5. Becoming native to our places --6. Developing the courage of our convictions

Environmental Interpretation: A Practical Guide for People with Big Ideas and Small Budgets


Sam H. Ham - 1992
    Drawing on 20 years experience and the successes of his colleagues worldwide, Sam Ham presents an unusually diverse collection of low-cost communication techniques that really work.More than 200 illustrations, photos, and technical insets provide simple instructions for designing and implementing effective education programs in forests, parks, protected areas, zoos, botanical gardens, extension and community programs, and in all kinds of agriculture and natural resource management programs.Aside from its step-by-step, "how-to" approach, what sets this volume apart is its solid theoretical foundation. Readers learn not only how to communicate their ideas more forcefully but why the methods work. Some 20 case studies, carefully selected from throughout the Western Hemisphere, stimulate the imagination and show how others have successfully applied what this book is about.Written for beginners and experts alike, the book represents a valuable resource for anyone faced with the need to communicate about the environment yet constrained by lack of money and experience.

Designing Your Natural House


Charles G. Woods - 1992
    before being allowed to purchase a drafting pencil. Mac and Charles have managed to consolidate most everything they know about residential design with wit, Clarity, and excellent sketches" -- David Wright, Noted Solar Designer and Environmental Architect * Designing Your Natural House Charles G. Woods and Malcolm Wells As concerns about our mistreatment of the environment keep growing, the trend toward housing that blends with rather than works against natural surroundings continues to accelerate. This important guide explores and illustrates all aspects of how to integrate dwellings with their natural settings. The authors are leading names in the natural design field whose work has been inspired by the contour-friendly, organic style of Frank Lloyd Wright. Charles G. Woods and Mclcolm Wells offer a wide range of invaluable design tips for both constructing new houses and remodeling existing ones. Every design they cover is in accordance with today's ecological and environmental concerns. Beautifully illustrated and hand lettered throughout, this guide explains how to choose the best site design, lay out floor plans, landscape, and incorporate energy-efficient features wherever possible. You're shown how to solve many design, ecological, and environmental problems, as well as how to keep design costs as low as possible. Numerous before-and-after graphics clarify every stage in the design process, and do and don't examples help you avoid common mistakes encountered when designing natural dwellings. Included are 150 money- and energy-saving tips more than 200 tricks of the trade that help assure exemplary results, and sample house plans (which you can order) that promote further understanding of how to integrate designs with the natural site. Designing Your Natural House is timely, comprehensive, and visually appealing, making it an ideal source for architects, contractors, interior designers, landscape architects, do -it-yourselfers, and remodelers.

Beyond the Limits: Confronting Global Collapse, Envisioning a Sustainable Future


Donella H. Meadows - 1992
    Twenty years after their influential book, The Limits to Growth, was published to worldwide acclaim, the authors revise several scenarios of growth, concluding that the global industrial system has already overshot some of the Earth's vital ecological limits.

Environmentalism and Political Theory: Toward an Ecocentric Approach


Robyn Eckersley - 1992
    It sets out to disentangle the various strands of Green political thought and explain their relationship to the major Western political traditions. Environmentalism and Political Theory represents the consolidation of a new field of political inquiry that is destined to become an increasingly important component of political studies and political reporting worldwide. An interdisciplinary study that builds bridges between environmental philosophy, ecological thought, and political inquiry, this book employs a range of new insights from environmental philosophy to outline a particular Green political perspective.

Education, Cultural Myths, and the Ecological Crisis


Chet A. Bowers - 1992
    In addressing the cultural and educational dimensions of the ecological crisis, the book illuminates educational issues associated with the hidden nature of culture, particularly how thought patterns formed in the past are reproduced through the metaphorical language used in the classroom. It examines why both conservative and liberal educational critics ignore the ecological crisis, and suggests that a more ecologically sustainable ideology is being formulated by such thinkers as Aldo Leopold, Wendell Berry, and Gregory Bateson.

Rivers of Change: Essays on Early Agriculture in Eastern North America


Bruce D. Smith - 1992
    Focusing on data derived from the expanding discipline of archaeobotany, Bruce D. Smith presents a provocative alternative theory of how prehistoric North American societies developed from hunting and gathering systems to food-producing economies. Eastern North America remains one of the world's best-documented independent centers of domestication and will clearly be the focus of sustained and rewarding research for many years to come.

Earthcare: Women and the Environment


Carolyn Merchant - 1992
    Earthcare brings together Merchan'ts existing work on the topic of women and the environment as well as updated and new essays.

Ecosystem Health: New Goals For Environmental Management


Bryan G. Norton - 1992
    This work is a multidisciplinary collection of perspectives on the concept of health as it relates to ecosystems. The contributors - leading ecologists, philosophers, and economists - analyze the normative, conceptual, and biological issues surrounding the idea of ecosystem health. They examine both theoretical and practical aspects of the issues, and look at philosophical and ethical underpinnings as well as implications for public policy and ecosystems management. Ecosystem Health is a groundbreaking attempt to formulate an understanding of the quality and health of natural environments so that regulatory mandates can be brought in line with legislative goals. Ultimately, it seeks a new ethic of sustainability that will serve to protect the vital processes of nature.