Best of
Sustainability

1993

The Ecology of Commerce


Paul Hawken - 1993
    A visionary new program that businesses can follow to help restore the planet.

Greenhouse Gardener's Companion: Growing Food Flowers in Your Greenhouse or Sunspace


Shane Smith - 1993
    Today, greenhouses and sunrooms are real living spaces where gardeners spend as much time with a book and a cup of coffee as they do with a watering can and a pair of pruning shears. In this fully revised edition of a best-selling classic, veteran gardener Shane Smith embraces this new "lifestyle" approach to greenhouse gardening. Through lively writing that balances wit with commonsense advice, Smith draws on his more than 20 years' experience to cover everything you need to know to establish a charming and productive greenhouse.“Exceptionally comprehensive . . . a joy to read.”—Hobby Greenhouse Association

Start with the Soil


Grace Gershuny - 1993
    This complete guide to understanding and improving the soil shows how to begin the process with easy-to-find organic materials. Includes testing soil, making compost, what plants to grow where, container gardening, how to tailor soil to fit the needs of individual plants, and much more. 75 illustrations.

Earthship: Evolution Beyond Economics


Michael Reynolds - 1993
    

Agriculture: Spiritual Foundations for the Renewal of Agriculture


Rudolf Steiner - 1993
    His intention was not to teach farming but rather to supplement existing good farming practices with a spiritual understanding of the forces of nature. Considered by many to be the most remarkable lectures Steiner ever gave, they contain profound insights into the nature of the farm organism, the plant and animal world, the nature of organic chemistry, and the influences of heavenly bodies. Without devaluing the importance of the chemical constituents of substance, Steiner emphasized the greater significance of the forces that shape or form those constituents of living nature. He identified many of these forces and described specific practices and preparations that enable the farmer to work in concert with them.This new edition, with extensive notes and appendices, brings together all of the material related to the Agriculture Course, including the lectures and discussions, Steiner's handwritten notes, diagrams and illustrations, color plates of Steiner's blackboard drawings, and further agricultural indications by Steiner. Included are several important sections that have not previously been available in English.The biodynamic agriculture movement has grown up from these lectures and is putting the ideas into practice in hundreds of farms around the world.

Hemp: Lifeline to the Future: The Unexpected Answer for Our Environmental and Economic Recovery


Chris Conrad - 1993
    It looks at detailed industrial applications of cannabis hemp, the medical and nutritional uses of the plants flowers and seeds, and the controversies around marijuana. A scholarly work that captures your attention and holds your interest, this book has been the springboard for many businesses to get up and going in the hemp field, and has inspired countless acts of activism in the cannabis reform movement. A veritable encyclopedia of hemp trivia and historical detail, this book will help you understand why so many people are energized by the promise of hemp. Essential reading for anyone who has ever wondered how past societies were able to survive without modern products, and for anyone who wonders how future generations will be able to survive after the conflagration of the petrochemical era. It dedicates much attention to scientific and sociological studies that shatter the myth of marijuana as the "killer weed," and goes behind the scenes to view the manipulations by which this plant, probably the most versatile and valuable resource on the face of the earth, was demonized and banned under the misnomer "marijuana". Warning: This book might change your life, because once you learn the facts about hemp there is no returning to ignorance. Give a copy to your library, your elected officials, your parents, children, teachers: Anybody who cares about what is wrong with America today. The second edition of the book is 8-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches and over 300 pages, with a title page printed on hemp paper. It is in black and white and illustrated with diagrams to explain the text. The soft bound cover is varnished, with three color illustration. The work includes footnotes throughout, an index and an appendix.

The Exploding Metropolis


William H. Whyte - 1993
    Whyte, Jane Jacobs, Francis Bello, Seymour Freedgood, and Daniel Seligman address the problems of urban decline and suburban sprawl, transportation, city politics, open space, and the character and fabric of cities. A new foreword by Sam Bass Warner, Jr., and preface by Whyte demonstrate the relevance of The Exploding Metropolis to urban issues in the 90s.

Ecocide in the USSR: Health And Nature Under Siege


Murray Feshbach - 1993
    A dissection of the Soviet Union's legacy of health and environmental disaster, this book examines a former country of 103 cities - home to 70 million people - where the air is unfit to breathe and pollution fouls 75 percent of the water.

Beginning Again: People and Nature in the New Millennium


David W. Ehrenfeld - 1993
    Referring to the biblical prophets, he says they were not the holy fortunetellers that the word prophet has come to signify....The business of prophecy is not simply foretelling the future; rather it is describing thepresent with exceptional truthfulness and accuracy. Once this is done, then it can be seen that broad aspects of the future have suddenly become apparent. The twentieth century is drawing to a chaotic close amidst portents of unprecedented change and upheaval. The unravelling of societies and civilizations and the destruction of nature march together--linked--a fact whose enormous significance is often lost. In Beginning Again, David Ehrenfeld hasundertaken the difficult task of describing the present clearly enough to reveal the future. Out of his broad vision emerges a glimpse of a new millennium: a vision at once frightening and comforting, a scene of great devastation and great rebuilding. Ehrenfeld ranges far and wide to present a coherent vision of our relationship with Nature--its many aspects and implications--as our century opens into the next millennium. Whether he is writing about the problem of loyalty to organizations, rights versus obligations, our over-managed society, the vanishing of established knowledge, the failure of experts, the triumph of dandelions, Dr. Seuss, Edward Teller, or the future of farming, he is always concerned with the intricate interaction between technology and nature. As in his classic book, The Arrogance of Humanism, Ehrenfeld never losessight of our fatal love affair with the fantasy of control. We now have no choice, he argues, but to transform the dream of control, of progress, from one of overweening hubris, love of consumption, and the idiot's goal of perpetual growth, to one based on the inventive imitation of nature, withits honesty, beauty, resilience, and durability. Few American writers and even fewer scientists can describe these timeless, transcendent qualities of nature so well. In Places, the opening chapter, David Ehrenfeld tells about nightly vigils he spent alone on the moonlit beach of Tortuguero, watching giant sea turtles emerging from the seato lay their eggs in the black sand where they were born. I could watch the perfect white spheres falling, he writes. Falling as they have fallen for a hundred million years, with the same slow cadence, always shielded from the rain or stars by the same massive bulk with the beaked head and thesame large, myopic eyes rimmed with crusts of sand washed out by tears. Minutes and hours, days and months dissolve into eons. I am on an Oligocene beach, an Eocene beach, a Cretaceous beach--the scene is the same. It is night, the turtles are coming back, always back; I hear a deep hiss of breathand catch a glint of wet shell as the continents slide and crash, the oceans form and grow