Environmental Politics

• Annie Leonard
• Simon & Schuster, 2011
• Paperback, 368 pages
• 9781451610291

• Mike Berners-Lee
• Greystone Books, 2011
• Paperback, 256 pages
• 9781553658313

• Doug Saunders
• Knopf, 2010
• Hardcover, 368 pages
• 9780307396891

From one of Canada's leading journalists comes a major book about h

• Elton, Sarah
• Harper Collins; 2010
• Hardcover; 272 pages
• 9781554684182

Strawberries in January, fresh tomatoes year-round and New Zealand lamb at all times -- these well-travelled foods have a carbon footprint the size of an SUV. But there is a burgeoning local food movement taking place in Canadian cities, farms and shops that is changing both the way we eat and the way we think about food.

Locavore describes how foodies,100-milers, urbanites, farmers, gardeners and chefs across Canada are creating a new local food order that has the potential to fight climate change and feed us all. Combining front-line reporting, shrewd analysis and passionate food writing to delight the gastronome, Locavore shows how the pieces of a post-industrial food system are being assembled into something infinitely better.

We meet city-dwellers who grow crops in their backyards and office workers who have traded their keyboards for pitchforks. We learn how a group of New Brunswick farmers saved the family farm, why artisanal cheese in Quebec is so popular and how a century-old farm survives in urban British Columbia, bordered by the ocean on one side and by a new housing development on the other. We follow food culture activists as they work to preserve the genetic material of heritage plants to return once-endangered flavours to our tables. In recounting the stories of its diverse cast of characters, Locavore lays out a blueprint for a local food revolution.

From Locavore:

• Charles Emmerson
• Public Affairs; 2010
• Hardcover; 448 pages
• 9781586486365

Long at the margins of global affairs and at the edge of our mental map of the world, the Arctic has found its way to the center of the issues which will challenge and define our world in the twenty-first century: energy security and the struggle for natural resources, climate change and its uncertain speed and consequences, the return of great power competition, the remaking of global trade patterns…

In The Future History of the Arctic, geopolitics expert Charles Emmerson weaves together the history of the region with reportage and reflection, revealing a vast and complex area of the globe, loaded with opportunity and rich in challenges. He defines the forces which have shaped the Arctic’s history and introduces the players in politics, business, science and society who are struggling to mold its future.

The Arctic is coming of age. This engrossing book tells the story of how that is happening and how it might happen—through the stories of those who live there, those who study it, and those who will determine its destiny.


Discovery Magazine
“As the Arctic thaws, nations around the globe are jockeying for access to its mineral resources and potentially lucrative new shipping routes. With considerable on-site reporting, Emmerson surveys the environmental and geopolitical changes under way.”

National Interest

David Kirby
St. Martin's Press; 2010
Hardcover; 512 pages
9780312380588

• Jamie Linton
• UBC Press; 2009
• Hardcover; 336
• 9780774817011

We all know what water is and many of us take it for granted. But because it seems so natural, the way we see water is seldom given critical attention. This book provides a much-needed analysis of how we view water, showing that modern understandings have given rise to a global crisis. Jamie Linton argues that modern Western society tends to understand water as a scientific abstraction - as merely H20 or the substance occurring in the hydrologic cycle. We have lost sight of its essential fecundity and stripped it of its wider environmental, social, and cultural contexts. This removal, or abstraction, has given modern society license to treat water as something that may dammed, diverted, and manipulated with impunity. The water crisis can be averted, Linton concludes, by deliberately reinvesting water with social content.


The book demonstrates, in a clear and concise fashion, the ways in which contemporary social relationships with water have constituted a crisis ... The subject is of fundamental importance and the author's emphasis on the need to posit environmental concerns within a socio-natural understanding is vital. - Alex Loftus, Department of Geography, University of London


Jamie Linton is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Geography at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.

• Wendy Rosenoff
• Krause Publications, 2009
• Paperback, 239 pages
• 9781440203671

This one-of-a-kind guide delivers 101 forward-thinking activities and projects that teach children sustainable living habits. Readers will discover hands-on projects in cooking, crafts and science that address global warming, saving energy, recycling and reusing packaging and bags, and growing and eating locally-grown foods, among others.

• Barry Sanders
• AK Press, 2009
• Paperback, 183 pages
• 9781904859949

"Here's the awful truth: even if every person, every automobile, and every factory suddenly emitted zero emissions, the earth would still be headed, head first and at full speed, toward total disaster for one major reason. The military produces enough greenhouse gases, by itself, to place the entire globe, with all its inhabitants large and small, in the most immanent danger of extinction." —from the Introduction  This new investigation by Barry Sanders examines in detail the environmental impact of US military practices. In a period of unprecedented scrutiny of the social and economic impacts of the US defense policies, Sanders explores a completely different aspect of the situation, declaring military activity, from fuel emissions to radioactive waste to defoliation campaigns, as the single-greatest contributor to the worldwide environmental crisis.  Based on research culled from documents released or leaked by the military, The Green Zone is the first book to provide a comprehensive examination of the relationship between militarism and ecological destruction. Includes a powerful Foreword by Mike Davis.

• Eds. Martin Reynolds, Chris Blackmore and Mark J. Smith
• Zed Books, 2009
• Paperback, 360 pages
• 9781848133174

This book is for anyone involved with managing environmental decisions making. The book promotes innovative ways of understanding and taking responsibility for actions in the context of our 'natural' world through a selection of classic and contemporary edited readings accompanied with an editorial narrative. It provides sense-making tools for appreciating and doing something about seemingly intractable modern-day environmental dilemmas--including global warming, fossil fuel consumption, fresh water quality, industrial pollution, habitat destruction, and biodiversity loss. The book draws on contemporary ideas associated with environmental ethics, social learning, communities of practice, systems thinking, ecological citizenship, corporate responsibility, fair trade, and the connections between environmental and social justice; configuring these ideas into practical notions for responsible action.

• Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon
• Vintage Canada, 2007
• Paperback, 266 pages
• 9780679314837

The remarkable, amusing and inspiring adventures of a Canadian couple who make a year-long attempt to eat foods grown and produced within a 100-mile radius of their apartment.

When Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon learned that the average ingredient in a North American meal travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate, they decided to launch a simple experiment to reconnect with the people and places that produced what they ate. For one year, they would only consume food that came from within a 100-mile radius of their Vancouver apartment. The 100-Mile Diet was born.

The couple’s discoveries sometimes shook their resolve. It would be a year without sugar, Cheerios, olive oil, rice, Pizza Pops, beer, and much, much more. Yet local eating has turned out to be a life lesson in pleasures that are always close at hand. They met the revolutionary farmers and modern-day hunter-gatherers who are changing the way we think about food. They got personal with issues ranging from global economics to biodiversity. They called on the wisdom of grandmothers, and immersed themselves in the seasons. They discovered a host of new flavours, from gooseberry wine to sunchokes to turnip sandwiches, foods that they never would have guessed were on their doorstep.

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating tells the full story, from the insights to the kitchen disasters, as the authors transform from megamart shoppers to self-sufficient urban pioneers. The 100-Mile Diet is a pathway home for anybody, anywhere.

• Rose George
• Henry Holt and Company, 2008
• Paperback, 288 pages
• 9780805090833

"In the early twenty-first century, when surgery can be done microscopically and human achievement seems limitless, 2.6 billion people lack the most basic thing that human dignity requires. Four in ten people in the world have no toilet. They must do their business instead on roadsides, in the bushes, wherever they can. Yet human feces in water supplies contribute to one in ten of the world’s communicable diseases. A child dies from diarrhoea – usually brought on by fecal-contaminated food or water – every 15 seconds.

• Michael Pollan
• Penguin, 2009
• Paperback, 140 pages
• 9780143116387

From the bestselling author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food" comes this collection of simple, sensible, and easy to use rules--the perfect guide for anyone who would like to become more mindful of the food he or she eats.

• Colin Beavan
• McLelland & Stewart, 2009
• Hardcover, 274 pages
• ISBN: 9780771010750

The riotous story of a guilty liberal who snaps, swears off plastic, goes organic, turns off his power, and becomes a bicycle nut in an effort to make zero environmental impact.

Manhattanite Colin Beavan spent a year trying to live without a net environmental impact, and he dragged his baby daughter and Prada-loving wife along for the ride (bicycle-powered, of course). In other words, no trash, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no air conditioning, no television…What would it be like to try to live a no-impact lifestyle? Is it possible? Could it catch on? Is living this way more satisfying or less satisfying? Is it worthwhile or senseless? These are the questions at the heart of this whole mad endeavour, which ultimately challenges each of us to embrace green living.

The publisher has aimed for sustainability in all aspects of this book’s production. For example, the interior paper is 100% post-consumer recycled, processed without chlorine, and certified by both the Forest Stewardship Council and EcoLogo. Instead of a jacket, the cover boards are stamped directly with ink, and the boards themselves are made from 100% recycled and FSC-certified materials.

Colin Beavan is the author of Operation Jedburgh and Fingerprints. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Esquire, Men’s Journal, Men’s Health, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and many other major magazines. He lives in New York City.

• David Owen
• Riverhead Books, 2009
• Hardcover, 357 pages
• ISBN: 9781594488825

This book is not currently in stock, but is available to order (1-2 weeks).

In this remarkable challenge to conventional thinking about the environment, Owen argues that the greenest community in the U.S. is not Portland, Oregon, or Snowmass, Colorado, but New York City.

• John Bellamy Foster
• Monthly Review Press, 2009
• Paperback, 328 pages
• ISBN: 9781583671795

Since the atomic bomb made its first appearance on the world stage in 1945, it has been clear that we possess the power to destroy our own planet. What nuclear weapons made possible, global environmental crisis, marked especially by global warming, has now made inevitable—if business as usual continues. The roots of the present ecological crisis, John Bellamy Foster argues in The Ecological Revolution, lie in capital’s rapacious expansion, which has now achieved unprecedented heights of irrationality across the globe. Foster compellingly demonstrates that the only possible answer for humanity is an ecological revolution: a struggle to make peace with the planet. Foster details the beginnings of such a revolution in human relations with the environment which can now be found throughout the globe, especially in the periphery of the world system, where the most ambitious experiments are taking place.</p><p>This bold new work addresses the central issues of the present crisis: global warming, peak oil, species extinction, world water shortages, global hunger, alternative energy sources, sustainable development, and environmental justice. Foster draws on a unique range of thinkers, including Karl Marx, Thomas Malthus, William Morris, Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Rachel Carson, Vandana Shiva, and István Mészáros. The result is a startlingly radical synthesis, which offers new hope for grappling with the greatest challenge of our age: what must be done to save the earth for humanity and all living species.