Green Group discussion

Every time I get a survey from food makers or sellers, I state that I always read ingredients and do not buy palm oil.

Good advice for all to follow.

This book does sound very good, Clare. I had never heard of it before. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

Does anyone feel a book shelf here dedicated to books for children and young adults would be helpful? I can think of several I have read which are designed to educate young readers about nature.

Go for it, Clare. Great idea.

Will do, then. Should anyone think of a book for inclusion, let us know.

I recommend:
Connecting the Drops: A Citizens' Guide to Protecting Water Resources

This is an excellent guide for concerned citizens, local journalists and local authorities on clean water issues. Everything from watersheds to wetlands is covered.
An expert witness would also find this very helpful as it gives case studies and shows what is required in clean water issue disputes.

Once They Were Hats: In Search of the Mighty Beaver


This is a fascinating, detailed study of how beavers once lived in every headwater in North America and were hunted almost to extinction for their fur. During the 20th century they began to be conserved, and now their landscape management and effect of hydrological systems forms fields of study.

The suggestion is that beavers completely changed the landscape and aquifer levels and now the drying out and flash flooding is partly a result of their disappearance.

I read two depressing but detailed and good books this year. One was A People's Curriculum for the Earth: Teaching Climate Change and the Environmental Crisis. Yes it is aimed at teachers but there is actually a great deal of information about the environment in there in an easy to read format (my review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The other one is not released in some countries yet but it is: Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard of the Fight against GMOs and Corporate Agriculture. I have to say that Vandana Shiva is a hero of mine and I thought this was a crucial book. My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Both are worth a read. :)

Clare wrote: "Does anyone feel a book shelf here dedicated to books for children and young adults would be helpful? I can think of several I have read which are designed to educate young readers about nature."

Yes please I am a preschool teacher and have teenage kids. So anything in the spectrum!

Great Stef, thanks for the feedback. You can see the books I've added so far if you check the bookshelf; I created a section for younger readers.

Here is a source of interesting books under the climate umbrella, for lack of a better description, it includes the whole spectrum from fiction to non fiction.

https://plus.google.com/communities/1...

It is Googles+ Ecology in Literature and the Arts group public page. There seems to be no real format, ideas, subjects and books just seem to float by.

You pick and choose a trail that leads to more books and ideas from the single page that appears to cover a bit quite a bit of territory by itself.

Thanks, will look.

I'm in the middle of Bill Nye's Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World and am really enjoying it. It's engaging, down-to-earth, clear-eyed, and optimistic. I'd recommend it - the Science Guy really delivers!

Sounds good, Brian. Suitable for a wide age range?

We're now told:
2015 was the warmest year on record worldwide.
15 of the last 16 years have been the hottest year recorded.
1% of the world owns as much as the other 99%.
Plenty needs changing.

Clare wrote: "Sounds good, Brian. Suitable for a wide age range?"

Yes, definitely. It's written in very accessible, engaging language, with good analogies and humor sprinkled throughout. I think my teen sons would dig it, too!

Hi folks.
I have added a shelf in our bookshelf, for birds. Fact and fiction welcome, but I'm thinking not standard bird identification guides at present. Here's the sort of factual book I'm adding:

Birding at the Bridge: In Search of Every Bird on the Brooklyn Waterfront

did you know that the beaver trade saved Plimoth Colony? The pilgrims were about to be cut off by their sponsoring company when they got the idea of going up the Kennebunk River to establish trade with the Wabanaki there.

Hi all, I am brand new to the group. I recommend Half Earth, Our Planet's Fight for Life by E.O. Wilson. It "proposes an achievable plan to save our imperiled biosphere." It recounts what we have lost and are continuing to lose in terms of biodiversity, but it is also optimistic and hopeful and proposes an actual, possible (though difficult politically, I think) solution.
Another book I found hopeful and worth reading is Cows Save the Planet, and Other Improbable Ways of Restoring Soil to Heal the Earth by Judith Schwartz
I would also like to let members of this group know about my book, which is climate fiction, and very different from the two non-fiction books that I just recommended. but in a different vein I wrote it three years ago, and (much to my embarrassment I did not even know there was an actual genre designation for climate fiction.) I used an unusual plot to get readers interested in "what would happen next" and to get them to care about the characters and only gradually brought them into thinking about the environment and climate change. There are reviews on Goodreads and more on Amazon. I would be happy to send a free copy to anyone in this group who is interested. I am working on the sequel now.
Glad to be part of this group. Thanks to the moderators for keeping it going.
JanI Call Myself Earth Girl

I'd like to recommend Walden Warming by Richard Primack. He analyzes flowering plant times in Thoreau's journals and compares them to modern day times and shows how the area around Concord has warmed since then. It's a great interdisciplinary field of study. I heard him speak a couple of years ago in the Boston area when the book first came out and he was very interesting.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I would also recommend Welcome to the Greenhouse, an anthology of short stories edited by Gordon Van Gelder. Van Gelder is an award winning Science Fiction editor who collected these stories about how society adapts to global warming.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Finally, I'd like to recommend the work of P.J. Lazos. Lazos is an environmental lawyer who also writes fiction about environmental issues. She has a blog at Green Life, Blue Water, and her books Six Sisters (which I've read and enjoyed) and Oil and Water (which is new, and I haven't read it yet) deal with environmental themes.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

I just read this important but provocative article in the New Republic by Bill McKibben http://350.org/war-on-warming/?akid=1.... I believe he is right that only with full-out effort will we win. How do we make that happen?

Anne wrote: "I just read this important but provocative article in the New Republic by Bill McKibben http://350.org/war-on-warming/?akid=1.... I bel..."

Anne, you know I agree with you. I think maybe we have to be single-minded and insert the environment into every political discussion, every conversation, etc. Just writing this makes me think "what a bore I will be, but we must raise consciousness quickly." Having written this gut reaction, I am pretty sure there are better ways, but other than Bernie, the major candidates are either deniers or lip servicers. Guess I'm just rambling here due to frustration.....

Having written this gut reaction, I am pretty sure there are better ways, but other than Bernie, the major candidates are either deniers or lip servicers. Guess I'm just rambling here due to frustration.....

I think/hope that Clinton will be at least an enabler of other people's action, even if she looks like a lip servicer on the campaign trail. Bernie did push the Democratic Party platform in a good direction, and if Clinton wins and has coattails maybe there will be a more reasonable Congress to work with too.

I don't think the President is the most important vote in this race. I think it's most important to elect pro-climate-action candidates at the state, local, and congressional levels.

Karen wrote: "Having written this gut reaction, I am pretty sure there are better ways, but other than Bernie, the major candidates are either deniers or lip servicers. Guess I'm just rambling here due to frustr..."
You are correct that it is important to elect pro-climate-action local reps. Those of us live in MA have already done that! So we are left dealing with the national mess.

No president is going to be able to fight a House of Representatives controlled by the Republican party. Just take the time to check out who gets to lead the science committees there.

No president is going to be able to get much done in a Senate that needs 60 votes to pass anything worthwhile because of filibusters. That is a recent trend. I can remember when Vice President Al Gore broke a 50-50 tie with a vote on Bill Clinton's raising taxes on the wealthy. Those days may be gone for both parties.

There are already threats to throw out agreements made by President Obama after the election.

Karen wrote: "Having written this gut reaction, I am pretty sure there are better ways, but other than Bernie, the major candidates are either deniers or lip servicers. Guess I'm just rambling here due to frustr..."
I totally agree about local reps being very important in this process, even at the town level. The rep for my district in MA is actually a Republican and more pro-business than pro environment. ( I know that is an over simplification)

Jan wrote: ".I totally agree about local reps being very important in this process, even at the town level. The rep for my district in MA is actually a Republican and more pro-business than pro environment. ( I know that is an over simplification) "

I used to live in Belmont MA (one town west of Cambridge) up until a year ago. Our State Senator there, Will Brownsberger, was a neighbor who lived around the corner from us . He totally rebuilt his house as a green house with solar panels (not a greenhouse for growing plants). I was "walk to school" chair at my kids' school for a few years and I always invited him to walk with the kids on Walk to School day, and he did that. He was great.

We moved to the SF Bay area last summer for my husband's job at Google. So we are right in the middle of the techie Silicon Valley culture. It's green here but it's also brown. Our biggest issue right now is the drought. Jerry Brown may have his problems and his detractors, but at least he is taking it seriously and I think his policies and actions about water conservation have been helping rather than hurting.

Jimmy wrote: "No president is going to be able to fight a House of Representatives controlled by the Republican party. Just take the time to check out who gets to lead the science committees there. ."

So maybe, as Trump's campaign implodes, we can be optimistic. He is deeply unpopular among young voters. What if he really gets a drubbing and it has consequences down the ticket? I think it's a good reason to be enthusiastic about voting for Democrats, even if you are not thrilled with Hillary personally.

Karen wrote: "Jan wrote: ".I totally agree about local reps being very important in this process, even at the town level. The rep for my district in MA is actually a Republican and more pro-business than pro env..."I too applaud JB for taking the drought seriously. We are in a severe drought in most of MA and I am discouraged by the number of people who continue to water their lawns, despite bans in just about every town.

Karen wrote: "Jimmy wrote: "No president is going to be able to fight a House of Representatives controlled by the Republican party. Just take the time to check out who gets to lead the science committees there...."
Agree!!

A book I would recommend to this group is:
The Swarm, by Frank Schaetzing

From a scientific and environmentalist point of view, it's a very good thriller. When it was published it allowed the Gaia theory to reach a vast public, and also alerted everybody about the risks of continuous polluting and wasting natural resources.
I'll add it to the bookshelves.

I happened to see a Mark Ruffalo post about an article on trees and how they communicate, and someone posted about this book: The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from a Secret World.

I haven't read it yet, but plan too. I love trees! :-)

by Peter Wohlleben

Good idea for a group read.

Jimmy wrote: "Good idea for a group read."

Jimmy, I thought so too.

Another good thing about it: people don't have to read this book, they can just bring in comments and articles about trees.

Sounds really nice! Urban forestry is becoming more recognised and studied because urban trees provide shelter and food for migrating birds.

Shall I add "The Hidden Life of Trees" to our currently reading list? Maybe take "This Changes Everything" off?

I toured a nearby farm and enjoyed hearing about the fungal layer under the soil that makes for a rich, interconnected ecosystem, which is usually torn up by our modern agricultural practices. The Hidden Life of Trees may discuss this I guess. I know we have tree & fungi people on here. It seems a very important concept that is not well known and probably should be.

Clare wrote: "Every time I get a survey from food makers or sellers, I state that I always read ingredients and do not buy palm oil."

I could not find a single margarine that did not contain palm oil and I looked everywhere including Whole Foods. I am sticking with butter for now, though I was trying to cut down on cow products.

It is a dilemma - as you leave one environmentally harmful product behind, you are often faced with a substitute that is equally bad. Cow products don't HAVE TO BE harmful, but with present agricultural practices they are.
Have you read Cows Save the World by Judith Schwartz?
Worthwhile!

Never heard of this man - Alexander von Humboldt - have any of you?

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/legacy_o...

I'm going to have to check out the book, The Invention of Nature.

Namer of the Humboldt Current and Humboldt Squid. Among many other discoveries. He was among a group which explored South America - Charles la Condamine led a group from Europe to map the equator - and with a background in chemistry and geology in Germany, he went about discovering and recording everything. Including climbing the Andes and discovering that water boils at a lower temperature high in the atmosphere.

I have a question for the moderators.

Let's suppose that you have written a new book. Would you keep it a secret from the group? Is there a way that you could tell group members about it without breaking the rules? I notice that an author can no longer show his/her book cover when they post a comment? I got in trouble when I announced a book giveaway & the moderators said I needed to participate in discussions. I have done this, over 100 posts I believe.

So what is the proper way of saying I have a new book that I think readers might be interested in hearing about?

James Kraus

We have a folder called Green Group Authors. Feel free to use it, James. We do not want spamming through the other threads. I've seen on other Goodreads groups where it takes over nonstop.

OK, thank you Jimmy.

Look forward to checking out your book, James.
Thanks for respecting the rules.