books

Ted Glick on two new books that address capitalism and the environment

I don't know if Gus Speth and Tony Mazzocchi knew each other personally. But as two fascinating books make clear, their distinct life experiences led them both to believe that the capitalist system which now dominates most of the world is the ultimate problem humanity must face up to and deal with if we are to survive.

Glenn Hurowitz’s analysis of Democratic election strategy

Hurowitz has written a book that analyzes how the Democrats managed to lose control of Congress for 12 whole years and let Bush get into and hold his office for the last eight. He sums up the problem in a single word: Courage. What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the "ape" in apricot? Courage can be hard to define, but you know it when you see it. For example, here is an old YouTube video where some guy off camera tells Cheney to GFY.

Sometimes there is a fine line between courage and stupidity. This guy, who may now be sitting in Guantanamo for all I know, sure had balls. Base jumpers and NASCAR drivers are on the wrong side of that line, because courage only counts when an individual takes a personal risk for others. We instinctively admire courageous leaders. If they are also smart leaders, they can impart a serious competitive advantage.

Hurowitz's book Fear and Courage in the Democratic Party is about 270 pages long but has only six chapters. Four of those chapters juxtapose four politicians: the late Paul Wellstone, Bill Clinton (gutless wonder), Tom Daschle (circumstantial coward), and Nancy Pelosi.

Kunstler meets Colbert

Painful:

A review of Claire Hope Cummings’ Uncertain Peril

In October 1996, a spokesman for Monsanto told Farm Journal why his company was buying up seed companies left and right: "What you're seeing is not just a consolidation of seed companies, it's really a consolidation of the entire food chain."

Today, Monsanto is the world's largest seed company -- and makes more money selling seeds than chemicals. The company's biotech seeds and traits accounted for 88 percent of the worldwide area devoted to genetically modified seeds in 2006 -- and Monsanto earns royalties on every single one. No one needed to tell Monsanto: Whoever controls the first link in the food chain -- the seeds -- controls the food supply.

What better way to understand the perilous state of industrial food and farming than by starting with the seed? Claire Hope Cummings' new book, Uncertain Peril: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Seeds is a sharp and elegant analysis of the biotech seed debate.

An interview with The ‘Stache pre-pie-in-the-face

Yes, Tom Friedman came to Brown University on Earth Day to unveil his new book and got hit by a pie.

But he cleaned himself up, came back with a joke about surviving Beirut and Jerusalem but running into trouble in Providence, and went on to deliver a stem-winder of an address for an op-ed columnist essentially outlining his latest book.

I found The World Is Flat to be a good window into business models in the 21st century. His new offering, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America, promises to be a cogent lassoing and explication of many of the biggest things that matter in the 21st century. Friedman chooses as the crucial drivers: energy supply and demand, climate, the spread of democracy versus petro-authoritarianism, biodiversity, and energy poverty.

A few bits from Friedman's speech to look forward to in Hot, Flat, and Crowded and when he returns to columns this month:

• The McCain gas tax holiday: A "dumb as we want to be" approach to energy policy.
• On high oil prices and petro-dictatorship: With oil at $25 per barrel, Bush looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul. At $100 per barrel, look into Putin's eyes and you'll see "all the instruments of democracy he's swallowed."
• Did Reagan bring down the USSR -- or was it the decline in oil prices from $80 per barrel to $14.50?
• And finally, China as the Speed bus, except that it must switch from a diesel to a hybrid engine without going below 50 miles an hour. (That's the first thing since The Matrix that makes you aspire to be Keanu Reeves, isn't it?)

Before his speech, I had the chance to catch up with Friedman and ask him a few questions. The short interview is below:

The Betty Crocker’s Cookbook of low-carbon living

When I got to college, the best book I bought was a 3-ring notebook-style Betty Crocker's Cookbook. Not adventurous food, but for someone who knew very little about anything concerning food, it was a great first book. It assumes that you are reading a cookbook because you want to know what to do, step-by-step -- instead of just hinting, it lays it out, with pictures and plain language. Great stuff. A couple times a year my wife and I still will ask one another, "What does Betty say to do with these?"

I always think of Betty (and the old How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive) as the epitome of good technical instruction books. They are all about practical information first, with a minimum of wasted words.

Today I found a new one for that list.

A biologist explains what security experts can learn from nature

Raphael Sagarin. Marine biologist Raphael Sagarin has eclectic interests. During the course of his career, he’s scoured an Alaskan gambling record for clues to climate change, retraced John Steinbeck’s and Ed Ricketts’ survey of the Sea of Cortez, and even studied how Easy Cheese escaped early chlorofluorocarbon regulations. In 2002, as a science fellow on […]

Thirty years ago, high crop prices caused environmental destruction, too

Last week, I wrote about high crop prices that were inspiring people to make all manner of dubious land-use decisions, like plowing up environmentally sensitive land to plant environmentally destructive corn. Then I came across an interesting bit from Merchants of Grain: The Power and Profits of the Five Giant Companies at the Center of […]

Voting is open for the Orion Readers’ Choice Award

Read a good green-themed book lately? The editors of Orion have, and in advance of their award of the annual Orion Book Award next month, for an outstanding book exploring the interaction of people and the natural world, they've just posted all the nominated books here for voting in a "people's choice" contest.

From The World Without Us to Blessed Unrest, it's an impressive list that makes me realize how many books I want to crack open. But after looking them over, I did at least take the time to vote for my own favorite of 2007. Hope you will, too.