We're located just outside Buffalo, NY, and each spring we find ourselves marveling at the transformation of our neighborhoods into budding, green places. Through newly opened windows, the scent of blossoms tempts us outside. The outdoors becomes something we enjoy rather than seek shelter from, and our homes expand to encapsulate backyards, parks, and the natural world.
The environment is not only something to enjoy. Protecting it is a matter of utmost importance for future generations. To better address our environmental crisis, we must consider a number of economic, psychological, and ethical dilemmas.
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Energy efficient refrigerators, biofuels, and hybrid cars-on the surface, we agree that they save energy. But is this actually a trap?
Botanist Steve Hallett points out how greater efficiency actually leads to more consumption and greater harm to the environment. While we are "saving" electricity, our overall consumption still increases!
The Efficiency Trap
"successfully shifts the conversation away from efficiency as an end-all-be-all to advocate for.... sustainability on all fronts," says E Magazine, and proposes ways we can resolve this contradiction. The Futurist says this "frank, thought-provoking [book] deserves a hearing. . . ." --and it will forever change the way you think about economic growth, peak oil, and climate change.
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Dutch philosopher Floris van den Berg's newest work, coming June 4th, considers the environmental crisis and the everyday choices we make from an ethical perspective. By taking into consideration the universal capacity for suffering, van den Berg proposes a new perspective, called universal subjectivism. Paul Cliteur, author of The Secular Outlook, calls this "provocative," and adds that "anyone interested in practical ethics must read this."
Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation, calls Philosophy for a Better World "an engaging and stimulating book, written in a lively style that will be accessible to anyone."
The daily routines we take for granted - eating meat, taking a car to work, using plastic bags - will not look the same after reading it.
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While polls show that we care about environmental quality, our actions often do not. Kenneth Worthy argues that this contradiction stems from the fact that our modern lifestyle is disconnected from nature in almost every way.
Invisible Nature: Healing the Destructive Divide Between People and the Environment, coming August 13th, traces broken pathways between our lives as consumers and the destruction that results in places such as contaminated rural Asian villages where our electronics are recycled. It discusses how we can reconfigure modern life to become more in touch with how we affect the environment and create greater contact with the nature that sustains us.
David Evan Harris, founder of the Global Lives Project, says Invisible Nature gives "hope that in its decoding of our precarious predicament, we will find a way to weave back together all the right pieces." Carolyn Merchant, author of The Death of Nature, calls it "a striking account of the deep divide between humans and the natural world. . . . Required reading for all who want a path to a new future."
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We hope these books will prove insightful as we consider our duty to protect the Earth and our need to remain connected to the natural world. Now get out there and enjoy the spring!
Lisa Michalski
Prometheus Books
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