2010 Global Sustainability Summer School-ParticipantSuggestions

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A few of us thought it might be helpful to have a section of books or readings that participants thought were valuable to the sustainability discussion, or at least good reads! Feel free to change categories, add books, or contribute your own thoughts to books already listed.

Environmental Studies

• "Classics in Environmental Studies" - Nico Helissen (1997).

Contains excerpts of books and reports from Malthus and Carson to Harrison and Gore. A good way to ramp up quickly on some of the commonly discussed environmental literature. Note the copyright is quite old, so newer stuff is not found in the book.

Change / Sustainability

• Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed. 2007. Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Patton.
  

A MUST READ: The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Joseph Tainter (1988)
Review from Amazon: "Political disintegration is a persistent feature of world history. The Collapse of Complex Societies, though written by an archaeologist, will therefore strike a chord throughout the social sciences. Any explanation of societal collapse carries lessons not just for the study of ancient societies, but for the members of all such societies in both the present and future. Dr. Tainter describes nearly two dozen cases of collapse and reviews more than 2000 years of explanations. He then develops a new and far-reaching theory that accounts for collapse among diverse kinds of societies, evaluating his model and clarifying the processes of disintegration by detailed studies of the Roman, Mayan and Chacoan collapses."

Economics

I think this is the paper driving many of Doyne's comments on CBA, though I should probably ask the man himself :^)
I assigned it to my CBA class last semester, after a long semester of hard work on CBA, they were not pleased... he he he
Martin L. Weitzman (2009). Additive Damages, Fat-Tailed Climate Dynamics, and Uncertain Discounting.
Economics: The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal, Vol. 3, 2009-39.
http://www.economics-ejournal.org/economics/journalarticles/2009-39

Fun

• "Encounters with the Archdruid" - John McPhee (1971).

A narrative of three journeys with David Brower, first executive director of the Sierra Club and founder of Friends of the Earth. In each journey, David Brower is paired with a mineral engineer, a dam builder, and a real estate developer. A fabulous and quick read with many take aways.

Movies

• By Hayao Miyazaki - Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away
• By Robert Benigni - The Tiger and the Snow