Below is a list of books worth reading. Most of these books are not recent and you will come to the conclusion that if we did not listen and act then why would anyone do it now?
This is why EQUAL EARTH has come to the conclusion that there is only one way to prevent a global apocalypse and that is to engage as a commercial counterforce. We shall buy forests, natural wildlife habitat and land wherever we can on commercial terms but unlike speculators we shall hand this land back to our fellow species and nature so that they will thrive and help to keep us healthy and alive.
The World Guide
published by the Instituto del Tercer Mundo obtainable from New Internationalist Publications Ltd. Oxford, UK
Fax No. 0044 1865 793 152 or email: newint@gn.apc.org
Comment: This is an excellent reference book giving all major facts about the socio-economic-political situation in each country.
"In 1993 the world consumption of insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and plant growth regulators rose to one billion eight hundred and ninety three thousand metric tons. Nearly half of it consumed in Europe, while the USA with 248,000 metric tons and China with 240,000 metric tons remained in first and second place."
Stephen Pope, Mike Appleton, Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, The Green Book – The Essential A-Z Guide to the Environment, Foreword by Sir Arthur Norman (Hodder and Stoughton, London 1991)
"Some cash crops and the high intensity practices to which they are subject ruin the soil. Soil that supports two successive peanut crops for example, can lose 30 per cent of its organic matter by the end of the second year with resultant drops in yield. Intensive cotton and tobacco production have similarly poisonous effects. In short cash crops have done the developing world a lot more harm than good."
Paul Kennedy, Preparing For The Twenty-First Century
(HarperCollins, London 1993)
"During the 1980s alone, an additional 842 million people were added to the earth's population, while croplands were eliminated to make way for roads and buildings, soil erosion and degradation caused millions of acres of farmland to be abandoned, and careless irrigation led to widespread salinization of the soil.
The overall consensus – with the exception of a few revisionists – is that the projected growth in the world's population cannot be sustained with our current patterns and level of consumption. Unlike animals and birds, human beings destroy forests, burn fossil fuels, drain wetlands, pollute rivers and oceans, and ransack the earth for ores, oil and other raw materials.
According to one calculation, the average American baby represents twice the environmental damage of a Swedish child, three times that of an Italian, thirteen times that of a Brazilian, thirty-five times that of an Indian, and 280 (!) times that of a Chadian or Haitian because its level of consumption throughout its life will be so much greater.
But if, for example, the per capita consumption of 1,2 billion Chinese reached that of Japan or the United States, the environmental damage would be colossal.
Then there is the special way in which the EC supports agriculture, described by The Economist as 'the single most idiotic system of economic mismanagement that the rich western countries have ever devised'. "
Robert Arvill, Man and Environment
(Pelican Books, London 1967)
"…..unlike other animals, he has the power consciously to regulate his own numbers…..The pressures arising from the arrival of a new baby every 12 seconds and a new car every 5 seconds are estimated to lead to the loss of 1 hectare (ha) of countryside every minute."
Jack Parsons, Population versus Liberty
(Pemberton Books, London 1971)
"What we need is a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities and Duties."
Adrian Cowell, The Decade of Destruction
(Hodder and Stoughton, London 1990)
" 'No one will intimidate the present State Government not to use this forest', the Governor of ParaHelio, Guieros, said when he inaugurated the first blast furnace in January, 1988. 'It's very convenient for those who have already achieved development, like the people of Sao Paulo, to support ecologists. The people who created Cubatao, now that they are developed, try to give lessons to Amazonia: 'Look, they say, 'don't touch the forest. 'Every one on the platform with him laughed. For Cubatao was the world's most polluted industrial complex."
Carl Sagan & Richard Turco, A Path Where No Man Thought
(Century, London 1991)
"The stratospheric ozone layer – or ozonesphere- envelops our globe in a protective shield. Yet the shield is extraordinarily vulnerable. If all of the ozone in the stratosphere were compressed into a gas at the sea-level pressure of the atmosphere, the layer would be no thicker than a pencil point. Providentially, the ozone layer is dispersed high in the atmosphere, safely away from meddling humans. Or at least it used to be."
Mark Girouard, Cities and People
(Yale University Press, New Haven 1985)
"Two hundred years ago or so it was possible to see the whole of any city in the world, without having to go several thousand feet up in an aeroplane to do so. One could see London from Highgate, Rome from Monte Mario, or Paris from Montmartre."
David Day, The Eco Wars
(Harrap, London 1989)
"I suggest we construct a pyramid from the coffins of those who are killed in the ecology wars in just one year….1 At the peak of the pyramid we place coffins of the most conspicuous casualties: the scores of conservationists who are murdered outright for their stand against the destruction of the environment and other species. 2 Next we have the coffins of the hundreds of tribal people who are massacred because they occupy and protect wilderness lands which others wish to exploit. 3 Beneath these are the thousands of coffins of those drowned in the many floods which directly result from ruthless cutting-down of mountain forests. 4 Then we come to the tens of thousands of coffins of those who die through chemical poisoning, toxic waste pollution, atomic radiation and industrial fires and explosions. 5 Further below are the coffins of those who die in droughts and famines brought on by farming and grazing methods which result in soil erosion and desertification. 6 Finally we come to the massive base of the pyramid. It is built of over twenty-five million coffins for those people who are killed through drinking and using polluted water."
Laurence Pringle, Global Warming
(Hodder and Stoughton, London 1990)
"Reforesting an area the size of Alaska would remove about a thousand million tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. In the tropics, at least five million square kilometres of cleared land could be reforested."
T.T. Macan & E.B. Wortington, Life in Lakes and Rivers
(Bloomsbury, London 1951)
Joseph Stiglitz, Globalisation and its Discontents
(Penguin London 2002)
"What could we do about the 1.2 billion people around the world living on less than a dollar a day, or the 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day – more than 45% percent of world's population….They discover that trade considerations trump all others, including the environment.
It has shown why markets may lead to the underproduction of some things – like basic research – and the overproduction of others – like pollution.
The typical central bank governor begins his day worrying about inflation statistics, not poverty statistics; the trade minister worries about export numbers, not pollution indices…..Inflation may mean that the dollars he gets repaid will be worth less than the dollars he lent.
GLOBALIZATION TODAY is not working for many of the world's poor. It is not working for much of the environment. It is not working for the stability of the global economy."
Maurice & Robert Burton, Animal Kingdom
(Octopus, London 1976)
T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism
(George Allen and Unwin, London 1955)
Godwin Sogolo, African Philosophy
(Ibadan University Press, 1993)
Stuart Wrede / William Howard Adams, Editors, Denatured Visions
(The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1988)
"Recently we received at home what was meant to be a sort of botanical decoration. It was a very chic little black box, containing not a potted plant, but just a clipped row of beautiful green grass that looked like a time capsule from a Steven Spielberg movie. This was a very peculiar bit of science-fiction landscape in a New York apartment. On a similar note, our children are always coming back after what they call a nature walk in Washington Square, and they say, producing something like one pitiful autumn leaf, 'We brought back some nature', as if they were coming from another planet." By Robert Rosenblum
Susan George, How The Other Half Dies
(Pelican, London 1976)
"The only point everyone seems to agree upon is that matters are bound to grow worse…..'Development'has been the password for impsoing a new kind of dependency, for enriching the already rich world and for shaping other societies to meet its commercial and political needs…..If it takes you six hours to read this book, somewhere in the world 2,500 people will have died of starvation or of hunger-related illness by the time you finish."
Stephanie Lashford, The Residue Report
(Thorsons, Wellingborough, 1988)
Foreword by Sir Richard Body, Former Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Agriculture
"Pesticides in general work by interfering with the delicate mechanism of the central nervous system in pests…..Should chemicals such as pesticides or hydrocarbons, be absorbed into the brain, that can then interfere with the production of chemicals which enable nerve messages to travel from one area of the brain to another, then behavioural problems can be seen. These behavioural problems can be depression, lethargy, malaise, bouts of hyperactivity, attempted suicide, irrationality, loss of appetite, introversion, inability to handle even the simplest of tasks and general personality breakdown…..At Risk Groups: People spending leisure time in the countryside. Millions of people are at risk especially at weekends and holiday times from contamination in the countryside: ramblers, walkers, campers, golfers, cyclists, riders and picnickers."
Policy Development Studies, International Perspectives in Aging, Population and Policy Challenges (UNFPA, New York 1982)
Paul Ehrlich / Anne Ehrlich, The Population Explosion
(Hutchinson, London 1990)
"The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities: that is, to the area's carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated? When its population can't be maintained without rapidly depleting nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current human occupants, that area is overpopulated. By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated.
It's time to face facts: Third world aid without birth control is like trying to pour water uphill…..The reason for the absence of honesty on this issue is no secret: most officials panic at the thought of the political backlash from the Catholic Church in poverty stricken areas of the Third world."
Christopher Robbins, Poisoned Harvest
(Victor Gollancz, London 1991)
"the basic source of energy for all life on earth is the conversion of light energy from the sun into chemical energy to fuel the production of simple sugars like glucose. This is photosynthesis, and it occurs only in plants. The chemical reactions involved are complex and can be disrupted at several points. Blocking photosynthesis is the mechanism of many herbicides. Treated plants starve to death…..As resistance to chemicals increases, farmers are compelled to use more pesticides more often. Pesticide approvals assume the chemicals are 'safe until proven harmful' rather than the wiser 'harmful until proven safe'."
Nandini Joshi, Development Without Destruction
(Navajivan, Ahmedabad 1992)
Problems of Modern Society, edited by Peter Worsley
(Penguin Education 1978)
"No city dweller today needs to be reminded of the atmospheric pollution caused by the combustion of coal, oil and gasoline. Our urban areas are overhung most of the time by a pall of smog whose more toxic compounds irritate the membranes of the eyes and respiratory system, produce cancer and otherwise shorten lives….Carbon dioxide is produced by the oxidation of carbon, as in the burning or decay of organic matter and in animal metabolism. It is essential to plant life. Nevertheless, this tasteless, odorless, colorless gas is today under scrutiny for its potentially ominous role as an environmental heat trap. Carbon dioxide permits most solar energy to pass through, but it is relatively impervious to heat radiated from the earth. Thus it acts like a global greenhouse….
The rapid depletion of the known reserves of coal and oil could raise the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by as much as seventeen times – an enormous amount indeed. What causes deep concern among informed persons as the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide mounts is that the increased retention of heat in the atmospheric through the 'greenhouse effect' may melt a good deal of the Greenland and Antarctic ice caps. This would raise the level of the oceans by as much as 250 feet, drowning every port city in the world and inundating every coastal plain."
Catherine Caulfield, Multiple Exposures
(Penguin, London 1989)
"Another Soviet satellite, Cosmos 1402, launched in 1982, carried a nuclear reactor that was intended to be boosted to a higher orbit when its job was done. Instead, in 1983, the reactor re-entered earth's atmosphere. Scientists believe that the reactor was destroyed by the atmospheric friction and is gradually returning to earth as fine radio-active particles.
Plutonium-238 has been used to supply power for scientific experiments and communications equipment aboard American space satellites since 1961. On 21 April 1964, a satellite carrying a unit known as SNAP9-A was unsuccessfully launched. As it re-entered the atmosphere over the Indian ocean, the satellite and its SNAP unit disintegrated. SNAP-9-A contained 17,000 curies of plutonium, which returned to earth within several years, and is deposited all over the globe."
FAW, Menschenbild und Ueberbevoelkerung
(Universitaetsverlag, Ulm 1992)
"Just to maintain its existing and for most Indians impoverished living standard, India needs every year an additional 127,000 schools, 373,000 teachers, four million jobs and ten million tonnes more food."
Nigel Dudley, Good Health on a Polluted Planet
(Thorsons, Harper Collins, London 1991)
UNCED 1992 Report of Switzerland for the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro 1992 (Swiss Ministry for Environment, Forest and Countryside BUWAL)
"Conservative estimates assume that daily 50-150 Species become extinct, on a yearly basis 50,000. If this trend continues in 25 to 50 years a quarter of all today existing Species of plants and animals will have been exterminated irretrievably. The destruction of the world-wide eco-systems does not only affect animals and plants: Ever more indigenous tribal people in the World are being robbed of their habitat and in their originality extinguished."
Anne H. Ehrlich / Paul R. Ehrlich, EARTH
(Thames Methuen, London 1967)
"Over the long term, Earth could support a relatively small human population, with each person living quite extravagantly. Or, it could support a much larger number of people living near the subsistence level.
That means the era of what US economist Kenneth Boulding called the 'cowboy economy' must come to an end. A cowboy economy is one with a very high level of 'throughput' - it specialises in turning natural resources into rubbish as fast as possible. It is a reckless, exploitative economic system, based on two demonstrably false premises: that Earth has infinite resources, and that the ecosphere has an infinite capacity to absorb abuse. These premises underlie most of what is taught in university courses in economics, in which growth of the conventional economic measure of throughput, the gross national product (GNP), is considered an unalloyed good.
Sadly in many developing nations, especially in Africa and some Muslim societies, women still have pathetically few rights except to work, marry, bear children and die."
Sumudu Whithanage, Towards Legal Protection of Tropical Forests
(Sri Lanka Environment Congress, Dehiwela 1991)
The major causes of forest degradation in Sri Lanka have been identified as: a) settled agriculture and shifting cultivation b) introduction of cash crops and expansion of plantations c) urbanisation and extensive agriculture d) timber felling e) gem mining f) expansion of tourism and g) encroachment. If one takes a closer look at these causes, it will be possible to identify two major reasons – poverty coupled with population growth and the emphasis placed on short-term economic development rather than environmental protection."
Policy Development Studies, Population Growth and Food Problems
(UNFPA, New York 1979)
John Seymour & Herbert Girardet, Blueprint for a Green Planet
(Prentice Hall, New York 1987)
"Each second 140 hamburgers are bought from just one of the world's fast food chains. Sales are increasing by 10 billion every year. Between 1966 and 1983, 25 million acres of Amazonian forest were converted to pasture. Yet by 1986 nearly all the ranches that were cleared before 1978 had been abandoned because soil erosion and loss of productivity made them worthless.
Since 1977, 1.7 billion tons of American farmland have disappeared every year. That means that for every ton of corn that the farmers produced, over five hundred tons of soil are gone for good."
James Cutler & Rob Edwards, Britain's Nuclear Nightmare
(Penguin, London 1988)
"When asked directly whether it was safe to live near nuclear plants, Sir Richard replied enigmatically: 'Is it safe to go home by motor car? What is safe?'…..They found that children born in Seascale were ten times more likely to die of Leukaemia than average, and three times more likely to die of other cancers."
Patrick Pietroni, The Greening of Medicine
(Victor Gollancz, London 1991)
Foreword by HRH The Prince of Wales
"To list the ways we have over the centuries polluted our rivers, destroyed our wild life and rendered many other species extinct is both depressing and painful. DDT (used widely as a pesticide for the control of malaria) has been found in polar bears at the North Poole and in penguins at the South Pole. Astronauts on the moon were able to detect the Los Angeles smoke pall from thousands of miles above the earth. The list is endless. Thirty-five per cent of our sewage waste is dumped into the North Sea and has begun to affect quite dramatically the patterns of diseases found in fish. Figure 6 illustrates what was known in 1968 of the link between pesticides and the food chain. Today's list would be far greater and would have to include the problem of acid rain, deforestation and the greenhouse effect."
André Singer, Battle for the Planet
(Pan Books, London 1967)
"When an oake is being felled it gives a kind of shriekes or groanes, that may be heard a mile off, as if it were the genius of the oake lamenting.' Quoted by Sir James Frazer in the Golden Bough.
At the current rate of destruction around the world, an area of forest about the size of England and Wales is disappearing every year. It has been calculated that this amounts to a forest the size of a football pitch being felled every second.
The main causes of plant decline are deforestation, overgrazing, air and water pollution. But 'improvements' to land already under cultivation are also a significant factor in species destruction."
David Attenborough, The Living Planet
(Collins/BBC Books 1984)
"The other great natural resource of the world, second only to the oceans, is the tropical rain forest. That too is being plundered in a similarly reckless way. We know that it plays a key role in the worldwide balance of life, absorbing the heavy equatorial rains and releasing them in a steady flow down the rivers to irrigate the lower valleys….Once it has gone, the roots of the trees no longer hold the soil together. The lashing rains wash it away. So the rivers turn to brown roaring torrents, the land becomes a soil-less waste and the richest treasury of plants and animals in the world has vanished."
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
David Attenborough, Life on Earth
(Collins/BBC Books 1979)
"But although denying that we have a special position in the natural world might seem becomingly modest in the eye of eternity, it might also be used as an excuse for evading our responsibilities. The fact is that no species has ever had such wholesale control over everything on earth, living or dead, as we now have. That lays upon us, whether we like it or not, an awesome responsibility. In our hands now lies not only our own future, but that of all other living creatures with whom we share the earth."
