Resources in this library reflect interesting resources and ideas about campus sustainability that intrigue and inspire us, and that we would like to share with others on the sustainability learning path. Literature is added to the library regularly to ensure the most progressive sustainability initiatives are made available to UBC. Literature Library users are encouraged to provide information on valuable material which is not yet part of the library. Content is organized according to UBC’s sustainability themes of community, ecoomy, energy & climate, and materials.

COMMUNITY

Toward Sustainable Communities: Resources for Citizens and their Governments

Mark Roseland (2005)
This text offers practical suggestions and innovative solutions to a range of community problems--including energy efficiency, transportation, land use, housing, waste reduction, recycling, air quality and governance. In clear language, with updated tools, initiatives and resources, a new preface and foreword, this sustainable practices resource is for both citizens and governments.

The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices

Sarah James, Torbjorn Lahti (2004)
The Natural Step for Communities provides inspiring examples of communities that have made dramatic changes toward sustainability and explains how others can emulate their success.

Blessed Unrest - How the largest movement in the world came into being, and why no one saw it coming

Paul Hawken (2007)
Hawken (Natural Capitalism) traces the formation of the environmental and social justice movement from the beginnings of natural science across years and continents in this rousing and "inadvertently optimistic" call to action.

Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century

Alex Steffen, Al Gore, Stephan Sagmeister (2006)
This 600-page companion to the eco-friendly website of the same name (www.worldchanging.com) is chock-a-block with information about what is going on right now to create an environmentally and economically sustainable future-and what stands in opposition.

The Sacred Balance

David Suzuki (2007)
In this extensively revised and enlarged edition of his best-selling book, David Suzuki reflects on the increasingly radical changes in nature and science — from global warming to the science behind mother/baby interactions — and examines what they mean for humankind’s place in the world.

WASTE

What We Leave Behind

Derrick Jensen, Aric McBay (2009)
What We Leave Behind is a piercing, impassioned guide to living a truly responsible life on earth. An in-depth analysis of waste and wastefulness

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

William McDonough, Michael Braungart (2002)
In Cradle to Cradle, the authors present a manifesto calling for a new industrial revolution, one that would render both traditional manufacturing and traditional environmentalism obsolete. Recycling, for instance, is actually "downcycling," creating hybrids of biological and technical "nutrients" which are then unrecoverable and unusable.

SUSTAINABLE ECONOMICS

Natural Capitalism

Paul Hawken, Amy Lovins, L. Hunter Lovins (2008)
In Natural Capitalism, three top strategists show how leading-edge companies are practicing "a new type of industrialism" that is more efficient and profitable while saving the environment and creating jobs.

A Short History of Progress

Ronald Wright (2004)
Progress can do us in, or so argues British historian Wright as he embarks on a lively if meandering journey through the development and demise of ancient civilizations to determine whether our current one is doomed.

The Case Against the Global Economy - & for a Turn Toward Local

Jerry Mander, Edward Goldsmith (1997)
The contributors to this handbook argue that the rush toward economic globalization, based on free trade and deregulation, is both harmful and reversible.

Small is Beautiful

EF Schumacher (1989)
This book can be read as a response to the Washington Consensus and Chicago school economist perspectives of metric-based laissez faire economics driven by efficiency, often at the expense of class polarization and increasing inequality, that pervade the shallow "common-sense" understandings of amateur economists and the general United States population: "...growth of GNP must be a good thing, irrespective of what has grown and who, if anyone, has benefited."

The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world

Peter Senge (2008)
In The Necessary Revolution, the management guru discusses the environmental woes facing business and some steps that may lead to a more sustainable world.

FOOD

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Michael Pollan (2006)
It's a fascinating journey up and down the food chain, one that might change the way you read the label on a frozen dinner, dig into a steak or decide whether to buy organic eggs. You'll certainly never look at a Chicken McNugget the same way again.

In Defense of Food

Michael Pollan (2009)
In Defense of Food is a series of wonderfully clear and thoughtful answers that help us omnivores navigate the nutritional minefield that's come to typify our food culture.

100 Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating

Alisa Smith, J.B. Mackinnon (2008)
The authors’ food-focused experiment questions globalization, monoculture, the oil economy, environmental collapse, and the tattering threads of community. Thought-provoking and inspiring, The 100-Mile Diet offers more than a way of eating. In the end, it’s a new way of looking at the world.

The World Without Us

Alan Weisman (2007)
Teasing out the consequences of a simple thought experiment—what would happen if the human species were suddenly extinguished—Weisman has written a sort of pop-science ghost story, in which the whole earth is the haunted house.

CALL TO ACTION
Would you like to suggest a book or other resource for this section? Get in touch with Anke Sieb.