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Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder Review

I'm old enough to remember an unplugged childhood, and although I want my kids to play unfettered in the woods and waters, we're a different society today. We can't just let them wander alone, but we also owe them the natural formative experiences we enjoyed like building forts, treehouses and teepees, catching fish, frogs and critters, and observing nature - in nature, not through the TV. Although we try to limit the exposure to electronica - it's a pervasive force in modern life. Louv shows through dozens of examples where kids today get their lessons and experiences - more often than not through the TV or computer screen. He's concerned that a new generation of children is growing up detatched from the earth, who view it simply as a resource to be mined, drilled, and sold. He sees children losing the wonder of nature, and the earth losing a generation of would-be caretakers.
As parents we don't have to move to Montana, or trap our meals to make a positive impact. It can be many little things, like catching fireflies, wading in a small stream with your kids, following animal tracks in the snow. These are all no cost and high-benefit activities that we can do with our kids to introduce them to the wonder that lies just outside our doors.
This book is a call to action. I'm giving it to the principal at my son's elementary school. If you have kids, are thinking about having kids, or are concerned with the future of childhood - READ THIS BOOK!
We had unplugged the tv for a few months and, frankly, were wavering. (We miss it too). After reading Last Child in the Woods, the TV is staying in the cellar. Maybe for the long haul!

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39% Off Discounts: Best Buy for Silent Spring Review

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Silent Spring Review

Rachel Carson sent tremors through American society with the publication of her 1962 book "Silent Spring." Carson, a marine biologist who died two years after publication of the book, wrote "Silent Spring" when she received a letter from a concerned citizen lamenting the mass death of birds after a DDT spraying. Carson continues to serve as a touchstone for both mainline and radical environmental groups, from the Sierra Club to Earth First!. It is not difficult to see why; Carson's call for active involvement in our environment is still an absolute necessity today as the industrial system continues its rapid march across the landscape. If we do not want our children born with gills and fins, keeping Carson in mind is important.
Carson's analysis of DDT and other synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbon pesticides resulted in a deeply ominous conclusion-pesticides destroy the environment and threaten everything within the ecological system. Carson examined the composition of pesticides, revealing that synthetic pesticides have the ability to not only kill their intended targets, but they also move right up the food chain, eventually reaching the human population. The pesticides then build up in the tissues of the body, rarely breaking down but often building in intensity through continued exposure or changing into forms that are even more toxic by interacting with other ingested chemicals. Even worse, these chemicals cause tremors, paralysis, cancer, and a host of other unpleasant ailments. Carson cites numerous stories about exposed people falling ill and dying shortly after spraying these toxic chemicals. Carson also shows the biological process these poisons take when they enter the body, when they cut off oxygen to the cells and raise the metabolic rate to unhealthy levels. Carson proves these chemicals move on to succeeding generations of offspring through mother's milk and other biological processes.
Most of the book deals with the effects of chemical spraying on wildlife in the environment. Separate chapters deal with birds, insects, fish, and plant life. Needless to say, the picture painted here is not pretty. Too often, spraying chemicals in the 1950's and 1960's brought into play the full ignorance of the human race. Carson's book shows how farmers applied pounds of poisons to their land, far exceeding the recommended application levels. Spray trucks moved through neighborhoods, hosing down the community with poison while the kiddies played outside in the yard. On several occasions, planes sprayed poison on cities. This reckless disregard for life in any form ruined landscapes, created mounds of animal corpses, and gave us tasty water that can melt your teeth.
What is surprising about Carson's book is that people knew all about the effects of these poisons. "Silent Spring" made a difference because it puts it all together, showing how a series of localized incidents is, in fact, a national problem. Carson also wrote her book in a style where even the densest yokels in the herd could figure out the dangers of the problem. Since I am a science idiot, I appreciated Carson's clear articulation of the problem without sacrificing the hard data behind the examples.
Carson delivers a stinging rebuke to our conception of mankind as the dominant force in the universe. If humanity truly rules the roost, so to speak, why are we such idiots about sustaining the very environment that feeds us? The ignorance of man in this book is astounding. Repeatedly, we destroy and destroy again even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the damage we are causing. Local governments kept spraying even when evidence showed it was a failure. Birds literally fell out of the sky while the trucks went out for another pass through the neighborhood. Dumb, dumb, dumb!
"Silent Spring" concludes with a call for sanity. Carson's answer to the insane escalation of chemical spraying is to seek out biological control methods. Many insects have natural enemies that, if introduced into a problem area, will keep down pest populations. Even localized spraying will work better than mass, indiscriminate spraying. Carson argues that biological control methods are increasingly important because insects are building up resistance to pesticides, requiring the creation of even more virulent poisons in a never-ending cycle where nobody wins.
"Silent Spring" is required reading for anyone concerned about the environment. Carson's book led to significant changes in environmental law (some would say not enough change) and resulted in the outright ban of DDT. My only problem with the book is the introduction written by Al Gore, as the publisher marketed the book with that fact in mind. Gore's name seems to merit equal billing with Carson's on the cover. One must remember Al Gore is a politician and is in league with the destroyers because he needs their money to run his expensive campaigns. Carson would be appalled.

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43% Off Discounts: Purchase Cheap Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things Review

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Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things Review

This doesn't feel like a book - literally. It's a different size and shape, the pages are thick, the thing feels significantly heavier than it looks, and it's waterproof.
The design of the book is making a point also made in the text of the book: the current state of recycling generally turns higher quality products into lower quality ones useful only for purposes other than the original product, and then eventually discards them. This is not recycling; it's slow motion waste.
"Cradle to Cradle," the object, is intended to be easily and completely recyclable into a new book of the same quality.
"Cradle to cradle," the phrase, is contrasted to "cradle to grave."
"Cradle to Cradle," the text, argues in favor of making all human productions either recyclable in the way this book is or completely biodegradable so that they can be used as fertilizer.
In the future envisioned and partially created and described by this pair of authors, packaging will be tossed on the ground in response to signs reading "Please litter!" Appliances will be leased and returned to manufacturers to be completely recycled. Objects that must contain both biodegradable and inorganic recyclable elements will be easily separable into those respective parts: you'll toss the soles of your shoes into the garden and give the uppers back to the shoemaker. And the water coming out of factories will be cleaner than what came in, motivating the factory owners to reuse it and eliminating the need for the government to test its toxicity.
These authors teemed up on the 1991 Hannover Principles to guide the design of the 2000 World's Fair. McDonough has an architecture firm in Charlottesville, Va., and from 1994 to 1999 was dean of the University of Virginia's School of Architecture. Braungart is a German chemist who for several years headed the chemistry section of Greenpeace.
This book is superb and should be read by those familiar with the issues of environmental design and those completely new to the topic. It draws on themes common in a long list of books ranging from "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn to "Natural Capitalism," by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. But McDonough and Braungart make no acknowledgements of any such influences and present themselves (just as these other authors have) as the vanguard of a change as radical as the industrial revolution.
Their idea is incredibly important and well stated, but it's not the clear break from current environmental (or for that matter industrial or "Third Way") thinking that they maintain - and for students of evolution why should it need to be, what's wrong with evolving our thinking a helpful bit further, as they have done? What McD and B propose as revolutionary is -- instead of reducing pollution and consumption and having fewer children -- making increased economic activity actually beneficial to the planet.
Three comments. First, this book does not suggest any radical change in behavior for the typical reader. (Have lots of kids, drive lots of cars, buy lots of stuff - what a break through!) This book is, rather, advice for architects, corporations, and municipalities. It is intended to free the typical reader of guilt. I think it should do something else as well, namely urge us to political action, to demanding of our democratically elected representatives that the earth-saving innovations described in the book be taken advantage of. All the descriptions in this book of common household objects, such as sofas, "off-gasing" toxic particles makes me want to take action to change things or at least buy a mask, not go shopping.
Second, the examples of new materials and building and product designs described in the book all build on the environmental thinking that McD and B so loudly reject. Reducing pollution to zero is not a "new paradigm" from reducing pollution to a teeny bit - it's just better.
Third, the vision of rendering mad self-indulgence completely beneficial to all other species is far from a reality, and even the dream described by McD and B would not, in any way that I can imagine, make it possible to place an unlimited number of humans on the planet without hurting anything - more humans than under current practices, yes -- an infinite number, no. But let's remember that most of the people now on the planet do not do nearly as much damage as we do in this country. How many billion Americans the Earth can hold has not been answered.
There is also a disturbing thread of anti-government corporatism in the book. Ford and Nike and other corporations for which the authors have worked are described as heroes for their positive efforts, while their destructive practices are passed over. The authors repeat a distinction (citing Jane Jacobs' "Systems of Survival") between Guardians and Commerce, i.e. paternalistic government and noble corporate heroes:
"Commerce is quick, highly creative, inventive, constantly seeking short- and long-term advantage, and inherently honest: you can't do business with people if they aren't trustworthy."
Is this a joke? Do these guys believe press releases they read from, say, Enron? (Apparently so, because later in the book they write: "...the summer of 2001, when unusually high energy demand in California led to rolling blackouts, skyrocketing prices, even accusations of profiteering...." Accusations! High demand or restrained supply? What rock have these intelligent authors been naturally cooling themselves under? Well, at least they recognize the concept of profiteering, even though it fits poorly with the inherent honesty of commerce.)
Immediately following the "inherently honest" comment (page 60) Mc D and B go on to equate regulation with partial pollution reduction, and to conclude that because complete pollution reduction is desirable and possible, regulation is bad. Instead they should conclude that rather than allowing limited pollution, regulators should ban it entirely (through whatever stages of phasing in that policy prove feasible).

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