Dr. Bethe Hagens

School of Public Policy and Administration

 

 

The World Without Us

 

by Alan Weisman (Thomas Dunn Books, 2007)

 

I heard Weisman interviewed on NPR, and it really grabbed me because he said that so much of sustainability literature was all built on shock, which is why his book begins on the day after we’re all gone from the planet. Weisman has done an amazing amount of research with experts on all sides about what happens in environments when there really isn’t too much human impact, and he shows what might survive, what would break down, what would happen to diversity. It’s just fascinating as you visualize it, and it’s not that long before Lexington Avenue in New York turns into a river—within something like 30 years. His hopeful part is that even if the worst happened, it’s really unlikely that all humans would be wiped out, which I liked.

 

As an anthropologist, I have studied periods in human history—there was a period about 13,000 years ago when a near pass by a comet apparently wiped out civilization in many parts of the world. Glaciers began melting, and climate and sea levels fluctuated for nearly 3,000 years. Then there’s an almost 2,000-year gap in the archaeological record until agriculture starts again, at about 7,000 BCE. So, we know planetary disaster has happened before, and that kind of gives me faith that it isn’t all going to end. The book gives a lot of information about what we’re doing and what the long-term impact of our actions will be. I was especially interested in what happened with plastics—they just don’t go away.

 

Cooking with Sunshine: The Complete Guide to Solar Cuisine with 150 Easy Sun-Cooked Recipes

 

by Lorraine Anderson and Rick Palkovic (Marlowe & Co., 2006)

 

I just love this book because it’s such a fun thing and it’s so easy. I built a solar cooker when I worked in product design with Bil Becker at the University of Illinois at Chicago.We designed a lot of solar and renewable projects and products in the ’70s and early ’80s, and one of our favorites was a solar cooker.

 

I started cooking with the sun because I couldn’t believe you could be in Chicago and get 400 degrees inside a box just using little reflectors. I just couldn’t believe it. This book has simple plans for safe cooking (no burns!) and recipes that anybody can understand—it’s like solar cooking for dummies. It offers ideas about how to combat firewood shortage in the Third World, how to teach your kids that you don’t need to use the microwave, and it brings families together if you just want to do something different. At the 2007 Walden Social Change Conference, we made sausages, eggs, and chocolate chip cookies. It cooks just like an oven. If you have a sunny day with no clouds in the sky, the outside temperature doesn’t even matter.

 

Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature

 

edited by Lance Gunderson and C. S. Holling (Island Press, 2001)

 

This book is really for Ph.D. “theoryheads.” When you know there aren’t any simple solutions, this is one of the best models I’ve seen for putting together how big impacts evolve from tiny inputs at random times. It’s kind of taking chaos theory into social and environmental and technological systems.

 

For example, on NPR there was a story about the recent discovery of a collision of two giant asteroids between Jupiter and Mars 160 million years ago. They’ve found pieces of the collision in the asteroid belt—this collision happened before dinosaurs had even evolved—and it was a piece of that explosion that ultimately hit Earth in 68 million BCE and wiped out dinosaurs. So to figure out what wiped out the dinosaurs, you have to go back before dinosaurs evolved to when two things hit each other. The book looks at social, technological, and ecological problems starting from seemingly unrelated decisions or actions in the past and shows how they play out through all the systems. And even though you don’t see the logical consequence coming, it’s always knitting together until it results in one.

 

The book gives you really interesting ideas about how a single-minded approach, like simply ceasing carbon dioxide emissions, would have so many negative impacts for other reasons. It’s a kind of thinking that confronts hubris. Any one-sided solution, in which you don’t expect long-term impacts in areas you never thought of, is a big danger.

 

This book is really for people who have Ph.D.s who want to stretch themselves and contribute in another way in talking about policy. It’s not for the weak of heart, but it’s accessible if you decide you’re going to commit to understanding it.

 

 

 

NextDr. MaryFriend Shepard