Humans have been writing about the environment for centuries, and the environment has figured prominently as a theme in both Western and Eastern philosophies. Books about or featuring the environment as a prominent theme have proliferated especially since the middle of the twentieth century. The rise of environmental science, which has encouraged interdisciplinary approaches to studying the environment, and the environmental movement, which has increased public and political awareness of humanity's impact on the environment, have been highly influential. The 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring has been regarded as particularly important in popularizing environmental science and helping to launch the modern environmental movement.[1] The emergence of the environmental humanities, including fields like environmental history, has also been important in bridging divides between the sciences and humanities and encouraging further interdisciplinary approaches. The environment also features prominently in much fictional literature.
This page is a list of environmental books. In this context they are notable books that feature the environment as a major theme, including human impacts on the environment.
Non-fiction environmental books
Non-fiction accounts are ones that are presented as factual, although often in the context of subjective argument. Non-fiction environmental books may, for example, be the products of scholarly or journalistic work. The books in this list include fields and styles such as anthropology, conservation science, ecology, environmental history, lifestyle, and memoirs.
Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of science fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.
The environmental movement is a social movement that aims to protect the natural world from harmful environmental practices in order to create sustainable living. Environmentalists advocate the just and sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the environment through changes in public policy and individual behavior. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered on ecology, health, as well as human rights.
Environmental science is an interdisciplinary academic field that integrates physics, biology, meteorology, mathematics and geography to the study of the environment, and the solution of environmental problems. Environmental science emerged from the fields of natural history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems.
Environmental history is the study of human interaction with the natural world over time, emphasising the active role nature plays in influencing human affairs and vice versa.
Environmental journalism is the collection, verification, production, distribution and exhibition of information regarding current events, trends, and issues associated with the non-human world. To be an environmental journalist, one must have an understanding of scientific language. The individual needs to put to use their knowledge of historical environmental events. One must have the ability to follow environmental policy decisions and environmental organizations. An environmental journalist should have a general understanding of current environmental concerns, and the ability to communicate information to the public in a way that is easily understood.
Ecocriticism is the study of literature and ecology from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. It was first originated by Joseph Meeker as an idea called "literary ecology" in his The Comedy of Survival: Studies in Literary Ecology (1972).
The environmental humanities is an interdisciplinary area of research, drawing on the many environmental sub-disciplines that have emerged in the humanities over the past several decades, in particular environmental literature, environmental philosophy, environmental history, science and technology studies, environmental anthropology, and environmental communication. Environmental humanities employs humanistic questions about meaning, culture, values, ethics, and responsibilities to address pressing environmental problems. The environmental humanities aim to help bridge traditional divides between the sciences and the humanities, as well as between Western, Eastern, and Indigenous ways of relating to the natural world and the place of humans within it. The field also resists the traditional divide between "nature" and "culture," showing how many "environmental" issues have always been entangled in human questions of justice, labor, and politics. Environmental humanities is also a way of synthesizing methods from different fields to create new ways of thinking through environmental problems.
Rutgers University Press (RUP) is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in New Brunswick, New Jersey under the auspices of Rutgers University.
Environmental communication is "the dissemination of information and the implementation of communication practices that are related to the environment. In the beginning, environmental communication was a narrow area of communication; however, nowadays, it is a broad field that includes research and practices regarding how different actors interact with regard to topics related to the environment and how cultural products influence society toward environmental issues".
Darwinian literary studies is a branch of literary criticism that studies literature in the context of evolution by means of natural selection, including gene-culture coevolution. It represents an emerging trend of neo-Darwinian thought in intellectual disciplines beyond those traditionally considered as evolutionary biology: evolutionary psychology, evolutionary anthropology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, affective neuroscience, behavioural genetics, evolutionary epistemology, and other such disciplines.
Eco-nationalism is a synthesis of nationalism and green politics. Eco-nationalists may be from many points across the left–right political spectrum, but all are bound to the idea that the nation-state and its citizens have a special duty to protect the environment of their country.
The seminal work of fiction featuring eco-terrorism as a major focal point is Edward Abbey's 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, wherein a group of environmentalists disrupt various projects that are damaging to the environment. The novel inspired the Earth First! movement and directly influenced the Earth Liberation Front. The term "monkeywrenching", in the sense of sabotage, derives from the book. The 1985 film Pale Rider, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, likewise frames eco-terrorism positively; in the film, the vigilante justice morality which is a common feature of the Western genre is applied to environmentally destructive mining practices. In contrast, Michael Crichton's 2004 novel State of Fear portrays eco-terrorists—in this case a group of environmentalists who seek to raise awareness about anthropogenic global warming by creating extreme weather events—in a negative light.
Greta Gaard is an ecofeminist writer, scholar, activist, and documentary filmmaker. Gaard's academic work in the realms of ecocriticism and ecocomposition is widely cited by scholars in the disciplines of composition and literary criticism. Her theoretical work extending ecofeminist thought into queer theory, queer ecology, vegetarianism, and animal liberation has been influential within women's studies. A cofounder of the Minnesota Green Party, Gaard documented the transition of the U.S. Green movement into the Green Party of the United States in her book, Ecological Politics. She is currently a professor of English at University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a community faculty member in Women's Studies at Metropolitan State University, Twin Cities.
Climate fiction is literature that deals with climate change. Generally speculative in nature but inspired by climate science, works of climate fiction may take place in the world as we know it, in the near future, or in fictional worlds experiencing climate change. The genre frequently includes science fiction and dystopian or utopian themes, imagining the potential futures based on how humanity responds to the impacts of climate change. Climate fiction typically involves anthropogenic climate change and other environmental issues as opposed to weather and disaster more generally. Technologies such as climate engineering or climate adaptation practices often feature prominently in works exploring their impacts on society.
Ecofeminism is a branch of feminism and political ecology. Ecofeminist thinkers draw on the concept of gender to analyse the relationships between humans and the natural world. The term was coined by the French writer Françoise d'Eaubonne in her book Le Féminisme ou la Mort (1974). Ecofeminist theory asserts a feminist perspective of Green politics that calls for an egalitarian, collaborative society in which there is no one dominant group. Today, there are several branches of ecofeminism, with varying approaches and analyses, including liberal ecofeminism, spiritual/cultural ecofeminism, and social/socialist ecofeminism. Interpretations of ecofeminism and how it might be applied to social thought include ecofeminist art, social justice and political philosophy, religion, contemporary feminism, and poetry.
Ecofiction is the branch of literature that encompasses nature or environment-oriented works of fiction. While this super genre's roots are seen in classic, pastoral, magical realism, animal metamorphoses, science fiction, and other genres, the term ecofiction did not become popular until the 1960s when various movements created the platform for an explosion of environmental and nature literature, which also inspired ecocriticism. Ecocriticism is the study of literature and the environment from an interdisciplinary point of view, where literature scholars analyze texts that illustrate environmental concerns and examine the various ways literature treats the subject of nature. Environmentalists have claimed that the human relationship with the ecosystem often went unremarked in earlier literature.
Christina Gerhardt is an author, academic and journalist. She has written on a range of subjects, including the environment, film and critical theory. She has been the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Visiting Professor of Environment and the Humanities at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University, and held visiting positions at Harvard University, the Free University of Berlin, Columbia University and University of California at Berkeley, where she taught previously and is now a permanent Senior Fellow. She has been awarded grants by the Fulbright Commission, the DAAD, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Newberry Library. Her environmental journalism has been published in The Guardian, The Nation, Grist, Orion and Sierra Magazine, among other venues.
Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to do it yourself and the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial aspects of creating such a future.
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