Books on Sustainability Offer Harmonious Messages

Whenever I publish a new book (like Bullish on Renewable Energy) it gets me thinking of all the other books coming out at the same time, and how, I’d like to think, they weave themselves together into a kind of tapestry on the subject of sustainability.

I just came across what appears to be a fabulous work by an author/photographer who shows that the Earth’s polar regions are some of the planet’s most fragile places, that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere else on Earth, and snow and ice cover are declining significantly.

Amid these changes, photographer Camille Seaman traveled yearly to the Arctic and Antarctic for a decade, capturing the ice and stunning landscapes that define the regions. Her new book, Melting Away: A Ten-Year Journey through Our Endangered Polar Regions, is available now.

It’s clear that Seaman is “not just anyone” as I’m fond of saying.  Here are two quotes from a recent interview that reveal important aspects of her character:

• I would recommend to anyone reading this to sit in silence for as long as possible and think about all that is being lost, all that is altered or gone. Grieve that your children may not see tigers or rhinos or polar bears in the wild. Think about the aspens and pines burning in the fires, the islands flooded with salt and weep for the new silence. We always have a choice, and even when you think you are not making one, you are. So choose the future you want and go work towards building that!

• I think that until we humans are able to really accept that we are not separate from nature — not above it, not meant to dominate or steward the land and the animals and the ocean — we really have no future on Earth. When I say I want to save the world, it’s not about making room for more of the same: exploitation, degradation, inequity, pollution and loss. I want to save as much of the natural world from us [humans] and our poor behavior. I want humans to realize that we are lessened by the loss of even a single species, a rainforest, the tundra, a pine grove.

Powerful thoughts of harmony and purpose.