Links and Resources

An Inconvenient Truth

The academy award winning documentary illustrating Al Gore's campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

A documentary that investigates the birth and death of the electric car, as well as the role of renewable energy and sustainable living in the future.

Applied Solar Energy: An Introduction by Aden B. Meinel

This is one of the early classics. The authors were solar energy researchers at the University of Arizona in Tucson. There's an excellent section on the solar resource itself, followed by the theory and physics of the different methods that have been used to harvest this power. Chapter One is kind of cool also because it shows imaginative things that have been done to harvest solar power over the previous centuries. -- Jim

Beyond Oil, The View from Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Deffeyes

The best of the books I've read so far on the future of our various energy resources. The author is a petroleum geologist, and he presents a pretty balanced and informative description of the resources available. For those of you not familiar with "Hubbert's Peak", this is a theoretical point where we have produced and consumed half of the available oil resource, and it corresponds with the point where production is at it's peak. The theory was developed for resource and mining processes in general by a Shell geologist named M. King Hubbert, who correctly predicted the peak and subsequent decline of oil production in the United States in the 1970's. Deffeyes in this book applies the same inquiry and analysis to all available stored energy resources from oil to gas to tar sands to coal and uranium. (Did you know that coal comes from green-leafed plants and oil comes from animal material deposited at the bottom of the ocean?) He concludes with a lot of down-to-earth, practical suggestions. -- Jim

The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists by Michael Brower and Warren Leon

This book provides a good overview of areas of personal action and ways to prioritize the actions that any individual or family can consider to reduce their impact on the environment. Some of the areas addressed are travel and transportation, food choices, household operations and consumer choices. -- Beth

Direct Use of the Sun's Energy by Farrington Daniels

A great reference that explores all the things that might be done with solar energy, from heating to distillation of water, to cooling and refrigeration, solar furnaces.... The author provides introductory level analytical tools for each of these processes and more. -- Jim

Green Living by the editors of E/The Environmental Magazine

This is a good compilation of basic information and tips from the E Magazine editors. The chapters address choices related to food, health, clothing, pets, home, baby care, gardening, and travel. In each chapter there are sections that describe political and legislative information, green products, and what each person can do. -- Beth

Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins

-- Thad

The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns can Change to Sustainable Practices
by Sarah James

-- Thad

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by R. Buckminster Fuller

Written in 1969, this book may seem a little dated, but it was one of the first books to stress the idea that the earth is both our home and our vehicle through space and time; we ought to take good care of it. He has fun playing with the idea that this spaceship has been so well designed that man lived on it for thousands of years without even realizing that they were on a spaceship. A remarkable part of this total self-sustaining design was, however, the lack of an operating manual. This may well have been an intentional challenge for us to use our intellects to figure one out. -- Jim

The Passive Solar Energy Book by Edward Mazria

Another classic, this one is oriented more toward passive heating for homebuilding and other structures. Again a lot of data on the solar resource combined with heat collection, heat storage, and heat transfer methods. -- Jim

Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands by Brad Lancaster

-- Thad

The Solar House by Daniel D. Chiras

-- Thad