Reading List

Sitting at the gate at RDU airport, I'm about to begin Micheal Ruppert's Crossing the Rubicon; The Decline of the American Empire at the end of the Age of Oil.

On my recent trip to Guatemala I read Paul Hawken's Ecology of Commerce, which quickly became one of my all time favorite books. I wish everyone on our project would read it.

Hawken writes of a "restorative" economy, one which mimics nature, in which each of our transactions, and indeed interactions with one another have a restorative value.

In his preface Hawken reflects on a moment he had at the podium, when he was receiving a distinctive award for his company's environmental leadership. He says he looked out at the crowd and was struck by the fact that he and his company didn't actually deserve the award at all. In essence, despite their best attempts to "green" their operations, they were simply a junk mailing firm. It is not clear which of his companies he was talking about-Smith and Hawken perhaps?

As one who has received a bunch of rewards for my business practices, I completely identified with his sentiment. His moment at the podium inspired The Ecology of Commerce, and it was a fantastic book. Unlike Natural Capitalism, in which Hawken had a hand along with Hunter and Armory Lovins, The Ecology of Commerce is a light read. It is a simple"declaration of sustainability," that left me inspired and wishing more people would read it.

Tes and I took a load of trash to the transfer station in Siler City shortly after our return from Guatemala. She is new on the project, and is doing construction, and landscaping, and janitorial, and odd jobs at Industrial. We grabbed a lunch at San Felipe and she delved into questions she had about our project at the plant.

I bemoaned the fact that not everyone on our project reads. She had the brilliant idea of putting together an annotated booklist on our website so that newcomers, and veterans alike could avail themselves of titles that have influenced the project.

She is so right. We need to build a library somewhere on the project. And we need to make "reading time" part of each person's job description. I want to work at a place where everyone can be drawing from a common body of work, so that we can see where various inspirations come from.

Some of this happens now. I put a bunch of my books in the office of the coop, and it was not unusual to see a copy of Jeremy Rifkin's Hydrogen Economy in the back seat of Pedro's car, or to see Bob Hunter's Thermagaedon on Forest's beside table.

Rachel was recently inspired by John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman, and it is currently on its way to Canada in Tami's book bag. Often when I mention books in the blog, Scott shows up and snags them from my shelf. So while it is true that ideas from these books get some traction in our community, it is also true that they do not always circulate widely enough.

Tes's idea of a virtual bookshelf is now on the list.

I think the project is strengthened when we are pulling from a common literature. Marc Dreyfors over at Bull City Biodiesel is a voracious reader of energy books, and that common ground has vastly helped my interactions with him. We were both reading Jared Diamond's "Collapse" at the same time, for instance, which allowed us to make small talk on the diets of the Norse Vikings-for instance.

Before dropping out of the University of Missouri, I had an intense year in the dorm with a friend who was migrating from accounting to the arts. Along the way we snapped up and consumed many fiction titles from my shelf-from Salinger to Kotzwinkle. After awhile he claimed to "completely understand me," simply by having read the books that I treasured. And I think he was right about that. In those days I was writing fiction, and had no interest in the truth.

Nowadays my reading diet comes exclusively from the "Current Affairs" section of the bookstore-although Rachel has complained that my own book, Biodiesel Power really belongs in the "Sci-Fi Fantasy" department.

I need to work up the book list. And we need a library. With a couch. And a perfect reading light. It needs to be a quiet spot, where each of us can retreat from the daily grind to read, or nap, or both.

Posted by Lyle at December 28, 2005 02:04 PM