Sustainability & Environmental Justice

A reading list of books relating to sustainability and environmentalism in creative arts, business and technologies. This list is not exhaustive but may provide a starting point for research, inspiration or interest in areas such as sustainability, environmentalism, climate change, anthropocene and ecology.

Updated January 9, 2024
U
University for the Creative Arts
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Art & ecology now
Brown, Andrew (Commissioning editor)
From land art and earthworks in the 1960s to conceptual art of the new millennium, ecology-focused art has been a prominent genre in the art world for decades. This book offers a look into the recent explosion in contemporary art that deals directly with nature, the environment, climate change, and...
Art Nature Dialogues Interviews with Environmental Artists
Grande, John K.
Environmental artists from Europe and North America talk about their work.
A better planet : 40 big ideas for a sustainable future
Esty, Daniel C.
A practical, bipartisan call to action from the world's leading thinkers on the environment and sustainability   Sustainability has emerged as a global priority over the past several years. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change and the adoption of the seventeen...
Beyond sustainable : architecture's evolving environments of habitation
Ludwig, Ryan
Beyond Sustainable discusses the relationship between human-beings and the constructed environments of habitation we create living in the Anthropocene, an increasingly volatile and unpredictable landscape of certain change. This volume accepts that human-beings have reached a moment beyond...
Bio design : nature, science, creativity
Myers, William (Curator)
For centuries, designers and artists have looked to nature for inspiration and materials, but only recently have they developed the ability to alter and incorporate living organisms or tissues into their work. This startling development, at the intersection of biology and design has created new...
Blue Dunes : climate change by design
Keenan, Jesse M.
Blue Dunes chronicles the design of artificial barrier islands developed to protect the Mid-Atlantic region of North America in the face of climate change. It narrates the complex, and sometimes contradictory, research agenda of an unlikely team of analysts, architects, ecologists, engineers,...
CLIMATE BOOK
We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, one of the world's leading climate activist, comes the essential handbook for making it happen. You might think it's an impossible task- secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against...
Climate change : the insights you need from Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review
Climate change is threatening our world. How are you responding? Heat waves, flooding, extreme storms, harsh winters. The effects of climate change are only getting worse. How can you ensure your organization is taking the right steps to mitigate this threat--and what can you, as an...
Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics : Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic
Bloom, Lisa E.
In Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics, Lisa E. Bloom considers the ways artists, filmmakers, and activists engaged with the Arctic and Antarctic to represent our current environmental crises and reconstruct public understandings of them. Bloom engages feminist, Black, Indigenous, and...
Cradle to cradle : remaking the way we make things
McDonough, William.
A manifesto for a radically different philosophy and practice of manufacture and environmentalism "Reduce, reuse, recycle" urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. But as this provocative, visionary book argues, this approach...
The dangers of fashion : towards ethical and sustainable solutions
Marcketti, Sara B.
From sweatshops to fur farming, from polluting chemicals to painful garments, the fashion industry is associated with activities which have had devastating effects on workers, consumers, and the natural world. This ground-breaking volume provides a framework for examining the ethical, social, and...
Designing for the Circular Economy
Charter, Martin
The circular economy describes a world in which reuse through repair, reconditioning and refurbishment is the prevailing social and economic model. The business opportunities are huge but developing product and service offerings and achieving competitive advantage means rethinking your business...
Digital Games after Climate Change
Abraham, Benjamin J.
​This book presents the first sustained analysis of the digital game industry's carbon footprint and its role in exacerbating global climate change. Identifying the ways videogames can actually help combat the climate crisis, it argues for the urgency of transitioning to a fully carbon...
Ecocinema Theory and Practice 2
This second volume builds on the initial groundwork laid by Ecocinema Theory and Practice by examining the ways in which ecocritical cinema studies have matured and proliferated over the last decade, opening whole new areas of study and research. Featuring fourteen new essays...
Ecological film theory and psychoanalysis : surviving the environmental apocalypse in cinema
Geal, Robert
This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fictionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings against the dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that even these apparently environmentally friendly films can still facilitate...
Ecoscenography : an introduction to ecological design for performance
Beer, Tanja
This ground-breaking book is the first to bring an ecological focus to theatre and performance design, both in scholarship and in practice. Ecoscenography weaves environmental philosophies and practices across genres and fields to provide a captivating vision for the future of sustainable...
The edge of the earth : climate change in photography and video
Ramade, Bénédicte
Increasingly and forebodingly, contemporary artists are turning their attention to the subject of climate change, in poignant and often confrontational ways. The Edge of the Earth: Climate Change in Photography and Video explores recent and historic work in the context of present-day environmental...
Design Studio. architecture and the climate emergency / Volume 1. Everything needs to change
Pelsmakers, Sofie
Want to keep up with emerging design thinking and issues worldwide? Design Studio is a new thematic series that distils the most topical work and ideas from schools and practices globally. The first volume launches with a statement: Everything Needs to Change. Exploring architecture and the...
Exploring degrowth : a critical guide
Liegey, Vincent.
A sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism, and the degrowth movement is bursting into the mainstream. As climate catastrophe looms closer, people are eager to learn what degrowth is about, and whether we can save the planet by changing how we live. This book is an introduction to the...
Film and Television Production in the Age of Climate Crisis : Towards a Greener Screen
Kääpä, Pietari.
This volume brings together a range of voices from across the global environmental media community to build a comparative international set of perspectives on 'green' film and television production. Through this, it provides a necessary intervention in environmental media studies that actively...
Five Times Faster : Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change
Sharpe, Simon.
We need to act five times faster to avoid dangerous climate change. As Greenland melts, Australia burns, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, we think we know who the villains are: oil companies, consumerism, weak political leaders. But what if the real blocks to progress...
Fragile futures : the uncertain economics of disasters, pandemics, and climate change
Tanzi, Vito
This book revisits a distinction introduced in 1921 by economists Frank Knight and John Maynard Keynes: that between statistically predictable future events ('risks') and statistically unpredictable, uncertain events ('uncertainties'). Governments have generally ignored the latter, perceiving...
Framing the world : explorations in ecocriticism and film
Willoquet-Maricondi, Paula
The essays in this collection make a contribution to the greening of film studies and expand the scope of ecocriticism as a discipline traditionally rooted in literary studies. In addition to highlighting particular films as productive tools for raising awareness and educating us about...
Green Documentary : Environmental Documentary in theTwenty-First Century
Hughes, Helen.
Green screen : environmentalism and Hollywood cinema
Ingram, David
This book combines film studies with environmental history and politics, aiming to establish a cultural criticism informed by 'green' thought. David Ingram argues that Hollywood cinema has largely perpetuated romantic attitudes to nature and has played an important ideological role...
Inhospitable world : cinema in the time of the Anthropocene
Fay, Jennifer
In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused mass...
Make ink : a forager's guide to natural inkmaking
Logan, Jason
From designer and artist Jason Logan, founder of the Toronto Ink Company--a citizen science experiment to make eco-friendly, urban ink from street-harvested pigments--Make Ink delves into the history of inkmaking and the science of distilling pigment from the natural world....
Moving environments : affect, emotion, ecology, and film
Weik von Mossner, Alexa
In Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, and Film, international scholars investigate how films portray human emotional relationships with the more-than-human world and how such films act upon their viewers' emotions. Emotion and affect are the basic mechanisms that connect us to...
On fire : the burning case for a green new deal
Klein, Naomi
The fight for a green world is the fight of our lives. And with On Fire, Naomi Klein gives us the ammunition to do it. In frank, personal terms, she shows us how the only way forward out of a polluted world of our own making is only through policy reform - a concrete set of...
A planet to win : why we need a green new deal
Aronoff, Kate
All politics are climate politics in the twenty-first century--and this bold book argues for a Green New Deal that confronts both climate change and inequality The age of climate gradualism is over, as unprecedented disasters are exacerbated by inequalities of race and class...
Playing nature : ecology in video games
Chang, Alenda Y.
A potent new book examines the overlap between our ecological crisis and video games   Video games may be fun and immersive diversions from daily life, but can they go beyond the realm of entertainment to do something serious--like help us save the planet? As one...
A practical guide to greener theatre : introduce sustainability into your productions
Jones, Ellen E.
Protecting the environment should be a priority of every theatrical production, but it can be challenging to mount an environmentally-friendly show with limited time, resources, and information. A Practical Guide to Greener Theatre: Introduce Sustainability Into Your Productions not only...
Prosperity without growth : foundations for the economy of tomorrow
Jackson, Tim
What can prosperity possibly mean in a world of environmental and social limits? The publication of Prosperity without Growth was a landmark in the sustainability debate. Tim Jackson's piercing challenge to conventional economics openly questioned the most highly prized goal of...
The re-use atlas : a designer's guide towards a circular economy
Baker-Brown, Duncan
This book is a highly illustrated "map," using photos, infographics and statistics, showing designers how they can successfully navigate the emerging field of resource management and the circular economy. Using the Brighton Waste House Project as a basis for this, the book will look at key...
Screening nature : cinema beyond the human
Pick, Anat
Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed "posthuman cinema." It comprises key...
This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate
Klein, Naomi
The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core "free market" ideology of our time, restructure the global economy, and remake our political systems.
Film ecology : defending the biosphere : Doughnut economics and film theory and practice
Hayward, Susan
Using the Regenerative economic model - also known as Doughnut Economics - Susan Hayward offers a thought-provoking sketch for a renewed, tentatively revolutionary approach to both film theory and film practice. This book attempts to answer the questions posed by T.J. Demos (in Against...

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