Sierra Club Chinook

*** Meeting are on the third Wednesday of the month from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Pages on Kensington, 1135 Kensington Road NW. ***

The goal of the Sustainability Book Club is to share books and discussions that help us understand the world and our place in it in a different way. This can change the way we experience the world and the way we act in our day-to-day lives, opening new possibilities for environmental sustainability, social justice and peace.

Feel free to join us and drop in – even if you have not read the book. It is the issues and themes that spark the discussion. Everyone is welcome to join in for one session or all of them. It is your opinion on the issues that builds an interesting discussion.

Sponsored by: Pages Bookstore, Sustainable Calgary, The Arusha Centre, EcoLiving Events, Green Calgary, Thrive, and now REAP Calgary and the Sierra Club Chinook Group.

 

Thursday, September 13, 2012: “The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude” by Andrew Nikiforuk
This is the first book of our season with the author in attendance and a different, public, format. Sept 13, 7pm book release at Central Memorial Library.
Andrew Nikiforuk argues in this provocative new book that we still behave like slaveholders in the way we use energy, and that urgently needs to change. Like slaveholders, we feel entitled to surplus energy and rationalize inequality, even barbarity, to get it. But endless growth is an illusion, and now that half of the world”s oil has been burned, our energy slaves are becoming more expensive by the day. What we need, Nikiforuk argues, is a radical new emancipation movement.

 

Wednesday, October 17, 2012: “Locavore: From Farmers Fields To Rooftop Gardenshow Canadians Are Changing The Way We Eat” by Sarah Elton
Locavore describes how foodies,100-milers, urbanites, farmers, gardeners and chefs across Canada are creating a new local food order that has the potential to fight climate change and feed us all. Combining front-line reporting, shrewd analysis and passionate food writing to delight the gastronome, Locavore shows how the pieces of a post-industrial food system are being assembled into something infinitely better. We follow food culture activists as they work to preserve the genetic material of heritage plants to return once-endangered flavours to our tables.

 

Wednesday, November 21, 2012: “The End of Growth” by Jeff Rubin
Economist and resource analyst Jeff Rubin is certain that the world’s governments are getting it wrong. Instead of moving us toward economic recovery, measures being taken around the globe right now are digging us into a deeper hole. Both politicians and economists are missing the fact that the real engine of economic growth has always been cheap, abundant fuel and resources. But that era is over. The end of cheap oil, Rubin argues, signals the end of growth–and the end of easy answers to renewing prosperity.

 

 

Wednesday, December 19, 2012: “Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth” by Curt Stager
In Deep Future, Curt Stager draws on the planet’ s geological history to provide a view of where we may be headed long-term. On the bright side, we have already put off the next Ice Age. But whether we will barrel ahead on a polluting path to a totally ice-free Arctic, miles of submerged coasts, or an acidified ocean still remains to be decided. And that decision is ours to make. There has been much written about global warming and climate change, but no other book offers the far-reaching perspective that Curt Stager gives us here. Deep Future adds a new dimension to the debate — one that will change how we think about what we’ re doing to our planet.

 

Wednesday, January 16, 2013: “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” by Clay Shirky
A revelatory examination of how the wildfire-like spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill.

 

 

 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013: “End This Depression Now” by Paul Krugman
How did we get stuck in what now can only be called a depression? And above all, how do we free ourselves? Krugman pursues these questions with his characteristic lucidity and insight—a quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the “intellectual clarity and political will” to end this depression now.

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 20, 2013: “The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times” by Rob Hopkins
The Transition idea has gone viral across the globe, from Italian villages and Brazilian favelas to universities and London neighborhoods. In contrast to the ever-worsening stream of information about climate change, the economy, and resource depletion, Transition focuses on solutions, on community-scale responses, on meeting new people, and on having fun. The Transition Companion tells inspiring tales of communities working for a future where local economies are valued and nurtured; where lower energy use is seen as a benefit; and where enterprise, creativity, and the building of resilience have become cornerstones of a new economy.

 

Wednesday, April 17, 2013: “Organize!” by Aziz Choudry
From community-based labor-organizing strategies among immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism for Palestine to organizing in support of indigenous peoples, each essay in this work reflects critically on the tensions, problems, limits, and gains inherent in a range of organizing contexts and practices. The book also places these processes in historical perspective, encouraging us to use history to shed light on contemporary injustices and how they can be overcome.

 

 

Wednesday, May 15, 2013: “Food and the City” by Jennifer Cockrall King
Food and the City examines alternative food systems in cities around the globe that are shortening their food chains, growing food within their city limits, and taking their “food security” into their own hands. Award-winning food journalist Jennifer Cockrall-King sought out leaders in the urban-agriculture movement and visited cities successfully dealing with “food deserts.”