Literary Guides to Turning Green

By EUGENE LINDEN

The book business has discovered that green is truly the color of money: publishers are rushing to cash in on the current enthusiasm for environmentalism. Books in Print lists roughly 6,000 titles in 50 subject categories related to the environment, and the number grows by dozens each month. With so many choices, would-be environmentalists are understandably bewildered. Which books are worth reading, and which were thrown together merely to exploit a fad?

Among the most popular titles are how-to guides like 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth (EarthWorks Press; $4.95). Such books are well intentioned and useful, but they may have the half-life of New Year's resolutions. The defeat of California's Big Green and other ecological initiatives in the recent election demonstrated that voters are still confused about the best way to deal with environmental concerns.

One reason is that the movement is young, and the meaning of environmentalism is changing in subtle and profound ways. Not so long ago, "old thinking" had the environment tucked away in parks and rural areas, an amenity for the relatively affluent to appreciate on weekends. Implicit in this attitude was the idea that ecology was irrelevant to businessmen and policymakers concerned with the real issues of the day and that mankind could somehow get along without focusing on the environment.

In recent years, however, such problems as ozone depletion and deforestation have shown that mankind is threatening the systems that support its economic and social well-being. Americans pay lip service to this reality but tend to revert to old thinking when environmental reform threatens either jobs or life-styles. People thus need to undergo a fundamental shift in perspective, acknowledging their dependence on a healthy biosphere. Seeing earth as a whole erases the illusion that humanity is separate from the natural order. For that reason alone, The Home Planet (Addison-Wesley; $19.95), an elegant compilation of photos taken during American and Soviet space missions, might be the first text in a syllabus for environmental re-education. In quotes accompanying the pictures, cosmonauts and astronauts from more than a dozen nations struggle to express the transcendental experience of seeing how life has invested our planet with a luminous beauty. Writes Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov: "So touchingly alone, our home must be defended like a holy relic."

The view from space also offers support for a scientific theory that is becoming the paradigm of the new environmentalism. First proposed by British inventor and chemist James Lovelock, this theory, called the Gaia hypothesis, argues that the earth functions as an organism and that life processes regulate the planet to maintain its habitability. According to Gaia, no single species, not even humanity, is necessary to the functioning of the biosphere.

More than a dozen books explore aspects of the Gaia hypothesis. Lovelock's most recent thinking is available in The Ages of Gaia (Bantam Books; $10.95). The scientist has an attractively wry style, but his discussions of biochemistry and other abstruse fields can run ahead of general readers, who might prefer to turn to one of the more popular books about the theory. Among the most balanced and accessible is Lawrence Joseph's Gaia, the Growth of an Idea (St. Martin's Press; $19.95). Joseph goes to great lengths to characterize the importance of Gaia, but where necessary he holds Lovelock to account. Lovelock was the first scientist to propose that chemical aerosols called CFCs might pose a threat to the ozone layer, but his faith in the restorative powers of Gaia led him to downplay the danger.

For those who would like to explore more deeply the context for Gaia and the new environmentalism, Bantam Books will soon publish The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God ($21.95) by Rupert Sheldrake. The British biochemist and philosopher delves into classical thought and the Reformation to describe the events that led to the desecration of nature in Western science and religion, and then argues that a new animism is bridging the gap between science and religion.

Popular writers as well as scientists have helped to shape new thinking about the natural order. Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez's homage to the far North, is an exemplar of the search to resolve the tensions between human aspirations and natural harmony. In the cold half-light of the Arctic, the author finds an altar to bow before, a place where life, though a mere brushstroke on the frozen plains, still manages to give meaning and beauty to an otherwise bleak world.

The literary skills of writers like Lopez notwithstanding, nature remains its own best salesperson. Nowhere is the exuberant genius of the biosphere more on display than in the world's rain forests, and photographs convey the riches of these regions as well as any text. Chronicle Books is currently bringing The Rainforests, A Celebration ($35) to the U.S. A coffee-table book first published in Britain, it combines stunning photographs with a series of essays written by some of the leading students of tropical nature. The book takes the reader through the forests, showcasing the resident creatures, their different strategies for survival and the mutual dependencies that tie these competing interests into an almost self-sustaining system. It is difficult to see the exquisite artfulness without wondering what other treasures are concealed in the forests -- and gaining a sense of how much is lost when earth's habitats are destroyed.