Everyone loves “best of” and “worst of” lists, including, some would say especially, those who claim not to like them.

The Guardian has published a short article with a list of the top 50 books on sustainability, and it’s a pretty solid list.

What are your top green books?:

“What’s your favourite ‘green’ book?” I get asked this question quite a bit and I always struggle for an answer. It presents the same problem as when you’re asked to name your favourite song of film: the answer tends to change by the hour.

It would be much easier to compile a list of the top 50 books, which is exactly what the University of Cambridge’s programme for sustainability leadership has just done. It asked its alumni – “around 2,000 senior leaders from around the world who have participated in its sustainability programmes over the past decade or more” – to list some of their favourite “sustainability” books.

The result is a pretty comprehensive rundown of the most influential and thought-provoking books of all time. There are many classics – Silent Spring, Fast Food Nation, The Limits to Growth, The Population Bomb, Small is Beautiful, A Sand County Almanac – but there are also a few omissions, too. Where’s Henry David Thoreau’s Walden? Where’s Thomas Friedman’s Hot, Flat and Crowded? Where’s Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature?

[the list of books is at the end of article]

To the “where is X???” list, I would add Fred Pearce’s With Speed and Violence, David Archer’s The Long Thaw, David MacKay’s Renewable Energy Without the Hot Air, Chris Mooney’s Storm World, and likely a few others after a little thought. I would also cheat and include a double entry for both the original and the 30-year anniversary versions of The Limits to Growth.

I can’t comment on all the books on their list, by any means, and a few were titles I’d never heard of, but will investigate. Just what we all needed–another dozen or so books added to our reading lists…


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