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Bill
Devall
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 Clearcut
: The Tragedy of Industrial
Forestry by
Bill Devall (Editor).
Once, old-growth forests blanketed the entire Pacific
Northwest. Today, after a mere century of intensive logging, only a
fraction remains. This book combines more than 175 dramatic photos of
decimated forests with 15 impassioned yet authorative essays by leading
ecologists and activists, including key figures in the modern
"eco-forestry" movement.
The eye-popping photographs in most Sierra Club books
and calendars inspire fascination, respect, even awe at nature's
remarkable beauty, variety, and complexity. The photos in Clearcut,
a joint publication of Sierra Club Books and Earth Island Press, are
just as startling, but the primary emotion they produce is anger. From
air and ground, the 35 photographers whose vivid work is gathered here
document the devastation clear-cut forestry has caused across Canada and
the U.S.: from Alaska and British Columbia east through the Rockies and
Great Plains to Maine and Cape Breton, and south to Alabama, Texas, and
California. More than 100 color plates of the slash-and-burn destruction
of "industrial forestry" call up memories of pockmarked bomb
sites from London under the Blitz to Baghdad and Sarajevo. But Clearcut
moves beyond complaint to action: in 15 essays, ecologists and
eco-foresters demand recognition of the "intrinsic value" of
forests and an "ecosystem-based approach to timber
management." Libraries in pictured areas may already have received
a donated copy of Clearcut, but policy decisions about the future
of North America's forests are sufficiently important to justify
purchase of this pricey but powerful volume by libraries in other areas.
Mary Carroll
Other Texts by Bill Devall:
 Click
here to learn more about this book
Click
here for Ecological Philosophy Books
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This is a short article introducing the theory of Deep
Ecology.
Excerpt:
Arne Naess first coined the term deep ecology in a
1973 article.[1] Deep Ecology refers to a deep, fundamental questioning
of views and attitudes of nature, particularly those held by the Western
societies.
The two "ultimate norms" that Naess believes
will lead to the deep ecology perspective are self-realization and
biocentric equality.
"Self-realization is the realization of the
potentialities of life. Organisms that differ from each other in three
ways give us less diversity than organisms that differ from each other
in one hundred ways. Therefore, the self-realization we experience when
we identify with the universe is heightened by an increase in the number
of ways in which individuals, societies, and even species and life forms
realize themselves. The greater the diversity, then, the greater the
self-realization...Most people in deep ecology have had the feeling -
usually, but not always, in nature - that they are connected with
something greater than their ego, greater than their name, their family,
their special attributes as an individual...without that identification,
one is not easily drawn to become involved in deep ecology..."
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