Outline: gripping and insightful. A must read!
First edition published in 2010
Why People Need Plants
By The Open University and Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Edited by Carlton Wood and Nicolette Habgood
Abstract
Humankind has always depended on plants for our subsistence, yet most of us aren’t aware of the many roles they play in our everyday lives. Written by scientists from The Open University and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Why People Need Plants is a fascinating instructional book that will help you realize and understand how essential plants are for our survival. Plants provides us with food, shelter, furniture, clothing, fuel (for heating and transportation), construction materials, medicine, drugs, and paper goods. Plants also make biodiversity possible, filter our air, and create enjoyable, beautiful, and refreshing green areas.
After explaining and illustrating the many uses of plants and addressing their vulnerability in the present world, the book concludes with the chapter “Plants and The Future” which discusses how the challenges of an overpopulated twenty-first century world can be met. Achieving a ‘carbon neutral’ level, where “the amount of CO2 that is produced (…) is balanced by the amount of CO2 that can be absorbed by various measures taken,” should be every individual’s and every country’s goal.
More books:
- Eating on the Wild Side, The Missing Link to Optimum Health, Jo Robinson
- Living with the Planet, Catherine von Ruhland
- Silent Spring, Rachel Carson
- Ready, Set, Green, Graham Hill & Meaghan O’Neill
- A New Green History of the World, Clive Ponting
- Walden, or Life in the Woods, Henry D. Thoreau
- Mad Cowboy, Howard F. Lyman
- The Climate War, Eric Pooley
- An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi
- It’s Easy Being Green, Crissy Trask
- The Genesis Enigma, Andrew Parker
