Two interiews with Fritjof Capra on Transition Culture

The first part is on Relocalisation and here Capra critizes the the original "sustainability" concept for focusing too much on individual moral persuasion mainly and leaving out the important issue of how to achieve sustainable development. Capras own simplest example is to mimic ecosystems which support life, recycle, uses solar energy and thus are adaptive and sustainable. This is a wonderful approach and it makes the issue more approachable for humans and also is a good incentive for how to go about with human communities. So I really think you should read this short interview in full. Aside on relocalisation theme : There is still an unclear picture on
costs and benefits. See for example the Dec 9 2006 issue of theThe Economist "Why ethical food harms the planet". (premium content). But maybe it is relevant to add an "may" to the title of the Econimist article!

Peak Oil and climate change is the second part of the interview and it recaps some things, but in the context of the opportunities served to mankind with the current climate change. If you need to get understand more on peak oil theory, check wikipedia, but the emphasis here is on "climate change", so don't get lost in debates about peak oil.

What can I do ?

There is a new book coming out soon from Worldchanging.com which looks promising. It covers
the following things (list cited directly from their site):

"You (which presents introductory materials and covers basic approaches for changing our thinking and designing our lives to be more worldchanging);

Stuff (which covers topics like green design, biomimicry, sustainable food, clothing, trade and technology);

Shelter (covering topics like green building and landscaping, clean energy, water, disaster relief and humanitarian design);

Cities (topics like smart growth, sustainable communities, transportation, greening infrastructure, product-service systems, leapfrogging and megacity challenges);

Communities (topics like education, women's rights, public health, holistic approaches to community development, South-South science, social entrepreneurship and micro-lending, and philanthropy);

Business (topics like socially responsible investment, worldchanging start-ups, ecological economics, corporate social responsibility and green business);

Politics (topics like networked politics, new media, transparency, human rights, non-violent revolution and peacemaking);

Planet (the big picture -- everything from placing oneself in a bioregion to climate foresight to environmental history to green space exploration)."

I am actually looking forward to reading this. Fritiof Capra has been arguing for this for a long time and has actually done a lot of projects at his ecoliteracy center. I do not know if he is a contributor to this book though. If you haven't read anything by Capra you should (but feel free to skip "The Tao of Physics"). His actual message becomes more prevalent from "The Turning Point" and onwards.

Besides that I think books by Vaclav Smil are good and as a start you might consider "Energy" published by oneworld. It is consise and to the point and really lives up to being a beginners guide to Energy. After that you might tackle his more ambitious books. For a balanced but highly debated book there is "The Sceptical Environmentalist" by social scientist (and Greenpeace member) Björn Lomborg. The debate can be read in full at the previous link but mainly it has been scientists that has pointed out flaws in but his method and numbers.