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Earth Day, every day
New books move beyond 'reduce, reuse and recycle' REVIEWS BY LYNN HAMILTON What we eat and wear, how we live and what stocks we buy affects—often adversely—the planet we call home. Here to the rescue are five books that identify ways to protect the planet and our fellow Earth-dwellers by looking more carefully at our priorities, how we vote and how we spend our money.
By Alex Steffen Abrams, $37.50 608 pages ISBN 9780810930957
How high is the water?
By Joseph Romm Morrow, $24.95 304 pages ISBN 9780061172120
The responsible dollar
By Duncan Clark and Richie Unterberger Rough Guides Limited, $14.99 304 pages ISBN 9781843537243
One day at a time
By Michael Norton Free Press, $14 384 pages ISBN 9780743297783
Better business
By Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler McGraw-Hill, $27.95 304 pages ISBN 9780071481519
Lynn Hamilton writes about environmental issues from Tybee Island, Georgia.
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Does your dream home have a green roof and a rainwater harvesting system? Will you propose marriage over organic wine and sustainably grown vegetables? Have you sworn your next car will get at least a hundred miles to the gallon? If so, prepare to swoon over Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century edited by Alex Steffen. If, however, you just want to keep doing things the same way your grandparents did, do not buy this book. Worldchanging will challenge even the most green, most socially conscious liberal to completely rethink her day-to-day habits, especially where she spends her money, and it is rich in resources for people who want to build and furnish a greener home from the ground up. This book goes far beyond the usual diatribes to recycle and save water; it celebrates futuristic designs that allow the eco-conscious to save bundles of energy and lower emissions while living better lives. Worldchanging is so well written, so up-to-date, and so comprehensive in its information, tree-huggers will want it on their shelves for decades to come.
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If we back up a few paces, Joseph Romm's Hell and High Water: Global Warming—the Solution and the Politics—and What We Should Do will tell us exactly what the crisis is and why we need to change our ways. In 2005, Romm's brother lost his Mississippi home to Hurricane Katrina. Since Romm holds a doctorate in oceanography, his brother naturally sought his advice on whether to rebuild. Romm's response was grim but clear: "Coastal dwellers from Houston to Miami are now playing Russian roulette with maybe two bullets in the gun chamber." In a rising sea of apocalyptic warnings about global warming, Romm's new book is perhaps the most unequivocal in its predictions. Coastal cities could be partly underwater by as early as 2050, he writes, and the rest of us will be dropping from deadly heat waves. Romm's rhetoric is more problem-centered, and he offers fewer solutions than other writers here, but he does say that taking action against global warming is the single most important thing we will do and we'll hate ourselves if we drop the ball.
The Rough Guide to Shopping With a Conscience by Duncan Clark and Richie Unterberger is probably the most comprehensive and up-to-date consumer guide of its kind. While the book covers all the historic cornerstones of ethical shopping, like the Nestlé and Exxon boycotts, much of its information is up-to-the-minute or even into the future. For instance, it touts a barcode scanner that you take to the store to scan a product for information on its origin, the working conditions of the employees who made it, its company's environmental record, etc. Ethical companies and small-footprint products are conveniently listed in pop-out sidebars alongside their evil, earth- and soul-destroying corporate twins. All this is spun in Rough Guide's trademark brisk, contemporary prose, and though the writers seem, at times, emotionally distant from their subject, that may contribute to the book's enormous credibility, especially for readers who might be a little wary of progressive Cassandras.
For people who want to take their revolution a little slower, there's Michael Norton's 365 Ways to Change the World: How to Make a Difference One Day at a Time, a clever spin on books with daily meditations. Each page corresponds to a day in the year and offers a bite-sized thought or activity that could plausibly make a small positive impact on the planet. One day, 365 Ways to Change the World will have you sending a cash donation to Zimbabwe; the next, you'll be asked simply to meditate on gender inequities. Readers are frequently called on to organize meetings of like-minded thinkers who will offer safety in numbers as well as many hands to make light work of projects. Other pages have you thinking about how even your tippling habits affect the planet. Did you know that Spanish growers of oak cork are in danger of losing their livelihoods—and surrendering their forests to clearing—from the advent of plastic wine corks?
Jeffrey Swartz will never forget the day his father gave him $108 and drove him to the nearest YMCA to see if he could live on that sum for a week. For Swartz, who now runs Timberland, the billion-dollar boot manufacturer he took over from his father, it was a lesson on the often difficult life of the working man. Swartz later established a nonprofit partnership that finds creative ways to give back. His story is one of many told by industry heads who devote a considerable amount of their corporate resources to philanthropy in The Business of Changing the World by Marc Benioff and Carlye Adler. You'll read how Alan Hassenfeld of Hasbro set up food banks and toy drives for children, and how UPS chairman and CEO Mike Eskew pays top employees their UPS salaries while they spend a month volunteering in impoverished communities. The Business of Changing the World doesn't just send the right message to big companies, it is also an insight into the warm and often quirky personalities of those who sit at the helm of financial power.