About the Author:
Michael Robbins is the former editor-in-chief of Audubon magazine. He has written books and articles for numerous publications including New York, Discover, Mother Jones, Plenty and Popular Science.
Wendy Palitz is an art director who has worked for New York, Self, Travel Holiday, and Workman Publishing. She has designed books for Houghton Mifflin, Stewart Tabori & Chang, and National Geographic Books.
Renée Loux, author of Easy Green Living, is the host of the TV show Easy Being Green.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
why green now?
If not now, when? The perfect storm of global climate crisis, dwindling resources, and an unsustainable model of consumer appetite is upon us and growing in urgency. Now is the time for individual action.
Never have everyday choices carried more consequences than right now. Think of the choices we can make--do make--every day as small steps, in either a positive or a negative direction. Each choice can work to benefit you, me, and our whole community--and ultimately, our global environment.
How can we make those right choices? One at a time, with the help of this catalog. We've convened thought leaders in every imaginable category to share with you a wealth of green information and green ideas. Just a few years ago, there were very few "green" products on store shelves and little or no "green" components in many of these categories; they simply didn't exist or couldn't compete in the marketplace. The sheer size of the Whole Green Catalog illustrates the diversity of possibility, discovery, and potential. Consider the items reviewed here as the furnishings of one's life, the furnishings for a whole new world that we can all live (better) in.
There is a fundamentally simple idea at play in this publication: We all need things with which to live in the world, and the things we choose (or don't choose) for our own lives can, in the aggregate, have a deep reaching impact and can make a significant contribution to renewing our world.
This catalog is a browser book. Like the original Whole Earth Catalog, which helped to define the credo of its age, this is a resource guide to a special kind of life: then, an alternative lifestyle and now, a sustainable one. We don't expect anyone to read it straight through, and we did not structure it that way. It is designed for people to peruse, consult, find, and choose. And it is full of surprises and delights--on every page. Flip through, and you'll find that it opens many doors.
The reviews in this catalog can foster a fresh way of thinking about where we are in time and in our world. Call it life-cycle thinking or thinking about the whole cradle-to-grave arc of the things we live with: where raw materials come from; how they are harvested or obtained; and how they are processed, transported, marketed, and packaged. Then, once their usefulness to you is ended, how are they passed on, reused, or disposed of. This is the "over the horizons" thinking that is fundamental to environmental awareness and action.
So, can we buy our way to sustainability? Probably not, but we can, with our consumer choices, take steps in the direction of solutions rather than continue--again, with our choices--to move along in familiar ways that only contribute to the larger problems.
While the green marketplace is no longer ahead of the curve or at the fringes, it is in process and getting better all the time. And in this new world of green, the same old laws of supply and demand still apply: When we demand greener things, the marketplace supplies them. We've grown in leaps and bounds from the seeds planted by the environmental movement over the last score of years, and this catalog speaks eloquently of that growth.
We have arrived at a point where it is not a personal compromise to make these choices. To live a sustainable life, it's no longer necessary to forfeit comfort, convenience, and luxury or to freeze, drown, and starve in the dark. Today, we can choose to move in the right direction.
--Renee Loux
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.