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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $16.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

As mayors and city councilors seek solutions to climate change, existing policies and legislation can stand in the way of effective change.

The Carbon Charter is the first book to describe the municipal bylaws required to abate climate change and create sustainable communities. It provides city councilors with a cut-and-paste set of green bylaws and policies of best practices culled from environmentally advanced communities around the world. They can be taken straight out of the book, placed into a council agenda with minimum modification, and voted on.

The Carbon Charter provides city councilors with the ammunition they need to implement and accelerate sustainability initiatives quickly. The book describes bylaws that are applicable throughout the world, with the emphasis on examples that are beneficial to temperate climates such as the U.S. and Canada. It also proposes innovative new bylaws that are found nowhere else. This highly accessible, comprehensive handbook includes:

• Sample bylaws, case studies and background material and references
• Numbered QuickLinks that allow readers access to full bylaw texts and links
• Special icons that pinpoint target audiences, with bylaws relevant to each audience

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $32.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

A man's home is his castle. But demographic and economic changes have turned our castles into islands. How can we regain the elements of the traditional village – family, cooperation, community and a sense of belonging – within the context of 21st century life?

Creating Cohousing: Building Sustainable Communities is an in-depth exploration of a uniquely rewarding type of housing which is perfect for anyone who values their independence but longs for more connection with those around them. Written by the award-winning team that wrote the original "cohousing bible" and first brought cohousing to North America, this fully-illustrated manual combines nuts-and-bolts practical considerations and design ideas with extensive case studies of dozens of diverse communities in Europe and North America.

Cohousing communities create unique opportunities for designing more sustainable lifestyles. Whether urban, suburban or rural; senior or intergenerational; retrofit or new, the authors show how the physical structures of cohousing communities lend themselves to a more efficient use of resources, and make everything from gardening to childcare to socializing easier.

Creating Cohousing puts the "neighbor" back into "neighborhood;" and is an essential resource for anyone interested in more environmentally and socially sustainable living.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $19.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Who controls our water resources and how much water do we have left? Can we enact meaningful changes in our personal lives, our policies and our laws to protect our remaining freshwater reserves? Can we learn to share water equitably with each other and the planet?

In this collection, some of the world's leading writers, activists, photographers, and artists have come together to answer those questions and put us on a path for change. Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource is a call to action and a solution-focused guide to solving our global water crisis. Authors take on both the good and the bad — the impact of climate change on water resources, the threat of privatization, and the challenge of thirsty agriculture, as well as a growing grassroots water justice movement, tools for watershed literacy, and success stories in conservation and efficiency.

Water Matters is a book that will make you pause for a moment to remember the life-sustaining value of water in our daily lives, and then inspire you to do everything you can to preserve and protect our threatened water resources.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $19.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Water Consciousness is designed to change the way people think about water. It explores all aspects of the water crisis and what we can do about it. Compelling contributions by Bill McKibben, Maude Barlow, Vandana Shiva, Wenonah Hauter, Sandra Postel, Tony Clarke and other top environmental writers explain the problems and inspire readers to action. The book contains more than 50 stunning photographs and a quiz to find out your own water footprint. Beautifully designed to be accessible to readers, it provides essays on privatization, bottled water, conservation, appropriate technology, lessons from indigenous cultures, and an argument for the need for new public policy on the right to water.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $16.95. AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

Whether we are nearing the end of oil or merely nearing the end of inexpensive oil, it is becoming increasingly clear that we need to find alternative ways to meet our energy needs. Biodiesel is one such alternative, and it's one of the fastest growing sectors of the U.S. economy.

Biodiesel in North America is in its infancy. As air quality deteriorates in major centers, governments are scrambling for ways to reduce emissions and are embracing biodiesel in their fleets. Conferences on biodiesel are often "inaugural," as society begins discussing this fuel in earnest.

Biodiesel Power is a chronicle of this emerging industry. Lightly touching on the technical aspects of the fuel, its qualities and specifications, the book is largely about the people and stories of the biodiesel movement. It explores the tensions between:

• grassroots activists and their altruistic co-ops
• the profit-minded commercial producers and the voices of agribusiness
• the government

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For many people, the word “industry” brings to mind images of sprawling factories belching toxic emissions in a blighted natural landscape. “Industrial” has become synonymous with pollution, human rights abuse, and corporate greed. In Industrial Evolution, Lyle Estill seeks to reclaim the term, with its original connotations of hard work, diligence and productivity, and to show how community-scale enterprise can create a vibrant, sustainable local economy. Industrial Evolution is a story of survival. It is about how the small group of committed entrepreneurs introduced in Small is Possible managed to keep their dream alive and thriving through the economic recession, emerging with a model of what a sustainable local economy might look like in a post carbon future. Compulsively readable and seasoned with light humor, this grassroots account demonstrates that ecological stewardship and enterprise at an appropriate scale can lay the foundation for abundance.

Industrial Evolution skips the doom and gloom and is all about solutions. By showing that it is possible to take the big out of industry, this book motivates people to work together in a meaningful way. Filled with inspirational tales of success, failure, perseverance, and real world experiences that anyone can relate to, Industrial Evolution is a must-read for activists, organizers, politicians, and anyone who cares about resilient communities.

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A committed environmentalist for decades, Ed Begley Jr., has always tried to "live simply so others may simply live." Now, as more and more of us are looking for ways to reduce our impact on the planet and live a better, greener life, Begley shares his experiences on what works, what doesn't -- and what will save you money!

These are tips for environmentally friendly living that anyone -- whether you own or rent, live in a private home or a condo -- can try to make a positive change for the environment. From quick fixes to bigger commitments and long-term strategies, Begley will help you make changes in every part of your life.

And if you think living green has to mean compromising on aesthetics or comfort, fear not; Begley's wife, Rachelle, insists on style -- with a conscience. From recycling more materials than you ever thought possible to composting without raising a stink to buying an electric car, Living Like Ed is packed with ideas -- from obvious to ingenious -- that will help you live green, live responsibly, live well. Like Ed.

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Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with more than 100 different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but has also produced fruits with dramatically reduced amounts of calcium, vitamin A and vitamin C, and tomatoes that have 14 times more sodium than the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?

Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Fla., aka the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation's top restaurants.

Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a who's who cast of characters in the tomato industry: the avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-Marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the U.S. attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; and the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents' medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.

Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit as well as an exposé of today's agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

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In EcoMind, Frances Moore Lappé — a giant in the environmental movement — confronts accepted wisdom of environmentalism. Drawing on the latest research from anthropology to neuroscience and her own field experience, she argues that the biggest challenge to human survival isn’t our fossil fuel dependency, melting glaciers or other calamities. Rather, it’s our faulty way of thinking about these environmental crises that robs us of power. Lappé dismantles seven common “thought traps”— from limits to growth to the failings of democracy — that belie what we now know about nature, including our own, and offers contrasting “thought leaps” that reveal our hidden power. Like her Diet for a Small Planet classic, EcoMind is challenging, controversial and empowering.

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Author Ellen Sandbeck preaches a return to a more primitive way of life—a life with more joy and fewer household products. Green Barbarians demonstrates that by mustering a bit of courage and relying less on many modern conveniences, we can live happier, safer, more ecologically and economically responsible lives.