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The 20th century saw unprecedented growth in population, energy consumption and food production. As the population shifted from rural to urban, human impacts on the environment increased dramatically.

The 21st century ushered in an era of declines, including:

• Oil, natural gas and coal extraction
• Yearly grain harvests
• Climate stability
• Economic growth
• Fresh water
• Minerals and ores, such as copper and platinum

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Concerns over climate change and energy depletion are increasing exponentially. Mainstream solutions still assume a panacea that will cure our climate ills without requiring any serious modification to our way of life.

Plan C explores the risks inherent in trying to continue our energy-intensive lifestyle. Using dirtier fossil fuels (Plan A) or switching to renewable energy sources (Plan B) allows people to remain complacent in the face of a potential global catastrophe. Dramatic lifestyle change is the only way to begin to create a sustainable, equitable world. The converging crises of Peak Oil, Climate Change and increasing inequity are presented in a clear, concise manner, as are the twin solutions of community (where cooperation replaces competition) and curtailment (deliberately reducing consumption of consumer goods).

Plan C shows how each person's individual choices can dramatically reduce CO2 emissions. It offers specific strategies in the areas of food, transportation and housing. One chapter analyzes the decimation of the Cuban economy when the USSR stopped oil exports in 1990 and provides an inspiring vision for a low energy way of living.

Plan C is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in living a lower-energy, saner and sustainable lifestyle.

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Sustainability has become a buzzword in the last decade, but its full meaning is complex, emerging from a range of different sectors. In practice, it has become the springboard for millions of individuals throughout the world who are forging the fastest and most profound social transformation of our time - The Sustainability Revolution.

The Sustainability Revolution paints a picture of this largely unrecognized phenomenon from the point of view of five major sectors of society:

• Community (government and international institutions)
• Commerce (business)
• Natural Resources (forestry, farming, fisheries, etc.)
• Ecological Design (architecture, technology)
• Biosphere (conservation, biodiversity, etc.).

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Making reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is a national focus in both the U.S. and Canada, and schools are well-placed to combine conservation strategies with an education program that makes links between lifestyle choices and the future of the planet.

This exciting resource provides educators at all grade levels with strategies to teach about global warming and engage students' interest in doing their part to help cool the planet. Compiled from the pages of North America's leading environmental education journal Green Teacher, Teaching About Climate Change is packed with lesson plans, activities, experiments and worksheets. From calculating your school's CO2 emissions and other greenhouse effect experiments, to strategies for reducing school energy consumption, and hands-on explorations of energy and transportation alternatives from solar cookers to bikeathons, this compendium provides the tools to get any classroom or community involved in making their school cool.

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Teaching Green - The Elementary Years is designed for anyone working with young people in grades kindergarten to fifth, whether in schools or non-formal education settings. It offers 50 kid-tested teaching strategies that promote interdisciplinary hands-on learning about natural systems and foster critical thinking about environmental issues, both local and global. The book includes background information and instructions for practical projects and activities on numerous topics. Rich illustrations and a curriculum index make this book of contributions from more than 60 educators from across North America appealing to a wide range of teachers, educators and parents seeking innovative ideas for incorporating green themes into their programs.

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This resource is ideal for anyone working with young people in grades 9-12, whether in schools or in non-formal educational settings. Richly illustrated, it offers 50 teaching strategies that promote learning about natural systems and foster critical thinking about environmental issues, both local and global. It contains new approaches to learning, strategies for living sustainably, and numerous activities that promote interdisciplinary learning. In addition, the book provides suggestions for how best to green individual subject areas, develop integrated learning programs or replicate exemplary programs created by innovative schools and communities.

Containing contributions from more than 60 educators from across North America, the book’s strength lies in its diverse content. Readers learn how best to apply systems, teach about controversial issues and use a step-by-step approach to creative problem-solving in environmental projects. Also provided are instructions for measuring the ecological footprint of a high school, creating an indoor “living system” that cleans water, monitoring air quality with lichens and using green technologies to help green school campuses. Many articles and activities engage teenagers in outdoor learning and community restoration projects. Suggestions are included for connecting students with special needs to the environment around them.

Readers will find accessible background information and suggestions for many practical projects and activities. It is sure to appeal to a wide range of teachers, educators and parents seeking innovative ideas for incorporating green themes into their programs.

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Every 15 seconds on our Earth Island, a child dies from waterborne disease. Three times an hour, another species becomes extinct. Each day we consume 85 million barrels of oil and pump 23 million tons of carbon dioxide into an already warming atmosphere. But against this bleak backdrop, beacons of hope shine from thousands of large and small initiatives taking place everywhere from isolated villages to major urban centers.

Thriving Beyond Sustainability draws a collective map of individuals, organizations and communities from around the world that are committed to building an alternative future - one that strives to restore ecological health, reinvent outmoded institutions and rejuvenate our environmental, social and economic systems. The projects and initiatives profiled are meeting the challenges of the day with optimism, hope and results, leading the way in:

• relocalization
• green commerce
• ecological design
• environmental conservation
• social transformation.

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Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. There is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations and serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets.

Leading the charge is Woody Tasch, whose decades of work as a venture capitalist, foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur now shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility. He offers an alternative vision to the dusty old industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when dollars, and the businesses they financed, lost their connection to place; slow money, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the new economic, social, and environmental realities of the 21st century.

About the author Woody Tasch is president of the newly formed NGO Slow Money and Chairman Emeritus of Investors’ Circle, a nonprofit network of angel investors, venture capitalists, foundations, and family offices that, since 1992, has facilitated the flow of $130 million to 200 early-stage companies and venture funds dedicated to sustainability. He lives in northern New Mexico. For information about Slow Money please visit www.slowmoneyalliance.org.

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In Losing Our Cool, scientist and environmental journalist Stan Cox shows that indoor climate control is colliding with an out-of-control outdoor climate. In America, energy consumed by home air conditioning and the resulting greenhouse emissions have doubled in just over a decade; energy used to cool retail stores has risen by two-thirds. And six out of every seven gallons of diesel fuel U.S. forces haul into Iraq and Afghanistan are used to run air conditioning.

Reporting from some of the world’s hot zones — from Arizona and Florida to India — Cox documents the surprising ways in which air conditioning changes human experience: giving a boost to the global warming that it is designed to help us endure, providing a potent commercial stimulant, making possible an impossible commuter economy, and altering migration patterns. Though it saves lives in heat waves, it may also be altering our bodies’ sensitivity to heat; our rates of infection, allergy, asthma and obesity; and even our sex drive.

About the author:
Before joining the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., as senior scientist in 2000, Cox worked as a U.S. Department of Agriculture geneticist for 13 years. His environmental writing has been widely published. He is the author of Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.

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Order your copy, signed by author Bryan Welch, today!
This groundbreaking book, by MOTHER EARTH NEWS Publisher and Editorial Director Bryan Welch, cuts through the pessimism and denial that pervade today's discussions of sustainability and invites readers to visualize a verdant and prosperous future for humanity and all the living things that share our planet. As a practical guide, it offers a process for making our current lifestyles more sustainable and inspires us to look beyond the immediate obstacles to nurture the "destination fixation" that stimulates all of humanity's greatest achievements.

In the lives and accomplishments of farmers, gardeners, inventors and entrepreneurs, Beautiful and Abundant finds a path toward a world vision we can proudly pass on to future generations – a vision that is aesthetically beautiful, economically abundant, ethically fair and irresistibly contagious.

Humanity is at a turning point. Only one species in the universe can recognize its own impact on its habitat, so far as we know, and we are that species. In the early years of the 21st century we face the definitive human challenge – sustaining our quality of life on this miraculous, but finite sphere we call Earth.

Tragically, a lot of human energy is being squandered in conflict over short-term environmental obstacles. People debate symptoms and solutions but societies persistently fail to offer positive incentives for change. To harness the full power of human imagination and community initiative we need a positive vision for humanity's future. We need a believable collective vision for the beautiful, abundant planet where our grandchildren will live.

Click here to read the Table of Contents and Introduction for Beautiful and Abundant.

Read what people are saying:
"Beauty is the new black. Abundance – for all! – is our North Star. Bryan Welch is a businessman who serves beauty, a rancher who champions interdependence, and a leader who recognizes the sweet spot we're looking for is at the nexus of self-reliance and sustainability." – Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder, B Lab

"This is a book that invites us all to cut through the negativity of doomsday prophets and other 'progressive' thinkers. … Bryan Welch is a rare business leader who writes prose that is nuanced, eloquent and visionary. This luminous call to action will inspire you. … It happened to me." – Wanda Urbanska, author of The Heart of Simple Living: 7 Paths to a Better Life

About the author:
As a boy herding goats in rural New Mexico, Welch formed an intuition for the intricate and interdependent relationships among plants, animals and people. He's developed that intuition into the very model of a productive, balanced and sustainable life.

Before starting Ogden Publications (publishers of MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Mother Earth Living, Utne Reader and other media brands) in 1996, Welch worked at newspapers in several states. He graduated from the University of Denver and holds a master's degree from Harvard University, where he studied media policy and management at the Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Business School.

Welch serves on the board of directors of the MPA (Association of Magazine Media), the Social Venture Network and the Down Home Ranch Foundation. He and his wife, Carolyn, raise grass-fed cattle, sheep, goats and free-range chickens at the farm they call Rancho Cappuccino, which they also share with donkeys, dogs and the rogue mule, Zero.