These obvious yet perhaps revolutionary words come from Industrial Evolution, a wonderful new book by Lyle Estill, an entrepreneur, author, and, dare I say, environmental industrialist. The book’s premise reflects something that we all know but generally ignore: We can’t shop our way to real wealth. To help us move towards a better future, Industrial Evolution provides a manifesto of sorts for a new industrial ethic.

The book revolves around Estill’s company, Piedmont Biofuels, a biodiesel production facility in North Carolina. If Piedmont Biofuels sold only biodiesel, it likely would have failed – along with many of the other biodiesel producers – during the collapse of 2009. But Piedmont survived, in large part because it diversified.

As Estill notes, “When fuel production was down, design-build was booming. When design-build was soft, our research and analytics would sometimes carry the day.” Estill continues, “What we failed to understand at the time, as we were bringing our chemical plant to life, was that we were imitating nature, and accidentally diversifying.”

Diversification went much beyond the many facets and faucets of biodiesel production. In fact, much of Industrial Evolution describes how Piedmont became the anchor tenant in an eco-industrial park where the co-products of one business became the feedstock of another. To the extent possible, there was no waste. It was an industrial ecosystem made up of pipes, plants, people and more. Everyone had to survive and flourish together, so that’s what they did.

** This review first appeared in Alternatives Journal 38.3: Art & Media, published in May 2012.
Click here to see more of that issue. **

At its heart, the ethic of Industrial Evolution is about people and how they matter. Much of the value in the Piedmont Biofuels model concerns building relationships and a shared vision of society.

“People just want to have a say in how they can govern their own lives,” Estill writes. Earlier on he notes, “It’s not about the gallons. It’s not about the fuel. It’s about people.” The people of Industrial Evolution are of course not all the same, and Estill devotes some time to candidly describing their differences. For example, a chapter on local food potlucks humorously describes a dispute between the vegans, who want everything to be properly labelled, and the meat eaters, who would be perfectly happy to hammer a sign on the front lawn that reads “Vegan option.”

Human welfare is just as important as an end-goal for a new industrial ethic, and Industrial Evolution shows how critical the human aspect is to the success or failure of a business or way of life. Estill is poignant when describing the impact of the death of his brother Mark, both on the people of Piedmont Biofuels and the success of the operation itself. In general, the plant would not have flourished without the collective sharing and sacrifice by all those involved.

To appreciate Industrial Evolution, it helps to know a little about Estill. As noted early in the book, he is an industrialist who believes in production. He wants to reclaim the word “industry,” which has literally been outsourced. Likewise, Estill notes that he is not an activist. Chaining himself to a barricade to stop a bulldozer would not be high on his priority list, he writes, especially if he may have been the one who ordered the bulldozer in the first place. And yet Estill believes firmly in sustainability, people and values, and he istrying to outline a new ethic both in prose and practice. While I don’t believe this means Estill embodies a contradiction, I do believe it lends him a unique perspective on issues of sustainability.

A key part of any business story is its success, and Estill is upfront about the financial difficulties Piedmont faced. “We were fuelling ourselves. We were feeding ourselves. But we were having trouble financing ourselves,” he writes. However, financial performance is “but one measure of a company. As a place, and as a culture, and by almost any other measure, Piedmont was doing wonderfully.” Estill’s preferred metric for success is the five-pointed star of genuine wealth described in Mark Anielski’s 2007 book, The Economics of Happiness.

Ideally, being virtuous also helps pay the bills. In Industrial Evolution, Estill describes how Piedmont developed the concept of open-source biodiesel, which is predicated upon a belief that freely sharing information is right and just. Being open-sourced ended up helping Piedmont financially, as it received several grants from the public and governments.

While Industrial Evolution is an uplifting story about a group of people who found a way to succeed living by the life they thought they should live, its message runs much deeper. The challenges that Piedmont faces are much more than the next financial statement. They cut to the heart of some critical issues facing America and the world, such as climate change, peak oil and local self-reliance. While Estill doesn’t provide a full solution for these challenges, I for one am grateful he is at the frontline, standing tall.

Kyrke Gaudreau is a doctoral student of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research focuses on developing and applying a sustainability assessment framework for energy systems.

In Creative Community Organizing, Si Kahn provides a bridge from the past to the present. At 68, Kahn is a living link between key North American social movements of the past half-century and the work activists are still doing today to address social injustice. For nearly 50 years he has been a community organizer and activist songwriter, working in the civil rights, labour, and anti-private-prison movements. Kahn attempts to distill the lessons of his ongoing involvement by telling vivid stories of his experiences and reciting his topical song lyrics.

Kahn encapsulates these lessons in what he calls “Creative Community Organizing’s Top 20.” Some of this advice is familiar: Park your stereotypes at the door (and create conditions for others to do the same); have a vision of what you are for, not just what you are against; find the common interest that can unite people; use culture and storytelling to build common bonds; and imagine where you want to be and work backwards from there.

However, he also offers ideas that are more specific to his experience: Make sure people are fully aware of the risks they face when they get involved in a campaign; find ways to play one opponent against another; and when you ask for people’s support, make sure it’s for something simple and straightforward. This is an insightful and entertaining book, but one has to wade through a lot of stories and side tangents to get to the meat of it.

Community organizer’s Linda Stout’s book, Collective Visioning, focuses almost exclusively on how to create a vision that can fire people up. Speaking from her rich experience working with people of all ages and cultural backgrounds, she talks about how to facilitate a visioning process and provides exercises for doing so. For Stout, such efforts bring together disparate groups to articulate mutual concerns and find common ground, creating preconditions for collaboration.

One particularly inspiring example involves high school students from a low income black community in post-Katrina New Orleans. The students had to put up with substandard food, malfunctioning air conditioners, almost unusable washrooms, and a lack of textbooks and seats in their classrooms. Stout brought them together as a group called the Rethinkers and encouraged them to imagine what their schools could be like in 2026. As the students took their vision to the media, the new school superintendent and non-profit organizations, major changes began to occur as adults became both inspired and shamed into taking action.

** This review first appeared in Alternatives Journal 38.3: Art & Media, published in May 2012.
Click here to see more of that issue. **

Stout’s work is deeply rooted in heart and soul. As she says, “We must work from a place of vision, a place of hope, a place of joy, and a place that is grounded in our hearts.” By shifting the focus initially away from challenges and problems and onto visions and desires, Stout’s approach seems effective for inspiring people to imagine that a better world is possible, and to find common ground across the divisions of race and class.

Jonathan Tisch and Karl Weber’s very relevant book, Citizen You, invites the reader to engage in the new civic activism and use personal creativity, initiative and commitment to solve seemingly intractable local and global problems. They argue that old models of involvement, such as volunteerism, charity and lobbying, are transforming into community-based action, leadership in global citizenship and social entrepreneurship. This provides incredible opportunities for determined, creative individuals to inspire and change the world.

The authors introduce a growing number of citizens who take passionate ownership of global issues, including urban farming, clean drinking water for everyone and combating massive drug distribution. Their work is committed to improving conditions for people and environments in developing countries.

Citizen You outlines how to revitalize democracy, how modern technology can create new forms of civic engagement, and how to change careers in search of a deeper meaning of life. The authors remind us of our own dreams and visions, and illustrate with compelling and fascinating real-life stories, as well as an abundance of tips, how to take effective action and be part of creating this new world.

Charles Dobson’s The Troublemaker’s Teaparty presents itself as a strategic, straightforward field guide to establishing citizen action groups and keeping them healthy and effective. Organized into 10 easily accessible and insightful chapters that build on each other, each chapter can also be a useful standalone resource when specific challenges occur.

The first chapter introduces different ways to organize the community, explaining how to lead a meeting and keep people involved, share information and raise funds. The book elaborates on grassroots relationships, mediation and conflict resolution, and explains how to prevent grassroots wilt. It educates well on how to design and run a project, and demonstrates how to use media as an effective tool to reach a broader community, rally troops, drive governments, help create distinctive messages, and build and support communication networks.

When the book was first published in 2003, Dobson was already well aware of the media’s potential to facilitate communication between massive numbers of people in order to influence public trends and government decisions. This is more true today than ever. The book also advises on how to directly contact government bodies and elected politicians, and outlines the best approaches to choose when meeting with decision makers. Dobson concludes with “Confrontation 101,” a list of Gandhi’s eight methods for converting an opponent in order to strengthen civil society. This book is an indispensable guide for every serious activist.

With a whole new generation of youthful activists coming on the scene, it is important to maintain the continuity of experience while opening the doors for fresh ideas. These four books are a good place to start.

Christine Krumrey has a PhD in natural sciences and works as a freelance writer and photographer. Don Alexander teacher geography at Vancouver Island University. He writes about place making, urban sustainability and smart growth.

Their overview is paired with the beautiful Batik artwork of Mary Edna Fraser, who captures many global landscapes affected by climate change in a stylish and unique way. Against this backdrop (which is worthy of even the most decorative coffee table), the authors clearly demonstrate that there is no debate about climate change. Their book presents this argument in a non-aggressive way, concentrating on scientific realities that are supported by irrefutable evidence.

Sometimes hard numbers are the key to understanding the role of greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic factors that drive climate change. Such facts and figures can become mind-numbing and overwhelming; however, the authors isolate the data that are necessary to understanding the science in an easy-to-read format. Basic terminology is also woven into the book, from the misnomer of the greenhouse effect to glaciers to governmental panels.

The book also confidently frames the nature of our uncertainty about the future. One of the nicest features comes at the end of each chapter, where a recurring section called “Myths, Misinterpretations, and Misunderstandings of the Deniers” briefly describes the most common mistakes in the climate change discussion and then refutes them. These are also the most valuable insights of this book, presented in a factual and consistent manner which is equally useful to both proponents and cynics.

One key point the authors make is that scientific terms and statistical numbers aren’t required to convince the humans and wildlife that are already living with devastating drought and wildfire, catastrophic flooding and melting of the permafrost. For the rest of us, perhaps we either can’t imagine these experiences or we don’t know enough to point directly to the causes. Yet some of the greatest, most beautiful places on our planet display clear evidence of climate change’s negative effects, and we are only beginning to contend with sea level rise and acidification, melting glaciers and desertification. Unfortunately, by the time we are all affected in an undeniable way, it will likely be too late to make things right.

Sadly, as the authors point out, it is possible that we are approaching a point where our options for mitigating climate change will run out. If that is in fact the case, the final chapter fittingly addresses the concept of geo-engineering, or what some refer to as Plan B. If all else fails, the desperate and dramatic options they describe do offer some alternative methods of controlling greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. However, the consequences of their deployment could be devastating, and are uncertain at best.

Global Climate Change rationally and simply explains what scientists from around the world all agree on: We are past the time of arguing about whether or not climate change is real, and into a time when consequences and solutions must be addressed. With that goal in mind, the authors intend to provide a tool which can be used by savvy environmental activists and, as the title asserts, climate change novices.

Jenn Marshman is an environmentalist who has worked in the health care industry since 1998. She is currently studying geography and environmental management at the University of Waterloo.

Paths to a Green World begins with an introduction that presents the four perspectives. This is followed by three chapters about modern environmental problems: the ecological consequences of globalization, the impact of globalization on environmentalism, and the gaps which separate economic growth in richer and poorer areas. In each chapter, the causes and consequences of the problems are then “explained” as they are seen by each of the four perspectives. These explanations are followed by another three chapters which indicate what positions each perspective takes with respect to global trade and the environment, global investment and the environment, and global financing and the environment. The book also offers the most easily understandable distinction between environmental and ecological economics that I have found (see especially page 107).

Each of the first seven chapters end with a section entitled “Conclusion,” and then a final chapter serves as a summary conclusion. The use of the singular rather than the plural must be taken as intentional, and it is my sole major complaint about the book. The authors are explicit that their goal is to present the four perspectives so that readers can find their own way among the positions and the resulting policy proposals. Good for them.

However, in my view, they carry neutrality too far. It is hard to find anyone – regardless of their worldview – who does not recognize population growth as contributing to, though not necessarily the source of today’s environmental problems. There is a near-consensus among analysts that subsidies which encourage higher rates of natural resources use are anti-environmental. (Admittedly, certain political parties in Canada seem to be oblivious to this analytical conclusion.) In short, I would have liked the last chapter to be less a conclusion than a source for multiple conclusions, and suggestions indicating why parts of each worldview are highly questionable (if not just plain wrong).

I have two other non-quibbles. First, the word “value” appears only rarely in the book. One can infer, but it is never stated, that each of the four perspectives is based on personal values, and those values are really the root for the different and indeed incompatible policy positions. All political choice ultimately comes back to values.

Second, the authors do an injustice to the concept of sustainable development by emphasizing its inconsistent use by the 1972 Brundtland Commission. Simply put, the Commission did not recognize the strength of the baby it had brought up. As a result, many institutions that should (and perhaps did) know better decided to treat sustainable development as little more than modified business-as-usual. Meanwhile, others have recognized its truly radical nature as a challenge to both the quality and the quantity of economic growth.

Despite these complaints, Clapp (who teaches at the University of Waterloo) and Dauvergne (UBC) deserve enormous thanks for clarifying the underlying perspectives that lead to such divergent advice for coping with what are now widely recognized are global environmental issues. Paths to a Green World may be used as a textbook, but it is also accessible to anyone who can read the editorial and op-ed pages of a daily paper.

David B. Brooks is a natural-resource economist who, when he is not in a canoe, identifies ways to conserve fresh water. He is also a member of Alternatives’ editorial board.

Carrot City’s overarching solution is to redefine what it means to live in a city by integrating food production into the built environment. Through fascinating case studies and vibrant images that showcase the appeal and diversity of urban gardens, the book aims to prove that, “There is no dichotomy between the beautiful yard and the edible landscape; they can be one and the same.”

The book divides urban agriculture projects into five main themes: “Imagining the Productive City”; “Building Community and Knowledge”; “Redesigning the Home”; “Producing on the Roof”; and “Components for Growing.” Each section profiles innovative communities, ongoing ventures or elaborate plans for a sustainable future. Many of the case studies are clustered around Toronto, Vancouver and New York, which allows Carrot City to challenge the demonization of urban development by demonstrating that even the environmentalist’s worst nightmare – the dreaded suburb – can foster biodiversity rather than destroy it. Likewise, industrial parks, often vilified as urban scars, are reimagined as “Agroparks,” or mechanisms of food production and distribution that completely overturn the idea of industrial ecology.

Using vivid graphical and literary imagery, the authors introduce incredible and attainable projects that not only promote edible landscapes, but also energy neutrality and sustainable lifestyles. Food miles become food metres when consumers pick produce grown right inside the supermarket. Rooftops can be repurposed as classroom gardens. Single-family homes can be reengineered to become closed-loop systems that mimic natural processes. Encouragingly, many of these projects are already a part of the fabric of our cities, and we all may have unknowingly walked past them without appreciating their splendor.

Carrot City also illustrates how urban agriculture transcends social class divides. The urban elite can redesign their homes to reduce their environmental footprint and add a rooftop garden, but people living in subsidized housing in Toronto’s low-income Regent Park area can do so too. The potential of urban agriculture in surprising landscapes is also covered. In the small community of Inuvik, for example, the local hockey arena was turned into a huge and vibrant community greenhouse, the closest one to the Arctic Circle in North America. In the slums of Nairobi in Kenya, people cope with land shortages by growing their food using a technique known as “a farm in a sack.”

We can all be part of this movement. There is room in urban agriculture for sophistication and also for simplicity, and all that is required is creativity and a willingness to get your hands dirty. Old tires, used containers and plastic bags are gardens waiting to grow. A child’s swimming pool can be filled with dirt, planted with herbs or flowers.

Carrot City will resonate with city planners and architects, but also with anyone willing to imagine the full growth potential of cities. It matters not who you are – artist, visionary, backyard farmer, guerilla gardener, engineer or parent. As the authors argue, one day soon, “It may be as unusual to find a city without productive urban landscapes as it would be today to find a house without plumbing.”

Megan Herod is an urban garden enthusiast and an undergraduate student at the University of Waterloo.

Each chapter of The Urban Food Revolution tackles a different topic and provides a detailed overview of the main issues and opportunities associated with it. Community Supported Agriculture programs, the economic obstacles facing farmers, community gardens, farmers’ markets, food deserts and the challenges plaguing modern food systems comprise some of the topics explored. These larger concepts are rounded out by Ladner’s guidance on relevant policy issues, including zoning concerns, new urban design paradigms and examples of jurisdictions that have support sound local food strategies.

Each chapter reads like a magazine article, with excerpts from interviews, real-world examples in practice from across North America, anecdotes and useful, up-to-date statistics from as recent as 2010. Ladner draws on websites, newspapers, journal articles and other sources to paint a picture of the vast landscape of obstacles related to feeding people in Canada and across North America.

For example, Ladner illuminates the troubling challenge of food deserts, which plague low-income neighbourhoods of cities across North America. These areas are considered to be too dangerous for a supermarket, leaving already disadvantaged residents with only access to convenience stores and fast food restaurants if they don’t own a vehicle. Arguing for the foundational role that access to fresh fruit and vegetables can play in improving livelihoods and building safer cities, Ladner draws connections between a lack of healthy food and criminal behaviour.

The Urban Food Revolution serves as a very useful starting point for readers who want to become more involved in finding solutions to modern food issues. Urban gardeners, city councilors, parents, teachers and others will find Ladner’s book to be a comprehensive overview of how they can influence food security issues in their backyard, city hall, family or classroom.

Carly Armstrong works collaboratively with First Nations, environmental non-profits, industry and governments to find lasting solutions to complex sustainability issues.

Rambunctious Garden is both an exercise in scientific communication and a philosophical exploration of humans’ relationship with nature. While this may be Marris’ first book, she’s certainly no stranger to the topic, having spent several years covering ecology, conservation biology and other subjects for the highly esteemed journal, Nature. Marris’ experience as a journalist and formal training as a science writer are evident in her accessible writing style, one of many of the book’s strengths. Rather than being a purely abstract exploration of the human-nature relationship, the narrative is anchored by conversations with a number of individuals who are grappling with their perceptions of nature on a daily basis. Take, for example, Christian Giardina, a government ecologist based in Hawaii, who vehemently believes that historical ecosystems are superior, yet she recognizes that when you break it down to the fundamental building blocks such as chloroplasts, there isn’t really any difference between species.

Revisiting concepts like exotic species and nature-in-balance, Marris advocates for challenging long-held assumptions regarding the natural world. If we continue to hold on to the idea of nature as untouched and undisturbed by humans, it will result in continuous disappointment and keep us from engaging in the important work that can and should be done in urban areas and agricultural landscapes. This is only part of the necessary reframing; other ecological narratives associated with ideas such as invasive species must also be reconsidered.

At the same time, Marris continuously explores the need to consider the past and present realities of climate change, and how they will affect the future of conservation and restoration. She questions, for example, whether establishing ecological baselines is just a futile exercise. From a paleontological point of view, ecosystem compositions have changed drastically in any given location. However, despite the perceptual barriers that stem from dominant ecological narratives and the prospects of climate change, Marris introduces the reader to a number of innovative conservation strategies and experiments already underway in all corners of the world, from Pleistocene re-wilding to assisted migration to designer ecosystems.

It is important to note that what is considered innovative to some can be deemed questionable by others. Addressing this reality, Marris discusses both emerging and dominant ideas. She includes input from skeptics such as Dustin Rubenstein at Columbia University, who is concerned about the use of proxies for re-wilding, as well as those who straddle the boundary like Jessica Hellmann, an ecologist at Notre Dame University who researches assisted migration on Vancouver Island but is uncertain about the widespread use of such strategies. In many cases, these conversations raise some of the book’s most provocative considerations, such as the complexities of co-evolution. Yet Marris does not suggest any sort of conservation canon or panacea. Instead, she carefully considers the need to weigh the pros and cons of various conservation goals, such as genetic diversity and ecosystem services.

Overall, Rambunctious Garden offers an optimistic outlook, and it is both timely and relevant. While the Harper Government may have recently announced their intention of designating Rouge Park in Toronto as Canada’s first urban national park, the idea of pristine wilderness continues to remain at the heart of Canadian cultural and historical narratives.

Marris’ book contends that “saving nature in a post-wild world” is, and will continue to be, the work of many. That group includes ecologists and conservation biologists; policy makers and public officials; staff and board members of environmental NGOs; as well as advocates, citizen activists and volunteers.

Steven M. Alexander (stevenmalexander.com) is a PhD student in the department of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo and a member of the Environmental Change and Governance Group. His current research is focused on the governance of coastal-marine systems in the Caribbean.

The right, however, has no monopoly on denial. In the burgeoning clean-tech field, optimistic literature about green jobs has expanded to fill the space between our desire to protect our creature comforts and our fear of the dragons of collapse. Some say green is a post-partisan issue, and perhaps in Northern Europe’s social democracies it is. But in North America, green still falls to the left of centre.

Given that The False Promise of Green Energy is written by neocon lawyers and economists from the right-leaning Cato Institute, I opened it as I would a bottle of cod liver oil. I hoped that Life Without Oil and Powering the Dream would provide some antidote. These three books approach the future of energy with agendas ranging from the Cato Institute’s business-as-usual philosophy, to Alexis Madrigal’s “clean tech is great business with a long history,” to Steve Hallett’s view that green tech isn’t enough; we need to transform society.

The Cato Institute exists “to counter the trend” of government regulation of free enterprise. Fittingly, The False Promise of Green Energy cautions against public investment in green jobs and clean-tech companies. The authors take an agnostic position on climate change. They avoid any direct reference to the end of cheap oil, putting their faith in the free market. The book should be subtitled “In Defense of Coal.” Their argument? We can’t have our cake and eat it too. Green jobs will make us “pay more to live worse.”

Moreover, they suggest, our environmental woes are exaggerated, and we need not move quickly toward a post-carbon economy. “The world suffers from profound environmental problems,” they affirm. “It always has.” Hmmm. Ancient peoples died from inhaling the smoke from their cooking fires. Do I detect a little cooking smoke and mirrors to distract us from acknowledging the scientific consensus on global heating?

The strength of this book is its deconstruction of the green-job estimates in documents such as the US Conference of Mayors’ 2008 Green Jobs Report and Van Jones’ 2008 book, The Green Collar Economy. They cleverly demonstrate that “the devil is in the details” and that green energy is being sold without dwelling on the bad news: Our lifestyles will have to change radically over coming decades.

But the shortcoming in these projections aside, we still need to revamp the industrial economy. We simply have to do it more transparently. With their phobia of government, the Cato Institute authors appear to have forgotten what it took to mobilize our societies the last time all bets were off – in World War II.

In Life Without Oil, Hallett reminds us that dealing with the environmental crisis before us will require governments to use “a combination of fierce persuasion and potent legislation.” The author doesn’t pull any punches. Hallett writes, “The combined impacts of two centuries of fossil-fuel-powered civilization building, pollution and resource depletion have finally overwhelmed our support systems. It is time to prioritize the retreat.” Then he asks, “What things will be most valuable in the generations to come?”

Hallett must be a popular professor at Purdue University where he teaches. He is lively, direct, knowledgeable beyond his field of botany, and writes with the intent of engaging students in critical thinking. He stands on the shoulders of pioneers in the post-carbon field such as Richard Heinberg, James Lovelock and Howard Kunstler. Perhaps he says nothing new, but Hallett is easy to read. He moves seamlessly from anthropological insights to ecological economics, has a nose for memorable details and spins a good yarn. He offers a personal “History of the World 101” to explain the collision course between human appetites and Earth’s ever-shrinking bounty.

In Powering the [American] Dream, editor of The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal, sings the praises of capitalism, which, in his opinion, will save us from the material scarcity that comes with peak everything. In his enthusiasm for the utopia of abundance, Madrigal shares the Cato Institute’s distaste for the limits to growth. Madrigal’s champions are men such as venture capitalist John Doerr, who sees clean tech as a way to make lots of money.

Madrigal’s book is written in a lucid, accessible style and offers a great deal of common sense. “Right or wrong, cheap things win, so clean energy has to get cheaper,” he quips, as he mocks the insights of the Club of Rome, referring to them as “hoary truisms.” He nevertheless offers fresh thinking on environmentalism and provides an eye-opening history lesson for green techno-optimists.

The book is worth reading for its stories, such as one about the 1895 competition between electric and internal combustion cars, and another about the brief, intense battle between compressed air and electricity transmission as ways to send power over long distances. He explains that there were six million windmills pumping water on American farms in the late 1800s, some so well designed that they are still operating today.

** This review first appeared in Alternatives Journal 38.2: Green Buildings, published in March 2012.
Click here to see more of that issue. **

But Madrigal’s quirkiness shows up in his difficulty with bicycles. According to him, these two-wheeled vehicles have a lot to answer for. Who knew? He suggests that the 10 million bicycles being used in the US at the turn of the 20th century transformed our notion of personal independence and paved the way for private cars. Not only did the bicycle make Americans skeptical of public transit, cyclists enabled cars by lobbying for road improvements across the US. Bicycle repair shops established the model for gas stations and garages, and Henry Ford probably got the idea of mass production from the famous Pope Manufacturing Company, which owned the original bicycle patent.

Madrigal sifts through scenarios of government support for green research and development, identifying both perverse consequences and successes. He does an excellent job of explaining the Danish model of consistent, long-term, flexible government support for clean-tech knowledge and people. His book is a useful primer for intelligent energy policy.

It’s difficult to find a common message in this trio of books on clean tech, but one theme does emerge: It takes a long time for new things to catch on and begin to work. The sooner we get started, the more likely we’ll succeed.

Producer/writer Chris Lowry works for a convivial post-carbon future. He can be found at ecotone.ca.

Doppelt presents us with his family’s dilemmas. They make the right choices, take the sustainable steps and everything works out for the better. But does it really? Life is seldom simple, and it becomes less so as one goes from the individual to family, business or organization.

The best parts of Doppelt’s book deal with choices between two good options. Should you purchase local food or food from an organic farm in a developing country? Doppelt cautions, “the global-versus-local ethical dilemma obviously does not lend itself to easy answers,” but his conclusion that “a thoughtful assessment of the pros and cons of this dilemma helps to prioritize and weigh the most important considerations” is simplistic.

In comparison, Jennifer Clapp and Peter Dauvergne’s Paths to a Green World gets closer to many people’s experience by focusing on broader political and economic issues instead of individual choices. In the absence of this wider perspective, they suggest, the outcome for the thoughtful­ and objective observer may be dismay and confusion.

Doug McKenzie-Mohr, a psychology professor in Fredericton, advocates “community-based social marketing.” To promote sustainability, he wants governments, corporations and non-governmental­ organizations to:

• target unsustainable behaviours and identify the barriers to change,
• understand various commitment strategies,
• communicate effective messages that focus­ on sustainable options for society, and,
• enhance motivation and invite participation.

The book treats each of these steps in ways that are understandable both to marketing specialists and laypeople. It backs them up with short case studies to indicate how and why some form of social marketing did or did not work. Though theory is not neglected, McKenzie-Mohr’s principal aim is to be practical. The book opens with a guide suggesting how it can be used, and closes with suggestions of what to do when one encounters resistance. It is a useful addition to the activist’s bookshelf.

Ithaca, New York, was in ferment at the end of the 1960s. African-American students, returned Peace Corps volunteers and those involved in the anti-Vietnam movement were challenging Cornell University, the city’s largest employer. Graduates of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, or Ag School, wrote a hard-hitting critique of how the school served mostly industrial agriculture. Many of these activists stayed on to live and work in Ithaca and Tompkins County, contributing to the sustainability efforts Liz Walker describes in her book, Choosing a Sustainable Future.

Besides being home to Cornell University and Ithaca College, this pleasant corner of upstate New York is favoured with good agricultural land, beautiful gorges, waterfalls, parks and the hottest spot in New York State for geothermal energy. The university and college provide an economically secure and well-informed cadre of potentially engaged community leaders. But 25 per cent of Ithaca’s population is without health insurance. African-Americans face subtle and less-than-subtle racism. Manufacturing jobs are disappearing and the cost of housing, pushed up by students, is 50 per cent higher than in surrounding counties, yet wages have not kept up.

** This review first appeared in Alternatives Journal 38.2: Green Buildings, published in March 2012.
Click here to see more of that issue. **

Walker describes key initiatives, organizations and leaders (many of them women) who are making Ithaca and Tompkins County more sustainable: a local farmers’ market, buy-local campaigns, sustainable-job-creation programs, a community-housing trust, seed funds from a foundation and an “alternative” credit union, sustainability education in schools, engaged alternative media, and the Ag School’s co-operative extension services.

Readers will find similar initiatives elsewhere, but there are also new ones that could be adapted to other communities. Rich in detail and diversity, Choosing a Sustainable Future identifies building blocks for achieving critical mass. We finish reading it in hope, but without certainty, that critical mass has been achieved.

As useful as they may be, none of these books recognizes adequately the limitations of individual and local approaches. After you’ve convinced yourself and those around you to live as sustainably as you can, how do you work on the unsustainable constraints of our economy? How can these local efforts be aggregated to a larger scale? As Mark Jaccard has observed (“Let’s Get Serious,” Alternatives, 37:4, 2011), focusing on behavioural change gives politicians an easy excuse to avoid the difficult but essential challenge of passing and implementing laws.

David B. Brooks is a natural-resource economist who, when he is not in a canoe, identifies ways to conserve fresh water. He is also a member of Alternatives’ editorial board.

Joy Woolfrey is a socio-economic analyst, planner, educator and activist when she is not repairing raccoon damage in the once sustainable community of Purcell’s Cove, NS.

The Transition Companion is the sequel to The Transition Handbook, written in 2008 by Transition movement founder Rob Hopkins. This second volume is the repository for everything that members of the movement have learned during the past decade. The first Transition initiative was organized in Totnes, England, in 2006. A group of activists created an “energy descent action plan” which consisted of local solutions for relieving the community’s oil dependency, such as cultivating food and building materials closer to home using nut tree farms, community gardens, cob houses and other sources. This approach has since struck a chord worldwide, and hundreds of initiatives have sprung up, from street-based groups to city and regional networks.

Companion is written and set up like an elementary school textbook. There are short, colourful sections with bullet points, photographs and case studies, making the content easy to engage with and accessible to just about anyone. The beginning sections present background, principles and ideas, and the bulk of the book is focused on ingredients (the different components of getting an initiative off the ground) and tools (practical tips and ideas for doing so). The information is organized to trace the trajectory of a successful initiative: starting out, deepening, connecting, building and daring to dream. Starting out, for example, covers visioning exercises and how to raise awareness, offering tools for running effective meetings and communicating with the media. Connecting, on the other hand, discusses how to create working groups on health or education and resolve conflicts while planning.

Hopkins emphasizes that these ingredients and tools are simply some of the adaptable ideas that have worked in other communities. The movement has retained its grassroots appeal while expanding globally by staying true to the principle that each group must choose the appropriate actions for their situation. There is no formal hierarchy or bureaucracy, and the only requirement is that an initiative has to care about creating a better world, starting at the community level.

This is not a book you sit down and read end-to-end. You pick up The Transition Companion when you want to see if other communities have faced the same problems as yours while trying to live better, or if you need guidance, next steps and the inspiration to take action.

Sylvie Spraakman is an environmental engineer based in Kitchener, Ontario, and she blogs about current issues like water resources, energy, mining and climate change.