How You Can Save the World

A few months ago, Dave Howe -- president of the SCI FI Channel, started a blog devoted to how individuals can save the world. As I read through the entries, I enjoy the breadth of the domain. They're not just about green technologies or being polite or urban retooling. It's wide open.

If you hop over there right now, you'll see an overwhelming emphasis on Barak Obama. If you fit into the crowd that thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread, you can enjoy that part of things. If you're skeptical and tired of hearing about him, look past those five or so articles at the other stuff. Sustainable travel. Sustainable food. School reform. Even video games! It's all good.

So anyway, I've added HOW YOU CAN SAVE THE WORLD to my reader subscription and maybe you will too.

What Can I Do?: An Alphabet For Living

Another handbook:

What Can I Do?: An Alphabet For Living

Concern for the health of our planet led award-winning actress Lisa Harrow and her husband, internationally renowned whale biologist Roger Payne, to create the performance piece Lessons from Copernicus. But Lisa and Roger found that, following performances of their show, audience members frequently wanted to know: What can I do to help? What can we all do to stop the destructive impact of our current way of life?

What Can I Do? is Lisa’s response, a guidebook on how to take action. What Can I Do? initially accompanied performances of Lessons from Copernicus as a resource for audiences to take home. Its immediate success led Lisa to expand the guide for public and educational use.

Now available to the general public, What Can I Do? is at once practical and charming. The book is written as "An Alphabet for Living," providing readers with an extensive annotated list of Web sites where anyone can begin to explore the practices of sustainable living. Each site in the book has been selected for its wealth of information and links, and each serves as a valuable tool for finding fresh ways to view the world and live gently in it.

A wonderful resource for both new and renewed interest in sustainable living, What Can I Do? makes a great gift. The advice inside covers a broad array of subjects: from stopping the junk mail in your mailbox to reaping the economic and social benefits of green business; from buying sustainably harvested seafood to donating and recycling your obsolete electronics; from finding local food producers to getting your town to turn garbage into soil-improving compost.

How to Make the World a Better Place: 116 Ways You Can Make a Difference

I know, I know, another handbook. But I figure that one of them might suit any given individual, so I keep making recommendations:

How to Make the World a Better Place: 116 Ways You Can Make a Difference

This book shows how just one person can make a difference in solving global, national, and local problems. Each chapter alerts readers to problems that require attention, explains the issues and what has to be done about them, and lists the addresses and phone numbers of organizations that can be contacted.