Chasing a guilt-free, consumption-rich lifestyle can be exhausting. Managing your ecological footprint, however, isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. It starts with incremental change(s) – or, as this book suggests, it first necessitates a certain awareness of your environment, the objects in it, and the origins, travels and projected lifespan of said objects. Fittingly, the book begins with a chapter on “Stuff” (and, incidentally, the Guide was printed on recycled paper and wind power credits were purchased to account for the energy it took to print each copy). One of seven sections transposed from the Worldchanging blog (Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics and Planet are the other six), “Stuff” alone left me dumbfounded as I perused my home. Nevertheless, the book’s steadfast optimism and do-what-you-can attitude rescues it from the preachy, doom-and-gloom self-righteousness that can plague a lot of ‘environmentalist’ works. The Guide also provides informative sketches of communities far and wide that are exploring and enacting change of all types. It’s a good introductory resource on a staggering range of material — everything from biomimicry to freecycling, citizen science and social entrepreneurship to prefab and Brazil’s telecentros. If you happen to know each of those in detail, there’s more than 500 pages of other ideas (plus dozens of other books and sites highlighted within). Sure you could just tune into the blog, but owning a physical, inspirational snapshot of where we’re at now means you can revisit it in time, if only to see what sticks.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
In your home, you may already have several “smart” appliances – machines that automatically shut off or go into a sleep mode to conserve power. These appliances use built-in features that would react the same way whether they were plugged into the wall outlet or connected to some space-age power supply.<\/p>\n
But a new generation of truly intelligent appliances is emerging. These machines actually interact with the smart grids to help protect both your wallet and the grid itself.<\/p>\n
For instance, the GridWise project, a collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Whirpool, and IBM, has already developed machines that can detect drops in power from the grid and cycle down just enough to reduce power demands. The shift is virtually imperceptible to consumers using appliances at home, but it eases the burden on the grid enough to prevent a crash.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
The Japanese company Mujirushi Ryohin meaning “No brand, good product,” is better known as Muji. Often described to Westerners as a merging of IKEA and Target, Muji sells products for all aspects of life, out of large retail spaces in urban areas. But unlike so many other companies that fit this profile, Muji makes products that feature no distinguishing markings, logos, or trademarks. Muji is a brandless brand.<\/p>\n
Of course, simply by virtue of labeling itself as an “unbrand,” Muji is a highly unique and recognizable company. But it makes a point and stand by it: customers don’t need bells and whistles; they don’t need to form personal identities based on the things they own; they simply need useful, well-made, efficient products – and that is just what Muji gives them.<\/p>\n
*<\/p>\n
Today, we are a planet on the move. According to the Population Resource Center, hundreds of millions of us have left the countries where we were born to start new lives abroad. Hundreds of millions more travel long distances for recreation and business. Jet contrails crisscross the skies, signals flash through fiber-optic cables, and the planet seems to shrink every day.<\/p>\n
With all this travel, we’ve lost our connection to the land around us. Few of us could match the local ecological knowledge of our most ignorant ancestors. On the other hand, we’ve gained a greater understanding of the wider workings of nature. We may not be able to identify the tree growing in our own backyards, but we can instantly conjure up a satellite photo of our neighborhood on our laptops. We might not be able to point south without the aid of a compass, but our cell phones can tell us our near-exact latitude and longitude. We may not be able to name the birds singing outside our windows, but we can empathize with the sorrows and joys of Antarctic penguins at our local movie theater. We are, in short, completely uninformed about the regions we call home, and yet tuned-in as never before the workings of the planet as a whole.<\/p>\n
What we need to do is to synthesize the two – the global and the local; the technological and the domestic. We need to use the best of the remarkable suite of environmental technologies that are emerging from labs and workshops around the world, and combine them with the kind of local ecological wisdom that comes only from a deep engagement with place. Combining the two will give us unprecedented tools for solving the planet’s most dire problems.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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