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Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots

Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots
By Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs, Jason Mark

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Product Description

After centuries of economic activity based on extraction, exploitation, and depletion, we now face undeniable environmental threats. New business models that save or restore natural resources are critical. But how can we translate that insight into more sustainable practices? BUILDING THE GREEN ECONOMY shows how community groups, families, and individual citizens have taken action to protect their food and water, clean up their neighborhoods, and strengthen their local economies. Their unlikely victories???over polluters, unresponsive bureaucracies, and unexamined routines???dramatize the opportunities and challenges facing the local green economy movement. The authors also: * Lay out strategies for a more successful green movement * Describe how communities have protected their victories from legal and political challenges * Provide key resources for local activists * Include conversations with Rocky Anderson, Lois Gibbs, Anuradha Mittal, David Morris, Michael Shuman, and others

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #367580 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-09-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 282 pages

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Danaher is one of the anti-corporate movement's most recognizable spokespeople. He is the author or editor of 10 books about globalization, and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. A respected political commentator, Danaher's essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle.

Customer Reviews

Empowering and exciting5
This was one of my favorite books of 2007. The book offers a variety of accessible, engaging tales from the front lines. From worm poop to the Boston Tea Party, the authors do a great job of telling stories that leave the reader feeling refreshed, educated, and heartened. Whether you're a seasoned activist or just getting involved, this book offers a variety of resources and success stories. It's time that we start celebrating what works in our communities, and this book shows how.

Excellent Book5
This book was an excellent compendium of stories and interviews that provide a baseline of hope for the Green movement. But it is more -- it illustrates the limits of our current political system and shows how the needs of our citizens are constantly sacrificed for the benefit of multi-national corporations. Although the subtitle is "success stories from the grassroots", it really is as much a call to grassroots political activism as it is a celebration of it. Basically, the message is that people have to get to work, starting in their own neighborhoods and working outward and upward because positive change is very unlikely to come down to us from the top.

One of the most significant issues this book addresses is the fact that corporations have become entities that enjoy all the benefits that "people" do, but have none of the burdens of accountability that people have. Corporations were originally entities formed on a temporary basis and their charters had to be reviewed and re-approved, and would get "re-approval" if what they did benefited their communities. Now corporations operate like armies without countries, able to impose their laws on cities, states and nations. Thus companies are free to poison our ground, water and air, and in some cases literally kill people, with impunity. As a result, cities, towns and so on around the nation have been amending their charters to assert their sovereignity over their own communities. The lesson there is that many efforts need to be multi-pronged - the political problem needs to be addressed before the environmental problem can be solved.

Also of note is the theme of empowerment - teaching citizens that they can effect change, and how they can do it.

There was really a lot packed into this book and I highly recommend it.