A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold

Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) was a philosopher. Though an accomplished scientist and expert in wildlife management, his greatest contribution to the environmentalism movement has been philosophical or moral in nature. He is widely considered one of the most influential environmentalists of all time, right up there with Rachel Carson, whom he predates. His great reputation and influence belies the fact that it rests primarily on one book, the slim, artful A Sand County Almanac.

First published posthumously in 1949 by his son, Luna (the name of an environmentalist’s child if there ever was one), the book was little noticed by the public at large until the environmental movement of the ’60s and ’70s took off (partly as a result of the work of Carson, Leopold’s intellectual heir). There are now over two million copies of the work in print, and its influence is still felt in the American conservation movement and in the vital school of environmental thought known as Deep Ecology. A Sand County Almanac is considered one of the seminal texts of environmentalism….

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Finding the Deep River Within by Abby Seixas

“Are you busy?” my young friend from Palestine asks in a chat box.

“Of course,” I respond. “But no busier than usual. What’s up?”

And so we begin our short visit, with me multitasking in between sentences, and my friend likely wondering why I can’t take few minutes to just do one thing at a time. I don’t think I’m unusual, at least in this accelerated electronic society of ours here in the U.S. But sometimes I wish I could just slow down. Maybe you wish you could, too.

Finding the Deep River Within addresses the need to take “time-in,” as author Abby Seixas (SAY-shus) calls it. Seixas knows whereof she writes, both as a woman and as a psychotherapist. Subtitled A Woman’s Guide to Recovering Balance & Meaning in Everyday Life, this book speaks to me and to the issues we women face on a daily basis. (That’s not to say men can’t gain insights from the book, too. Until a male therapist pens a book like this for men, you guys might just find many parts of the book speak to you, too.) …

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Terri French, Contributing Writer

Terri French is a writer living in Huntsville, Alabama. Her work has appeared in The Valley Planet, Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine, Boston Seniority, and The Canadian Organic Grower. Terri and her husband, Ray, recycle, use “green” products, buy organic, and make environmentally friendly investments.

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The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It

In yesterday’s post, Blue Planet Green Living (BPGL) talked with Robyn O’Brien to find out what motivated her to start AllergyKids, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting children with food allergies. In Part 2 of this two-part interview, O’Brien tells us more about O’Brien’s book, The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, which was released by Random House yesterday.

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AllergyKids Founder Seeks to Protect Children from Harmful Foods

If someone asked you to define a pivotal experience that changed the course of your life, would you have to think long and hard before answering? For Robyn O’Brien, the event is as vivid as when it occurred more than three years ago. O’Brien is the founder of AllergyKids, an organization dedicated to protecting children with allergies from being harmed by the very foods they eat. She is also the author of The Unhealthy Truth: How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It, which was released for sale by Random House today…

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Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s

Did something in the environment cause my cancer? This is a question I heard asked repeatedly by young adult cancer patients across the country while researching my book Everything Changes: The Insider’s Guide to Cancer in Your 20s and 30s.

I was diagnosed with cancer at the age of twenty-seven and often wondered if growing up amid Pittsburgh’s steel town relics may have contributed to my own cancer. I leapt at the chance to interview Richard Acker, a 36-year-old metastatic colon cancer patient and environmental attorney…

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Notes from Iowa: We Are Gambling with Life Itself

As part of the National Teach-In on Global Warming Solutions held at colleges and universities across the U.S., the University of Iowa invited activists and experts to participate in panel discussions. Blue Planet Green Living was privileged participate on a panel with Andrew Saito, a student in the MFA program in Playwriting. After a short reading from an original play, Saito read the following essay to the audience. We found the images and the message so thoughtful, beautiful, and powerful that we asked him to share it with our readers.

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My 5: James Glave, Author

Blue Planet Green Living asked author James Glave, “What are the five most important things we can do to save the planet?”

Here’s his response: “To me, saving the planet means so many different things. It’s deforestation. It’s depletion of fisheries and fish stocks. You can easily get overwhelmed with what do we need to do. To me, it just comes down to global warming and climate change. Whatever we can do to reduce our emissions, we should do….”

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Choosing to Value a Sustainable Life

Yesterday we introduced you to author James Glave, a very down-to-earth, environmentalist who is working to reduce his family’s carbon footprint. He is also active in his community, helping to not only spread the environmental message, but also to make the island he lives on more sustainable. In today’s post, Glave talks about pressing environmental issues that confront both his own community and Canada at large.

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Saving the Planet with a Laptop and a Hammer

I believe I swing a pretty mean hammer. Just talking with author James Glave about his book, How I saved 1/6th of a Billionth of the Planet, inspired me to go out to the tool shed and polish up my 20 oz., curved-claw Estwing. I missed it, and I missed the smell of pine sawdust. Glave made me realize something else I had missed through all my years of construction: Everything I had built for the last 20 years, I had built wrong; I had not considered my planet.

For Glave, moving to Bowen Island, British Columbia, raised ethical issues about his family’s carbon footprint. Commuting — and shipping in supplies — from Vancouver to Bowen requires a ferry ride, which by itself substantially increases each resident’s impact on the environment. So when he wanted to build a small office/guest house next to his home, he decided to do it with the least-possible carbon footprint. He chronicled the building of the “Eco-Shed” and its impact on both his family and the Bowen community in his book. I talked with Glave from his home on Bowen Island, to find out more about the man and the impact of his work on his community.

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