WORLDCHANGING: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
From the Archives
Posted on March 28, 2008
Previously filed under: Book and Film Reviews
WORLDCHANGING: A User's Guide for the 21st Century
,
Alex Steffen
Published by Abrams, April 2008, 600 pp.
Worldchanging is a behemoth of a topic to try to cover. The world is 6 billion people and quickly growing, as the book points out, and providing innovative solutions for all of its collective problems is near impossible.
Yet, Alex Steffen, and his team at Worldchanging.org, have asked some important questions of our time and shown us just a glimpse of the good that is already being done. The book's green-colored, leafy design and introduction by Al Gore may in some ways misrepresent the full scope of the book. But that may be just the point. "Worldchanging" green washes a well-rounded list of today's issues; it forces us to get out of our specialized areas of expertise and remember that it is all connected.
"Worldchanging" deconstructs the tree-hugging image of environmentalism and re-imagines it as the holistic approach to life that it really is. It takes broad issues typically categorized as humanitarian in concern - human rights, refugees, public health, urban growth, to name a few - and puts them on the same page as those environmental issues that typically fall on other shelves at our local bookstore - global warming, sustainable forestry, biodiversity and green technology.
It will make a Bible-like thud if you try to lug it around to coffee shops, but remember that it is still a mere intro into various ways we can impact our world positively. The book is divided into seven sections that are helpful for getting you started: Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics, and Planet. Each section is then divided into articles rather than chapters, and sometimes even those are divided further into more digestible sound bites. The book reads like one long magazine mashed into a college textbook. I recommend beginning in the section you are most interested rather than reading it from cover to cover.
The book begins with a discourse on our relationship with the stuff we own. Starting with international trade, it questions consumption asking us if we understand where the things we own come from. The book moves to the Shelter section and addresses some more conventional eco topics such as water and power - needs that apply to anyone from Dakar, Senegal, to New York City. The next section is based on the presupposition that living in compact cities should be the best way to be green and highlights a few that are on the right track - Portland, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C. In the Community section the book tackles the traditional approaches of worldchanging with a run through of issues covered in the UN's Millennium Development Goals. Both the Business and Politics section talk about the need for a new transparency and suggests citizen tools such as investing, blogging and consumer education, to demand socially responsible decision making from governments and corporations. Lastly, the book talks about how we can care for our planet so that we can hang out on it a little longer. The section supposes that we are all ecologists and that we should find ways to synthesize the global knowledge that we have gained about our planet in this age of technology, travel and international commerce with an increased awareness of our local environment.
The book stands atop a soapbox and urges global citizens to embrace the good that globalization can bring. In today's world, not only does our technology allow us to know more about what is going on in other parts of the world, but we can eat mangoes in Minnesota and buy shoes made in China. The world we live in is becoming smaller; we should embrace it and do good deeds in it. There are small changes that each of us can do as consumers and citizens, and there are also innovative solutions that each of us with individual talents can discover and contribute to the bigger puzzle. That is worldchanging.
Worldchanging is a lot of small changes from a large quantity of people rather than the commonly thrown around billion-dollar numbers traditionally associated with global change. This book is just a compilation of some of those grassroots solutions fit to very specific contexts.
Product designers, humanitarian aid workers, scientists, farmers, urban planners, teachers and businessmen are all featured as pieces in the bigger puzzle of how to make the world a better place.
For example, a man named Fabio Rosa rents solar power to poor Brazilians for $13 a month through a program called The Sun Shines for All. In the U.K., Peter Brewin, of London's Royal College of Art, is working on a design for a recycling shower. And Dr. Palmira Ventosilla at the Instituto de Medicina Tropical in Lima, Peru, has been advocating the use of coconuts to combat malaria; coconuts naturally incubate Bti, a bacterium that kills mosquito larvae.
No matter what a reader's current career path is, this book will inspire him or her to do good deeds and respect the efforts of fellow worldchangers in other worthy types of work.
The whole book also favors the open source movement, and this philosophy of knowledge sharing makes its way into a variety of article entries from more effective disaster relief to the Creative Commons movement. By very nature, the 600-page tome celebrates this philosophy - if we all combine our knowledge, we can solve some big problems.
Despite the length of the book, one gets the impression that he or she is only skimming the surface of these complex, brain-y issues such as governmental transparency, the economic development of poverty-stricken regions, and global warming. Though the book is a breath of fresh air in a world of pessimism, there is a lack of multiple perspectives on some issues that would offer necessary negative information in order to find even better positive solutions.
To pick one example, the biodiesel discussion was limited and offered few resources or viewpoints. The book elevated biodiesel as the best solution without considering what the push for biodiesel might do to the global economy. Will people learn to produce biodiesel locally? Or will it be made from harvested sugarcane in Brazil or maize in Mexico? If so, how is the new demand affecting the economies and environments of those countries? How does it in turn affect ours? A little research will give answers that put another dimension to the biodiesel discussion.
But the book rarely provides that dimension on any of its varied topics. Instead it expects the readers to pick up another book as soon as they have put this one down. To its credit, it does recommend books, websites and organizations that can help further educate its audience on each topic.
Though it is definitely helpful to attempt to see the big picture from the collective perspective of some visionaries, after this deluge of information, readers may want to contemplate their own place in all of it first. The frenetic topic-changing can be a little overwhelming for readers (like me) who are prone to over-thinking things. Treat "Worldchanging" as a comprehensive starting point, and this book will serve you well.
Contributed by Rebecca Mayer. Rebecca Mayer is a Portland-area journalist. She graduated with a B.A. in Communications from Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn.
To read another Global Envision book review about globalization and its effects, see Making Globalization Work.
Click the icon to buy books from Amazon.com.
A portion of your proceeds will go to support Global Envision.
Return to top
Alex Steffen
Published by Abrams, April 2008, 600 pp.
|
| Alex Steffen, and his team at Worldchanging.org demonstrate the good that is already being done in today's world. Photo Credit: Amazon.com |
Yet, Alex Steffen, and his team at Worldchanging.org, have asked some important questions of our time and shown us just a glimpse of the good that is already being done. The book's green-colored, leafy design and introduction by Al Gore may in some ways misrepresent the full scope of the book. But that may be just the point. "Worldchanging" green washes a well-rounded list of today's issues; it forces us to get out of our specialized areas of expertise and remember that it is all connected.
"Worldchanging" deconstructs the tree-hugging image of environmentalism and re-imagines it as the holistic approach to life that it really is. It takes broad issues typically categorized as humanitarian in concern - human rights, refugees, public health, urban growth, to name a few - and puts them on the same page as those environmental issues that typically fall on other shelves at our local bookstore - global warming, sustainable forestry, biodiversity and green technology.
It will make a Bible-like thud if you try to lug it around to coffee shops, but remember that it is still a mere intro into various ways we can impact our world positively. The book is divided into seven sections that are helpful for getting you started: Stuff, Shelter, Cities, Community, Business, Politics, and Planet. Each section is then divided into articles rather than chapters, and sometimes even those are divided further into more digestible sound bites. The book reads like one long magazine mashed into a college textbook. I recommend beginning in the section you are most interested rather than reading it from cover to cover.
|
It will make a Bible-like thud if you try to lug it around to coffee shops, but remember that it is still a mere intro into various ways we can impact our world positively.
|
The book stands atop a soapbox and urges global citizens to embrace the good that globalization can bring. In today's world, not only does our technology allow us to know more about what is going on in other parts of the world, but we can eat mangoes in Minnesota and buy shoes made in China. The world we live in is becoming smaller; we should embrace it and do good deeds in it. There are small changes that each of us can do as consumers and citizens, and there are also innovative solutions that each of us with individual talents can discover and contribute to the bigger puzzle. That is worldchanging.
Worldchanging is a lot of small changes from a large quantity of people rather than the commonly thrown around billion-dollar numbers traditionally associated with global change. This book is just a compilation of some of those grassroots solutions fit to very specific contexts.
|
Worldchanging is a lot of small changes from a large quantity of people rather than the commonly thrown around billion-dollar numbers traditionally associated with global change.
|
For example, a man named Fabio Rosa rents solar power to poor Brazilians for $13 a month through a program called The Sun Shines for All. In the U.K., Peter Brewin, of London's Royal College of Art, is working on a design for a recycling shower. And Dr. Palmira Ventosilla at the Instituto de Medicina Tropical in Lima, Peru, has been advocating the use of coconuts to combat malaria; coconuts naturally incubate Bti, a bacterium that kills mosquito larvae.
No matter what a reader's current career path is, this book will inspire him or her to do good deeds and respect the efforts of fellow worldchangers in other worthy types of work.
The whole book also favors the open source movement, and this philosophy of knowledge sharing makes its way into a variety of article entries from more effective disaster relief to the Creative Commons movement. By very nature, the 600-page tome celebrates this philosophy - if we all combine our knowledge, we can solve some big problems.
Despite the length of the book, one gets the impression that he or she is only skimming the surface of these complex, brain-y issues such as governmental transparency, the economic development of poverty-stricken regions, and global warming. Though the book is a breath of fresh air in a world of pessimism, there is a lack of multiple perspectives on some issues that would offer necessary negative information in order to find even better positive solutions.
|
Though the book is a breath of fresh air in a world of pessimism, there is a lack of multiple perspectives on some issues that would offer necessary negative information in order to find even better positive solutions.
|
But the book rarely provides that dimension on any of its varied topics. Instead it expects the readers to pick up another book as soon as they have put this one down. To its credit, it does recommend books, websites and organizations that can help further educate its audience on each topic.
Though it is definitely helpful to attempt to see the big picture from the collective perspective of some visionaries, after this deluge of information, readers may want to contemplate their own place in all of it first. The frenetic topic-changing can be a little overwhelming for readers (like me) who are prone to over-thinking things. Treat "Worldchanging" as a comprehensive starting point, and this book will serve you well.
Contributed by Rebecca Mayer. Rebecca Mayer is a Portland-area journalist. She graduated with a B.A. in Communications from Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn.
To read another Global Envision book review about globalization and its effects, see Making Globalization Work.
A portion of your proceeds will go to support Global Envision.
Return to top
Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Reddit
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
Printer-friendly version
Recent comments