Sustainable Choices

We hear the word “sus­tain­able” a great deal these days: sus­tain­able energy sources, sus­tain­able agriculture…what does this mean? Ask a dozen peo­ple and you’ll get as many answers, prob­a­bly, depend­ing on their pol­i­tics, social stand­ing, and pos­si­bly even their religion.

At its heart, though, to live sus­tain­ably is to con­sciously bring our lifestyles into bal­ance, know­ing that each choice we make affects the rest of the world…and par­tic­u­larly the chil­dren who will inherit this world.

As Chief Arvol Look­ing Horse, car­rier of the Sacred Pipe of the Lakota peo­ple, has said,

You can show your con­cern for the planet and the peo­ple in just about every aspect of your life…

Shop­ping for Change

Invest­ing In Your Values

The fol­low­ing pages offer resources to help you learn about ways in which you can reduce the impact of your lifestyle on the planet and the people.

Awak­en­ing the Dreamer, Chang­ing the Dream is a mul­ti­me­dia sym­po­sium and com­mu­nity networking/brainstorming event devel­oped by the Pachamama Alliance to bring forth an envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able, spir­i­tu­ally ful­fill­ing, and socially just human pres­ence on Earth.

We are a co-facilitator for this eco-educational event; you can find more infor­ma­tion about it on the Let’s Talk page.

Care2 is a com­pre­hen­sive resource with news, prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions, green tips, recipes, dat­ing, oppor­tu­ni­ties to speak up on impor­tant social and envi­ron­men­tal issues, and more.

The Earth Pol­icy Insti­tute, led by World­Watch Insti­tute founder Lester Brown, is ded­i­cated to pro­vid­ing a vision of an envi­ron­men­tally sus­tain­able economy—an eco-economy—as well as a roadmap of how to get from here to there. Among news of ongo­ing cli­mate change, result­ing social changes, and tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments in response to them, the Earth Pol­icy site also offers free down­load­able copies of Lester Brown’s books, Eco-Economy: Build­ing an Econ­omy for the Earth and Plan B: Res­cu­ing a Planet under Stress & a Civ­i­liza­tion in Trouble.

FootprintNetwork.org offers infor­ma­tion and tools to help you learn your per­sonal eco­log­i­cal impact — that is, how many plan­ets it would take to sup­ply the world’s pop­u­la­tion if every­one con­sumed resources at your rate, or that of your busi­ness, your city, and your nation.

The Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for a Liv­able Future is the widest-ranging local resource site I’ve found, with projects, pub­li­ca­tions, and edu­ca­tional events to ben­e­fit the local com­mu­nity, and pages upon pages of infor­ma­tion and links and ways to get involved

Social Ven­ture Net­work seeks  “to trans­form the way the world does busi­ness,” offer­ing an online review of busi­ness and envi­ron­men­tal news relat­ing to sustainability