Introduction

After the runaway success of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth several years ago, it became clear that people were bent on finding ways to become more environmentally friendly in every aspect of their lives. An Inconvenient Truth raised important issues and left people wondering what they could do to help stop global warming.

To address this need, I wrote The Green Book: The Everyday Guide to Saving the Planet One Simple Step at a Time, a book that provides solutions—more than four hundred—that people can easily adopt into their everyday lives. It put environmental issues into accessible language and appeared at a time when the green frenzy was just beginning: I traveled the country speaking about the tips and advice in that book. I answered hundreds of e-mails, fielded question after question, and watched as the green marketing machine took off. Eco-friendly products began appearing on store shelves. Hybrid car sales began to sizzle. Lots of "green" homes hit the market. Green rock concerts were staged. Green television shows aired. One Web site even offered green sex tips. Clearly the green movement had entered the mainstream.

But something was getting lost in the rush to market. The issues were getting diluted. The reasoning and rationale for becoming environmentally friendly were becoming commercialized to the extent that people weren’t buying "green" anymore, they were being sold it. There was and continues to be a general lack of understanding about why what we do matters.

I began to ask a very simple question after every green solution I heard: "Who cares?" And by that I meant who beyond just me are these problems and solutions affecting?

I couldn’t put many faces or many images to the answer to that question; data, sure, but I was at a loss to connect actual people, places, and things.

This book puts images to actions. It is an effort to move beyond the noise, beyond the unbearable weight of the problems.

You will get outside the house, your comfortable and known world, and be taken to places you may have only heard about. You will become an environmental voyeur. You will see what’s affecting the world and at the same time become empowered to change its course.

This is not green-lite. It’s an adventure story structured to take you on a journey of understanding.

You will be transported into the thick of the most environmentally tenuous places on the planet. The hope is that doing so will create a sense of appreciation for the world and for how each of us, individually, can effect change for the future. Disaster will occur only if we ignore the