From Green Drinks Singapore:

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Venue: Naive, 99 East Coast Road

This month, we are gathering all the green groups, societies, businesses and individuals with green values to talk about their plans for 2010, and explore ways we can all work together.

In particular, we are targetting to have ECO (Singapore), SEC, Nature Society (Singapore), Vegetarian Society (Singapore), Social Innovation Park, Food for All, green societies from the various tertiary institutions, various businesses, and individuals already well known in the green sphere. As always, everyone is welcome!

Let us have a meaningful greater conversation about what we can do together! Do spread the word, and we hope to see you there!

Foodwise, Naive has kindly put together a special three-course menu at the price of $18+ for those wishing to dine there.

How to get there: By bus- 10, 12, 14, 32, 40; By car- parking is available at Katong Mall and Katong Village

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(We are selling Al Gore’s new book, Our Choice, at Green Drinks to raise fund for the Haiti Earthquake relief operations. Have 40 copies of the book to sell at $50 each. 100% of profits will go to the Singapore Red Cross who will channel it to the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies.)

• Ray Anderson (Founder of Interface, Inc)
• James Cameron (Founder, Executive Director and Vice-Chairman of Climate Change Capital)
• Paul Dickinson (CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project)
• John Elkington (Founding Partner and Director of Volans)
• John Grant (Author of The Green Marketing Manifesto)
• Denis Hayes (President and CEO of The Bullitt Foundation)
• Gary Hirshberg (President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm)
• Tony Juniper (Former Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland)
• Professor Sir David King (Former Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government)
• Amory B. Lovins (Chairman and Chief Scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute)
• Professor Wangari Maathai (Founder of the Green Belt Movement and Nobel Peace Prize Winner)
• Ricardo Navarro (Founder and Director of the Salvadoran Centre for Appropriate Technology)
• Dr Vandana Shiva (Physicist, Environmental Activist and Author)
• Jeffrey Swartz (President and CEO of Timberland)
• Sir Crispin Tickell (Diplomat, Academic and Environmentalist)

These leaders share insights on their professional and personal lives, and their current views on sustainability. The book gives a concise overview of how these green gurus started their green journey, and their wish to see a more sustainable world.

Here’s some thoughts from the gurus:

Well, it’s easiest to start with the first principle of natural capitalism: radical resource efficiency. Just look for muda, that wonderful Japanese word that means waste, purposeless and futility. Look for any measurable input that produces no customer value, and set a goal of reducing it to zero. – Amory B. Lovins

So sustainability really can and should be at the core of what companies are now planning, in terms of, for example, where markets will go and what will be some of the future risk factors. At that fundamental level sustainability, for a company, is about being able to continue in business. – Tony Juniper

The beautiful thing about business is that it doesn’t have any ideology except to make money. If you can demonstrate that you make more money by saving the world, then businesses will save the world really quickly. And so all we have to do is wake up the consumer to stop putting money into their own endangerment. And that shouldn’t be very difficult. – Paul Dickinson

I think the biggest problem, which I must admit I’m still dealing with, is the fact that very many people do not see the environment as something that is integral to our daily lives. It tends to be seen as an outside issue, often associated with scientists and academics, but in fact it is very, very central to our lives. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat – all these things that we cannot live without. – Professor Wangari Maathai

Related Info

Watch this short introduction video of the book:

Click here to view the embedded video.

See larger image Conversations with Green Gurus: The Collective Wisdom of Environmental Movers and Shakers (Hardcover) By Laura Mazur, Louella Miles List Price: $39.95 USD New From: $17.61 In Stock Used From: $16.89 In Stock

From Amazon

The Creation is E. O. Wilson’s most important work since the publications of Sociobiology and Biophilia. Like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, it is a book about the fate of the earth and the survival of our planet. Yet while Carson was specifically concerned with insecticides and the ecological destruction of our natural resources, Wilson, the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner, attempts his new social revolution by bridging the seemingly irreconcilable worlds of fundamentalism and science. Like Carson, Wilson passionately concerned about the state of the world, draws on his own personal experiences and expertise as an entomologist, and prophesies that half the species of plants and animals on Earth could either have gone or at least are fated for early extinction by the end of our present century.

Astonishingly, The Creation is not a bitter, predictable rant against fundamentalist Christians or deniers of Darwin. Rather, Wilson, a leading “secular humanist,” draws upon his own rich background as a boy in Alabama who “took the waters,” and seeks not to condemn this new generations of Christians but to address them on their own terms. Conceiving the book as an extended letter to a southern Baptist minister, Wilson, in stirring language that can evoke Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” tells this everyman minister how, in fact, the world really came to be. He pleads with these men of the cloth to understand the cataclysmic damage that is destroying our planet and asks for their help in preventing the destruction of our Earth before it is too late. Never a pessimist, Wilson avers that there are solutions that may yet save the planet, and believes that the vision that he presents in The Creation is one that both scientists and pastors can accept, and work on together in spite of their fundamental ideological differences.

See larger image The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (Paperback) By Edward O. Wilson List Price: $13.95 USD New From: $2.48 In Stock Used From: $2.39 In Stock

From Amazon

In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an original approach to questions of humanity’s impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.

Weisman explains how our massive infrastructure would collapse and finally vanish without human presence; which everyday items may become immortalized as fossils; how copper pipes and wiring would be crushed into mere seams of reddish rock; why some of our earliest buildings might be the last architecture left; and how plastic, bronze sculpture, radio waves, and some man-made molecules may be our most lasting gifts to the universe.

The World Without Us reveals how, just days after humans disappear, floods in New York’s subways would start eroding the city’s foundations, and how, as the world’s cities crumble, asphalt jungles would give way to real ones. It describes the distinct ways that organic and chemically treated farms would revert to wild, how billions more birds would flourish, and how cockroaches in unheated cities would perish without us.

Drawing on the expertise of engineers, atmospheric scientists, art conservators, zoologists, oil refiners, marine biologists, astrophysicists, religious leaders from rabbis to the Dali Lama, and paleontologists—who describe a prehuman world inhabited by megafauna like giant sloths that stood taller than mammoths—Weisman illustrates what the planet might be like today, if not for us.

From places already devoid of humans (a last fragment of primeval European forest; the Korean DMZ; Chernobyl), Weisman reveals Earth’s tremendous capacity for self-healing. As he shows which human devastations are indelible, and which examples of our highest art and culture would endure longest, Weisman’s narrative ultimately drives toward a radical but persuasive solution that needn’t depend on our demise. In posing a provocative concept with gravity in a highly readable presentation, it looks deeply at our effects on the planet in a way that no other book has.

See larger image The World Without Us (Perfect Paperback) By Alan Weisman Used From: $7.98 In Stock

Bookchanging is an online community for book readers to find, enjoy, share, discuss and buy green books. You can read environmental books to gain more knowledge, work towards a sustainable future and change the world.

Under the New Books category, you can find the latest books on the environment, including Al Gore’s Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and Colin Beavan’s No Impact Man: Saving the Planet One Family at a Time.

Under the Recommended Books category, you can check out our book recommendations, which includes Alex Steffen’s Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century, and Janine M. Benyus’s Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.

You can also choose to buy the book in Singapore from Bookchanging or buy the book overseas from Amazon. Visit http://www.bookchanging.com to check out our books.

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Contacts

Eugene Tay

Founder of Bookchanging

Email: eugene@greenfuture.sg

Social Media: LinkedIn | Facebook

About Green Future Solutions

Green Future Solutions is a Singapore-based business that promotes environmental awareness and action for a green future, through its network of green websites, events, presentations, publications and consultancy. For more information, visit http://www.greenfuture.sg.

We recommend Al Gore’s latest book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. This book is a sequel to his previous bestseller, An Inconvenient Truth. In this new book, Al Gore offers a comprehensive overview of different solutions to tackle climate change.

You can now buy this book in Singapore at a special offer of $37.90, which is cheaper than most bookstores. And we will also offer free delivery in Singapore.

To buy the book, just send us an email with your contact number, address and book quantity, or just use the shopping cart below.

From the Book

It is now abundantly clear that we have at our fingertips all of the tools we need to solve the climate crisis. The only missing ingredient is collective will.

Properly understood, the climate crisis is an unparalleled opportunity to finally and effectively address many persistent causes of suffering and misery that have long been neglected, and to transform the prospects of future generations, giving them a chance to live healthier, more prosperous lives as they continue their pursuit of happiness.

Our Choice gathers in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now and that, together, will solve this crisis. It is meant to depoliticize the issue as much as possible and inspire readers to take action—not only on an individual basis but as participants in the political processes by which every country, and the world as a whole, makes the choice that now confronts us.

There is an old African proverb that says,

‘If you want to go quickly, go alone;

if you want to go far, go together.’

We have to go far, quickly.

We can solve the climate crisis. It will be hard, to be sure, but if we can make the choice to solve it, I have no doubt whatsoever that we can and will succeed.

AL GORE, from the introduction

Related Info

Check out the Our Choice website for a preview of the book chapters.

See larger image Solutions (Paperback) By Albert Gore New From: $16.72 In Stock Used From: $16.71 In Stock

From Amazon

According to Stewart Brand, a lifelong environmentalist who sees everything in terms of solvable design problems, three profound transformations are under way on Earth right now. Climate change is real and is pushing us toward managing the planet as a whole. Urbanization-half the world’s population now lives in cities, and eighty percent will by midcentury-is altering humanity’s land impact and wealth. And biotechnology is becoming the world’s dominant engineering tool. In light of these changes, Brand suggests that environmentalists are going to have to reverse some longheld opinions and embrace tools that they have traditionally distrusted. Only a radical rethinking of traditional green pieties will allow us to forestall the cataclysmic deterioration of the earth’s resources.

Whole Earth Discipline shatters a number of myths and presents counterintuitive observations on why cities are actually greener than countryside, how nuclear power is the future of energy, and why genetic engineering is the key to crop and land management. With a combination of scientific rigor and passionate advocacy, Brand shows us exactly where the sources of our dilemmas lie and offers a bold and inventive set of policies and solutions for creating a more sustainable society.

In the end, says Brand, the environmental movement must become newly responsive to fast-moving science and take up the tools and discipline of engineering. We have to learn how to manage the planet’s global-scale natural infrastructure with as light a touch as possible and as much intervention as necessary.

Related Info

Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental ‘heresies’ in this TED Talk video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

See larger image Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto (Hardcover) By Stewart Brand List Price: $25.95 USD New From: $10.50 In Stock Used From: $10.40 In Stock

From Amazon

In the growing debate over eco-friendly living, it seems that everything is as bad as everything else. Do you do more harm by living in the country or the city? Is it better to drive a thousand miles or take an airplane? In NO IMPACT MAN, Colin Beavan tells the extraordinary story of his attempt to find some answers – by living for one year in New York City (with his wife and young daughter) without leaving any net impact on the environment.

His family cut out all driving and flying, used no air conditioning, no television, no toilets…They went from making a few concessions to becoming eco-extremists. The goal? To determine what works and what doesn’t, and to fashion a truly ‘eco-effective’ way of life. Beavan’s radical experiment makes for an unforgettable and humorous memoir and an attempt to answer perhaps the most important question of all: What is the sufficient individual effort that it would take to save the planet? And what is stopping us?

Related Info

Check out Colin Beavan’s blog to read his thoughts and adventures during the No Impact Man project. The project is also made into a film, watch the trailer here:

Click here to view the embedded video.

See larger image No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet, and the Discoveries He Makes About Himself and Our Way of Life in the Process (Hardcover) By Colin Beavan List Price: $25.00 USD New From: $5.69 In Stock Used From: $5.31 In Stock Released September 1, 2009.

From Amazon

With shortages, volatile prices and nearly one billion people hungry, the world has a food problem – or thinks it does. Farmers, manufacturers, supermarkets and consumers in North America and Europe discard up to half of their food– enough to feed all the world’s hungry at least three times over. Forests are destroyed and nearly one tenth of the West’s greenhouse gas emissions are released growing food that will never be eaten.

While affluent nations throw away food through neglect, in the developing world crops rot because farmers lack the means to process, store and transport them to market. But there could be surprisingly painless remedies for what has become one of the world’s most pressing environmental and social problems.

Travelling from Yorkshire to China, from Pakistan to Japan, and introducing us to foraging pigs, potato farmers, freegans and food industry directors, Stuart encounters grotesque examples of profligacy, but also inspiring innovations and ways of making the most of what we have. Combining front-line investigation with startling new data, Waste shows how the way we live now has created a global food crisis– and what we can do to fix it.

Related Info

Check out Tristram Stuart’s website for more facts, photos and campaigns on food waste.

See larger image Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Hardcover) By Tristram Stuart List Price: $27.95 USD New From: $16.58 In Stock Used From: $15.91 In Stock