Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave was first released in May of 2007. It is a resource book about living a life that is based on renewable, recyclable and sustainable resources. It is a general overview on how to maximize the sustainability in your life by examining the environmental impact of every phase of the human lifecycle.

Since it is a review of sustainability, it is not designed to be an in-depth technical manual on ecological living. For those of you who are interested in learning more, I have included resources within the chapters where appropriate, and an extensive list of references at the end of the book.

In this expanded 2nd Edition I’ve included new information about sustainable living from a variety of sources, including more information on green university degrees, new information on alternative energy, alternative fuels, green transportation and green architecture. In this edition I have also included a new chapter on global warming and its effects.

It is my hope that everyone who reads this book will use it to maximize sustainability in as many areas of their lives as possible. If this book can contribute in some small way to the future ecology of our planet, then my mission will have been accomplished.

 

Green Circles: A Sustainable Journey from the Cradle to the Grave

Contents include:

1 Spirituality, Nature & Wellbeing
2 Natural Childbirth
3 Raising Green Children
4 Green Colleges
5 Green Weddings
6 Green Transportation
7 Green Building
8 Green Energy
9 Living without Electricity
10 Green Gardening & Vegetarianism
11 Green Clothing
12 Intentional Communities
13 The Rainbow Tribe
14 Green Burial
15 Global Warming
16 A Sustainable Future
References

 

About Green Circles

I tend to take a post-modernist view of life. Instead of linear cause-and-effect relationships, I believe that most events occur in cycles. This is nothing new to those of you familiar with Eastern philosophies or Native American shamanistic beliefs. We live within the circle of our families. We are also a part of our circle of friends. This circle is a part of the greater circle of our neighborhood, which is a part of the circle of our town, and so on. Ultimately we are all a part of the circle that is life on this planet. These circles of humanity exist within the circles of the seasons; within the circles of the weather; within the circles of the Earth, Moon and stars.

Our existence, all of our lives, consists of a series of interlocking circles. As we live from day-to-day within all of these circles, we all consume resources to go about our daily business. If we rely on non-renewable resources, eventually those resources are going to run out.

One of many examples of a non-renewable resource would be fossil fuels. The only way to make more fossil fuels is to bury a few million or trillion tons of plant and animal material in the ground and wait a few million years. Therefore for all practical purposes fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource. This means that eventually we will use up all of our fossil fuel supply. This is a linear system.

On the other hand, if we choose to use renewable resources, something different happens. Let’s stick with the idea of fuels for a
moment. Imagine that suddenly the automobile industry decided to mass-produce cars that could run on biofuels. Biofuels are fuels that are made out  of vegetable materials. Vegetable materials are a renewable resource because once they are harvested we can always grow more.

This type of system is a cyclical system, not a linear one. It’s a circle; because once you’ve used the vegetable resources for fuel you can grow more vegetable resources to replace the ones you’ve used. A linear system is not sustainable, but a circular one is. For the purposes of this book, a ‘circle’ is a sustainable system.

My intent for this book is to design a lifestyle that could have the potential of being totally sustainable. A totally sustainable life cycle would be one that relies on nothing but renewable resources. By replacing at least as much as we take out of the environment, we complete the circle for ourselves and for future generations.

Green circles are cycles of sustainability. I like to believe that it is possible to live a totally sustainable lifestyle: A life made of green circles. I believe that by living such a lifestyle we will secure the future for our descendants. I also believe that if we don’t
learn to live sustainably, our descendants may not have a future.