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This 163-page book ranks all model year 2003 cars and trucks according to environmental friendliness. Shoppers can compare cars, vans, pickups and SUVs.

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Biologist Sandra Steingraber shares a passionate story of her pregnancy while revealing the alarming extent to which environmental hazards threaten each stage of a child's development.

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If you're considering a solar or wind system for your home or business, this solar power guide is a valuable resource. In Got Sun? Go Solar, the authors explain how installing a solar or wind system is an economically attractive and environmentally responsible option.

From Vermont to California, homeowners are plugging in to a hot new idea — reducing or eliminating their electric bills by using free energy from the sun and wind. In this straight-talking new solar power guide, authors Rex Ewing and Doug Pratt tell other grid-connected homeowners how to capture alternative energy and put it to use in their home.

Renewable energy is going mainstream, thanks to affordable new technologies with rebates and incentives from many states. Today more and more homeowners believe that installing a home RE system is the economically-attractive and environmentally-responsible thing to do. Whether they install a solar/wind system to benefit their checkbooks or to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, they also enjoy the added independence of a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

This solar power guide covers battery backup versus non-battery systems, as well as equipment needed and installation considerations. Other topics include legal and safety issues, incentives/rebates, and permits and paperwork. An extensive appendix of resources, state energy offices, system sizing worksheets, and much more turns this 160-page book (filled with more than 120 photos and illustrations) into a must-have book for anyone interested in exploring their power options.

Contents:

• Why invest in renewable energy for your home?
• Is it legal and safe?
• How solar electricity works
• Batteries or not?
• Sizing your system
• Got Wind?
• What does it cost?
• Any financial help out there?
• Permits and Paperwork
• The Nuts and Bolts: what to look for, what to avoid
• Who does the installation?
• Appendix: manufacturers, web resources, state energy offices, sizing worksheets, glossary and more

About the authors:

The authors of this solar power guide know firsthand how these systems work. Rex Ewing, author of Power With Nature has lived off-the-grid in the Colorado Rockies since 1999. Doug Pratt, the former technical editor of the Solar Living Sourcebook, lives in a grid-tied home in northern California, and has been on the front lines of the renewable energy revolution since 1985.

Recommended product for Wiser Living: Today, more than ever before, our society is seeking ways to live more conscientiously. To help bring you the very best inspiration and information about greener, more sustainable lifestyles, Mother Earth News is recommending books to its readers. For nearly 40 years, Mother Earth News has been North America's "Original Guide to Living Wisely," creating books and magazines for people with a passion for self-reliance and a desire to live in harmony with nature.

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This Mother Earth News Book for Wiser Living helps you understand the sometimes confusing array of renewable energy technologies and techniques, plus shows how you can slash energy bills.

The coming energy crisis caused by a peak in global oil and natural gas production will profoundly affect the lives of all North Americans. As the price of these vital fuels rises, homeowners will scramble to cut their fuel bills. Two options for meeting the upcoming challenge are dramatic improvements in home energy efficiency and efforts to tap into clean, affordable, renewable energy resources to heat and cool homes, to provide hot water and electricity and even to cook. These measures can result in huge savings and a level of energy independence.

This 290-page book opens with basic facts about energy and an outline of likely impacts of fossil fuel shortages. It discusses how to conserve energy and cut heating bills, and how to prepare for renewable energy options. Focusing on strategies for replacing specific fuels, the book then examines each practical energy option available to homeowners.

The Homeowner's Guide to Renewable Energy gives readers sufficient knowledge to hire and communicate effectively with contractors and, for those wanting do installations themselves, it recommends more detailed manuals. With a complete resource listing, this well-illustrated and accessible guide is a perfect companion for illuminating the coming dark age.

About the author:

Dan Chiras is the father of two boys, and the author of more than 20 books on environmental issues and sustainability. He teaches courses on renewable energy, green building and sustainability at Colorado College. His free time is spent mountain biking, camping, canoeing, kayaking, playing music and gardening with his boys.

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Made by the women of Kampala, Uganda, many of whom suffer from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria, this beautiful, one-of-a-kind necklace is created from recycled magazines. These women are paid a fair-trade rate for their work. Be careful not to get necklace wet. Fastened by screw clasp. 30" to 40" long. Colors vary.

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CLEARANCE ITEM. PREVIOUS RETAIL PRICE WAS $18.95 AVAILABLE ONLY WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

The benefits of straight vegetable oil (SVO) as an alternate fuel for diesel engines are many. SVO is cheap, carbon-neutral, uses a waste product and does not depend upon centralized corporate infrastructure.

SVO is the only book available that explains exactly what you need to convert a diesel vehicle and how to do it properly. It provides readers the knowledge to sort through the different supply companies and online plans to find the best equipment and plans for their needs. While technical in nature, this fully illustrated book is very accessible. Each method is introduced and described in great detail. Illustrated, 226 pages.

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How To Build With Grid Beam is a Mother Earth News book that will help you become familiar with the modular, reusable building system that is fast, easy, affordable and virtually goof-proof.

Grid beam's modular pieces and bolt-together construction make the system fast and straightforward to work with. It has all the advantages of an industrial building system: standard, modular sizes; uniform materials; and interchangeable parts. Projects knock flat and are easy to transport. Since the pieces can be used over and over again, grid beam is easy both on your wallet and on the environment — the authors have been using some of their components for over 30 years.

How to Build with Grid Beam includes hundreds of photos of real projects built over a 60-year period, showing the many uses of grid beam, from shelves for college students to projects involving alternative energy. The versatility of grid beam is inspiring, for beginners, more experienced do-it-yourselfers, and innovators who will develop their own designs. Even school-age children can use grid beam to build simple projects.

About the Contributor(s):
Phil Jergenson is an innovator who built the first grid beam vehicle.

Richard Jergenson built his first grid beam project in 1977.

Wilma Keppel is a writer and editor who is also a welder, carpenter and grid beam builder.

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To Plead Our Own Cause contains ninety-five narratives by slaves and former slaves from around the globe. Told in the words of slaves themselves, the narratives movingly and eloquently chronicle the horrors of contemporary slavery, the process of becoming free, and the challenges faced by former slaves as they build a life in freedom.

An editors' introduction lays out the historical, economic, and political background to modern slavery, the literary tradition of the slave narrative, and a variety of ways we can all help end slavery today. Halting the contemporary slave trade is one of the great human-rights issues of our time. But just as slavery is not over, neither is the will to achieve freedom, “plead” the cause of liberation, and advocate abolition. Putting the slave's voice back at the heart of the abolitionist movement, To Plead Our Own Cause gives occasion for both action and hope. Paperback, 272 pages.

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Thomas L. Friedman’s phenomenal number-one bestseller The World Is Flat has helped millions of readers to see the world in a new way. With the brilliant Hot, Flat and Crowded, Friedman takes a fresh and provocative look at two of the biggest challenges we face today: America’s surprising loss of focus and national purpose since 9/11; and the global environmental crisis, which is affecting everything from food to fuel to forests. In this groundbreaking account of where we stand now, he shows us how the solutions to these two big problems are linked — how we can restore the world and revive America at the same time.

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.” Already the earth is being affected in ways that threaten to make it dangerously unstable. In just a few years, it will be too late to fix things — unless the United States steps up now and takes the lead in a worldwide effort to replace our wasteful, inefficient energy practices with a strategy for clean energy, energy efficiency, and conservation that Friedman calls Code Green.

This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution we need is like no revolution the world has seen. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. But the payoff for America will be more than just cleaner air. It will inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time — nation-building in America — by summoning the intelligence, creativity, boldness, and concern for the common good that are our nation’s greatest natural resources.

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Green, Inc. is by a veteran journalist and former member of the global communications division of Conservation International. It is a first-person account of an eco warrior’s travails at the crossroads of the nonprofit and corporate worlds. MacDonald arrives at one of the world’s largest environmental groups with no small dose of idealism.

She is ready to dedicate herself to the fight for the planet’s remaining forestlands and endangered species. Quickly, however, she grows disillusioned by the group’s questionable liaisons with environmentally hostile corporations; the six-figure salaries of its leaders; and the lack of environmental ethos exhibited by her colleagues at their stylish Washington offices.

The book takes a hard look at corporate liaisons and examines the truth to claims that the country’s most prominent environmental groups have allowed themselves to be silenced by corporate money. While working inside one of the largest conservation groups in the world, the author noticed too often its sophisticated public relations machine focused on touting the virtues of corporate sponsors, spinning unrelentingly upbeat stories that distracted the public from looming environmental crisis. The book provides frank talk about allegations of “greenwashing.” The author has interviewed conservationists from the United States and several other countries, who express their concerns about the celebrity lifestyles and decision making by elite conservationists and corporate leaders.

But it not only focuses on the failures. The book also examines environmental-corporate partnerships that are bearing fruit, and reforms that could nurture a truly sustainable capitalism based on the premise that protecting natural resources can be good for both the environment and the profit margin.