New Society Publishers

Essential Rainwater Harvesting is a comprehensive manual for designing, building, and maintaining water-harvesting systems for the warm and cold climates of the world. Presenting design considerations and approaches for the most common household rainwater supply scenarios.

Millions of acres of land have been contaminated by pesticides, improperly handled chemicals, dirty energy projects, toxic waste, and other pollutants in the United States and Canada. This toxic legacy impacts the environment, our health, our watersheds, and land that could otherwise be used to grow healthy local food and medicines. Conventional clean-up techniques employed by government and industry are tremendously expensive and resource-intensive and can cause further damage.

In this book, Frid tackles the big questions: Who, or what, represents our essential selves, and what stories might allow us to shift the collective psyche of industrial civilization in time to avert the worst of the climate and biodiversity crises? In seeking the answers, he draws from a deep well of personal experience and that of indigenous colleagues, finding a glimmer of hope in indigenous cultures that, despite the ravishes of colonialism, have for thousands of years developed intentional and socially complex practices for resource management that epitomize sustainability.

Intrinsic Hope offers a powerful antidote to these feelings. It shows how conventional ideas of hope are rooted in the belief that life will conform to our wishes and how this leads to disappointment, despair, and a dismal view of the future. As an alternative, it offers "intrinsic hope," a powerful, liberating, and positive approach to life based on having a deep trust in whatever happens. The author, a hopeful survivor, shows how to cultivate intrinsic hope through practical tips and six mindful habits for living a positive, courageous life in these troubled times.

Featuring a foreword by visionary filmmaker and philanthropist Adam McKay, Facing the Climate Emergency takes a deep dive into why disruptive grassroots activism is the fastest, most cost-effective path to transformative change. Whether you're drawn to the front lines of high-stakes, non-violent direct action, or prefer to play a supporting role, this guide will help you combat the forces of climate denial and discover your own power in the face of the greatest planetary crisis.

Your career has wound down, the kids have moved, and your schedule is clear...for the next 30 years. In your youth, you cared about people and planet Earth, and you had grand visions of changing the world. At some point, those passions and that sense of purpose got buried under diapers and the 9-5. Still, that old "you" remains alive. Now, with the rest of your life ahead, you can be the change and make this next stage of your life the most powerful yet.

Human Permaculture is a powerful, forward-thinking guide that uses permaculture principles of ecological design rooted in people care, Earth care, and fair share for redesigning your life and community to align with the resources available on the planet. As climate change, ecological decline, and social breakdown start to bite, people expect that governments will solve our problems. Yet this belief has proven to be false. Rather than looking to others, changes must come from the inside out: transforming the "I" to "we", changing the world by changing ourselves.

Our communities are facing the fallout from the demise of vital industry, bankrupt economies, bad policy or policing, and political mismanagement. People are looking for answers, and the "same old" simply won't do. In the Business of Change is a practical and inspirational guide that showcases how social entrepreneurs from places such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Vancouver, who are weary of waste, injustice, and government inaction, are using business savvy to tackle challenges in their communities.

Liberal contempt for Trump supporters is exacerbating the political and cultural rift tearing America apart. Beyond Contempt shows progressives how to communicate respectfully and effectively across the great political divide, defusing hostility, building trust, and, just maybe, discovering common ground.

Our reliance on industrial agriculture has resulted in a food supply riddled with hidden environmental, economic, and health care costs and beset by rising food prices. With only a handful of corporations responsible for the lion’s share of the food on our supermarket shelves, we are incredibly vulnerable to supply chain disruption.

It's time to make money and give a damn. You give a damn, right? You want your money to do good, but your pension is riddled with oil and defense companies. Besides, investing is a pain in the ass. It's tedious, and most sustainable and responsible investing books are as much fun as a root canal. You're fighting the urge to bury your head in the sand. What to do? There is a better way.

"The Rise of Street Gangs" gives a unique first-hand account of the rise of the street gang culture across the world, where drive-by shootings and communities under siege have become the new norm. The book not only covers street gangs but also the characters of the gangs, their current evolution and outlook, and how these gangs are on the rise worldwide. "The Rise of Street Gangs" looks at gangs in the United States, Mexico, the Native American Reservation, the slums of Manilla in the Philippines, South Africa, and Australia and the role of gangs during the Black Lives Matter protests.

Ecological footprint accounting, first introduced in the 1990s and continuously developed, continues to be the only metric that compares overall human demand on nature with what our planet can renew—its biocapacity—and distills this into one number: how many Earths we use.

Culture Gap: Towards a New World in the Yalakom Valley tells the story of a two year sojourn at the Camelsfoot Commume in a remote valley in BC, Canada. The challenges and privations, the joys and adventures of rural communal living, form the backdrop to the human drama the author recounts. Judith and Kip Plant's family includes her children; Willie takes to the new life, but his sisters feel the strong pull of the life they left behind. Meanwhile Fred, the inspiration for the commune, stricken with cancer, is dying.

Commoning was a way of life for most of our ancestors. In Reclaiming the Commons for the Common Good, author Heather Menzies journeys to her roots in the Scottish Highlands, where her family lived in direct relation with the land since before recorded time.

With catastrophic global warming already baked into the climate system, today's children face a future entirely unlike that of their parents. Yet how can we maintain hope and make a difference in the face of overwhelming evidence of the climate crisis? Help is at hand. Written by Harriet Shugarman - the Climate Mama and trusted advisor to parents - How to Talk to Your Kids About Climate Change provides tools and strategies for parents to explain the climate emergency to their children and galvanize positive action.

With every news report, the world seems to be careening off the rails. It's all too easy to slip into despair waiting for co-opted, self-serving governments to act. Hope and action is the antidote. We each hold the power to make personal changes that can drive local changes and cascade into large-scale social transformation. This is the guidebook for ordinary people who want to create a new society now.

Revealing the deep and abiding interest that African American, Latino, and Native American communities - many of whom live in degraded and polluted parts of the country - have in our collective environment, Engage, Connect, Protect is part eye-opening critique of the cultural divide in environmentalism, part biography of a leading social entrepreneur, and part practical toolkit for engaging diverse youth.

While happiness science is advancing rapidly, and governments and organizations are creating indices for measuring happiness, there is little practical information on how to create policy to advance happiness. Drawing from a deep well of expertise and experience, The Happiness Policy Handbook is the first step-by-step guide for integrating happiness into government policy at all levels.

In the latest fruit of a brilliant career, Michael Nagler argues that nonviolence - not just as a tactic but as a way of being - is the only way to unite deeply divided people and enable progressive movements and leaders of all stripes to fulfill their promise and potential. So many of the problems that beset us - war, poverty, isolation, and the climate crisis - have their roots in an old story about the universe: We are purposeless matter in a random void, and scarcity, competition, and violence are inevitable.