Imagine It!

About this Book

Welcome to Imagine It!—a handbook for anyone wanting to begin or advance a journey toward living in better balance with our planet. This book is meant to inspire you, support you, and make it easy for you to replace old, planet-hurting habits with new and healthy ones—that is to say, to make your personal contribution to reversing our global warming crisis and enhancing your own health and well-being.

Assertion: Not a single person who picks up this book intentionally decided to live in a manner that contributes to environmental degradation and global warming.

Reality: Our harmful impact on the planet happened as we became more and more dependent on fossil fuels and embraced all that modern-day life had to offer. Without conscious intention but having grown up with all that the 20th century brought to us, we have become people who buy, use, and do things that are wasteful and damaging to our environment and often to our own health.

Making matters worse and unjust, for decades BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) communities the world over have disproportionately shouldered the repercussions of our fossil fuel–based lifestyle and the resulting climate change.


It is now time, in fact past time, that we fully and boldly engage, and course correct. This book is one small contribution to shifting our understanding and behaviors. It is about developing new mindsets and then making personal and collective change that will lead to a healthier planet and a healthier us.

In these pages, we highlight the need to change some of our food, clothing, and transportation habits, and meaningfully lower our use of plastic, paper, water, and harmful chemicals.

We call the changes in these areas lifestyle shifts; and there is a chapter devoted to each one of them. Each chapter begins with a short story on the shift being explored, and then provides clear steps for replacing old habits with new ones.

We know—it sounds like a lot. But keep reading. It is easier than you might think. And we know from experience that taking planet-positive actions is hugely satisfying.

This book also highlights the role each person can play to influence necessary changes in business practices and, perhaps more important, in government regulation. We as consumers and citizens have so much power to effect change. Our voices on social media can create multiplier effect momentum. Manufacturers and retailers, as well as those hoping to be elected to office, are keenly connected to what we are saying, what we are doing, and how we spend our hard-earned dollars. Many people making individual changes ultimately leads to a collective will and inevitably business and government action. And this is exactly what we need!

Underpinning everything in this book are these beliefs:

Being an environmentalist is as basic as wanting to drink clean water and breathe clean air.
Becoming an environmentally thoughtful and engaged person is a journey. It is about growing more aware of our various “footprints” and then, at as significant a pace as possible, taking steps to reduce those footprints. The key is to learn, act, and stay on the journey.

Being an environmentalist is not about being “perfect” all the time, because no one ever is. It’s about being open to a learning curve and making determined progress.

Making small everyday changes helps develop our overall mindset and ultimately results in shifting
our attitudes on the big issues, i.e., who we vote for and what we expect of our companies and our representatives.

Our votes matter. We need to use our voices and our votes to elect leaders who are fully committed to implementing regulations to reverse global warming.

Imagine It!

You needn’t read Imagine It! in order, from beginning to end. You can pick a chapter of interest to you and just dive in. You can read this introduction and move right to the chapter on Clothing and then return to an earlier one. Whatever feels right for you.

If you simply do one chapter a month, you will wake up in a few months and discover you have made amazing progress as an environmentalist. Suggestion: if you have kids, involve them in all you are learning and doing.

As we noted earlier—each chapter begins with a very short “story” on the footprint being explored. We mean for these short stories to give you some important context about the problem being explored. But in every case there is so much more that can be learned if you are interested. For this reason, we have included a list of books and websites in the Appendix that will allow you to delve more deeply.

Sprinkled throughout are some pages marked NOTES. We are all for writing in the book as ideas come to mind, whether using these specially marked pages or any of the margins. You might even find it fun to keep track of the changes you are implementing.

Also note that there is a glossary at the back of the book, which will help if you come across a term or an acronym with which you may not be familiar.

Things to keep in mind while reading:

• Environmental health and personal health are intricately connected. We are in constant interaction with our environment—breathing the air, drinking the water, and eating the food that comes from the land, oceans, rivers, and streams which surround us. As goes the health of all of these, so goes our own health.

• Our planet, like our bodies, is a system. Everything is interconnected. Environmental damage in one area will very likely set off a chain reaction of damaging effects in other areas.

• Conversely, taking action to replace harmful activity will most likely result in positive impacts elsewhere in our ecosystem. The more we understand these connections, the more we will make good choices. So...

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