Tonight is the second part of Planet in Peril

'Planet in Peril' is CNN's four-hour documentary that examines global environmental issues. The first part was on CNN last night and the second part will be broadcast tonight at 9PM ET.

This documentary looks at four key issues: climate change, vanishing habitats, disappearing species and human population growth. To tell this story, Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Animal Planet's Jeff Corwin traveled to some of the most remote and remarkable places on Earth.

I saw the first part yesterday and I enjoyed it, as much as you can enjoy a documentary on these troubling issues.. Yet, this is a good opportunity to see these issues and not just to read about them. Also, they try to discuss these issues from more unique angles, to make them more interesting for the viewers, and I think they do it well.

For more information on Planet in Peril, please check CNN's website.

You can also get an idea about Planet in Peril from this trailer:



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Joe Wikert and the future of the publishing industry

I haven't recommended for a while on a bookish website, and therefore I was happy when I learned few days ago about Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog.

For anyone who is interested in the future of the book publishing industry (and I definitely am), Joe Wikert's blog is a great place to get information and news from an insider perspective - Wilkert is a Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Only on this month's posts you can learn on issues such as print on demand (POD), future of textbooks, e-books, Microsoft's Live Book search program, and more.

The blog has a clear techie orientation, but even those who are not very interested in new media formats can benefit from it. Sustainable reading is about awareness, vision, leadership and economics, but also about technology.

So you're welcome to check it out. I will certainly will.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Sloom and Slordig - Bookshelves From Hell

Ok, this is just too silly not to pass on. Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing reports this intentionally absurd design disaster in the form of a bookshelf. Sustainable? Only because it leaves you no more room for books so you have to release to the wild some of the old ones.


Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Financial forgiveness for the benefit of Costa Rica's forests

We don't hear too much positive environmental news about the Bush administration, so I was very happy to read last week about the swap deal with Costa Rica.

Marc Lacey reported on the New York Times that "The United States has agreed to forgive $26 million of Costa Rica’s debt as part a debt-for-nature swap that will protect some of the country’s most threatened tropical forests." The deal was brokered by the Nature Conservancy.

The debt for nature swap is an innovative mechanism to sustain long-term conservation efforts in developing countries. It is an agreement between a developing country in debt and one or more of its creditors, where the creditors agree to forgive debts in return for the promise of environmental protection, usually protection of large areas of land such as tropical rainforests. This deal not the first debt for nature swap, but it's the biggest one so far.

According to the article, the funds will help protect important Costa Rican natural areas including the Osa Peninsula, Tortuguero, La Amistad, Maquenque, Rincón de la Vieja and the Nicoya Peninsula.

The Bush administration was very clear about the importance it sees in the benefits of the deal to the natural resources of Costa Rica: "“There’s a double benefit for these countries,” Claudia A. McMurray, assistant secretary of state for oceans, environment and science, said in a telephone interview. “They get some or all of their debt wiped out, and they get help in preserving an important natural resource.” On top of that, Ms. McMurray said, there are the benefits to climate, as forests play an important role in absorbing greenhouse gasses."

So what's the reason for this unexpected greenness of the administration? I am not sure about the reasons behind the deal, but I assume it got to do with some other parts of the deal - "To qualify for the program Costa Rica had to meet a series of political and economic requirements, including cooperation with Washington on drug enforcement and counterterrorism." I also suspect that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who is well known for his green attitudes, contributed to this deal.

In any case, no matter what the reasons are, this is a positive step and a necessary one - Costa Rica's natural treasures are under increasing pressure from human activity and deforestation stripped the country of almost 80 percent of its forest cover, although environmental groups say replanting efforts have helped reversed the trend.

More information on debt to nature deals can be found on WWF and the Nature Conservancy websites.

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

The Man Who Planted Trees - Holiday green gift guide for book lovers: part 1

The holiday season is just around the corner, and if you already start thinking about gifts, we hope you would think about books. A good book is always a great present!

To help you find out which books are best for giving this holiday season, Eco-Libris blog begins a new series: Holiday green gift guide for book lovers. Yes, every Sunday you will find here an interesting book to be considered for your gift list.

Of course, our recommendations will be green, and I'm not just talkin' about balancing out your book gift, but about the subject of the books. Just wait and see..

Our first recommendation for this holiday's gift is:

The Man Who Planted Trees

Author: Jean Giono

Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing

Originally published in: 1953

The story: it is a touching story of Elzéard Bouffier, a shepherd, who after being widowed, has decided to restore the ruined ecosystem of the isolated and largely abandoned valley in the south of France by single-handedly cultivating a forest, tree by tree. He planted 100 acorns each day before, through, and after two world wars, and transformed a sorrowful place into one full of life and joy.

Why it's a great gift: This is an inspirational story about what one person can do to restore the earth. Jean Giono's story offer a tribute to how much good one person can accomplish in a lifetime and advise on how to live life with deep meaning.

If you're not sure yet, you can watch the animated version of the story, produced by Frédéric Back in 1987. Also, if you look for a special edition of the book, Chelsea Green Publishing released a special twentieth anniversary edition on National Arbor Day 2005 with a new foreword by Wangari Maathai, winner of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize and founder of the African Green Belt Movement.

And if you give your friends or family this book as a present on the holidays, you are more than welcome to balance it out with Eco-Libris, add its sticker to the book and make it the perfect green gift for the holidays.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

Michael Pollan at OrganicallySpeaking

Hi,

I just wanted to pass on this very interesting podcast interview at OrganicallySpeaking.org that I just listened to. Michael Pollan is the author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, published April 2006 by the Penguin Press. If you are in any way into organic food, nutrition and our food chain, and haven't yet read it, do consider adding it to your BookMooch wish list :)

Have a great weekend!
Eylon @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a Tree for Every Book you Read!

Mooching books has never been easier

The source of today's post is again the New York Times, where I find new treasures every day. This time it's BookMooch, an online community for exchanging used books.

Joanne Kaufman wrote last Monday on the NYT ('Clear the Bookshelf and Fill It Up Again, All Online') about BookMooch, " a book-swapping Web site created a year and a half ago by John Buckman, a bibliophile who describes himself as a “wealthy ex-dot-com person.”"

The concept is very simple - BookMooch lets you give away books you no longer need in exchange for books you really want. Buckman created a system based on points, where according to the site "every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish." And yes, it's totally free.

Book swapping is a great concept: you can find books you are looking for at no cost, give books you want others to enjoy and of course benefit the environment. It's the same idea as with library - maximizing the usage of every printed book minimizes the need to print new ones and saves many trees from being cut down.

Don't get me wrong - we don't want people to stop buying new books, but as long as books are printed mostly from virgin paper, we would like to see maximum usage for each printed copy. Therefore, we think the concept of book swapping is definitely a way to green up on your reading and make it more sustainable.

BookMooch is not the only book swapping website (The list includes also SwapTree.com, TitleTrader.com, SF-Books.com, tbxn.com for textbooks and others), but what differentiates BookMooch from the others is according to Buckman " its neighborly feel. “If someone has been especially nice, very explicit about the condition of the books they’ve sent out, you can give them a ‘smooch,’ which is an anonymous thank-you gift of one of your points,” he said. Members can also donate their points to selected charities — New Orleans libraries, for example, which are restocking their shelves in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.""

BookMooch looks like a great website, we recommend to check it out. I haven't used it yet, but I intend to do so in the near future. I won't be there alone it has already 40,000 members around the world and according to Buckman, who by the way runs BookMooch by himself, 300 new people are joining every day. Participants The “library” has some 750,000 titles, and Buckman estimates it will hit one million by the end of December.

Enjoy BookMooch,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!