WorldChanging: Changing the world?

It's amazing how mainstream being eco-friendly has become in the past few years. It is almost like if you want people to take action on something, you need to make it cool and sexy and marketable. take Worldchanging.com for instance. It has been around for a while and is getting more popular but I have to admit I only just stumbled upon it last week. At first I thought "cool, this looks like a great resource" but after perusing the site for a bit, I wasn't so excited anymore. For instance here is an article that obviously caught my eye: "Biomimicry Certificate Program". So of course when a Biologist thinks biomimicry, we think of poisonous butterflies. But hold on, biomimicry also means people literally mimicking biological processes. "Do you personally want to use biomimicry to redesign the world?" who can say no to that but can I believe that "...many people they have taught now teach biomimicry at universities, primary and secondary schools, and as consultants." well there are some very good points on the topic but I failed to see how it was immediately relevant to the average person looking to "change the world".

Anyroad, as you can imagine there is a book to go along with the site: "WorldChanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century". But what do I really need to buy a book for? Here is an excerpt that is provided on the web page "In the middle of Denver, in the middle of December, you can walk into
most any supermarket and buy a ripe mango. This has been true long
enough that almost nobody stops to think of the remarkable distance
that mango traveled or of the tree it fell from, which is probably
enjoying a balmy tropical day on the other side of the planet.
Proponents of eating local food balk at the ubiquitous midwinter mango.
Why? Because they think about the baggage that mango flew in with." yeah, big surprise. Most conscience consumers realize these things. The title on that blurb is "Buy Local". Isn't that old news? As in "Think Global, Act Local"? Did everybody miss out on that in school?

I was curious as to what people had to comment about this book. Over at Amazon I found some very low ranking scores and one person recommended this book: "The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet" which is published by none other than the Cato Institute. Ironically Cato is something I found out about some months ago but have only started to dig into this past week. (Did I say I was busy in the lab? um, I meant I have lots of incubations). Baiscally, this book in the complete opposite of WorldChanging. So far, the point seems to be: "everything is great! Be Happy, Don't Worry!" Didn't I also hear that somewhere else before also?

Well I'm not sure how much of this Cato Institute I can support but their seminar "The Mind of the Market: The Case for Capitalism from an Evolutionary Perspective" should at least be entertaining. Oh, did I mention that Evolution is everywhere (but that doesn't mean anybody understands it). As for WorldChanging, I still have to wonder how much is really useful information vs marketing gimick, but if it gets people turned onto eco-friendly, there must be some redeeming qualities in there.