Tom Croft, author of Up From Wall Street, recently wrote an article about renewing (in both the monetary and green sense) our economy for the fall issue of the socially-responsible investment magazine, Green Money Journal.

This article can be found online right here. As always, Cosimo Books are available in our online store and at Amazon.com.

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Hey everyone! These are the LAST TWO DAYS you can vote for bloggers so that Proctor & Gamble will donate 2 Liters of water to a person in need in a third world country! Together, bloggers have helped donate more than 9,000 days of water to suffering families! During these last two days, P&G is DOUBLING the amount of drinking water they donate with each vote! SO GET OUT THERE! In addition, the blogger who gets the most votes wins a trip to Africa with Dr. Greg Allgood to help children and families in need. You can read the whole story here.

By checking out the Changents.com site, you can see and read other blogs who are participating. Be sure to check out some of their fantastic stories, and VOTE!

Also remember that after the Changents.com contest is over, you can go over to the Proctor & Gamble website and donate water yourself! You CAN help make a difference and contribute to solving our global water crisis!

To read more about the water crisis and the value of water, check out Allerd Stikker’s book, Water, The Blood of the Earth.

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Al Gore recently commented on an Australian protest where citizens rallied against the government for not taking more direct action against climate change. Al Gore echoed these sentiments for the United States, where he hopes that American citizens will rally to try and convince the government to take action against global warming, passing a comprehensive energy bill that will reduce carbon emissions and hold companies accountable for their output. This call for government action–or action from the people to encourage government action– is largely similar to the letter from Earth Fever authors Erik van Praag, Judy McAllister, and Jan Paul van Soest to the governments of the world, pleading with them to pass a comprehensive measure or bill against climate change.

You can do your part by writing to your local Senator or Representative, encouraging him or her to vote for methods and measures protect against climate change.

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Darwin Gillett, author of Noble Enterprise, has written a new blog post to help companies with the current economic meltdown. “Reflections, Examples and Three steps Companies Can Take to Escape the Current Economic Malaise” can be found here. His keynotes and seminars can be read about here.

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Along with Proctor & Gamble and bloggers across the net, Changents.com has created a campaign called “Clean Water Blogivation” to bring clean water to the countries and people who need it most. More than one billion people do not have access to clean drinking water, and that lack of access remains one of the leading causes of death around the world. Proctor & Gamble has made it easy to donate clean, valuable drinking water to a child or family. Pur Packets, developed through a joint effort by Proctor & Gamble and the CDC, can clean 10 liters of water per packet and provide fresh water for one child for five days. You can donate individually online in increments of $1.00, $7.50, and $30.00, which gives one family clean drinking water for one year (www.csdw.org).

You can see the Pur Water Packets working below:

Through the Clean Water Blogivation campaign, you can help donate 2 liters (one day’s worth!) of drinking water per day for those in need. If you have a blog, you can create a post like this one and become a change agent, letting others know how important it is for people to have clean water around the world. In addition, bloggers will be eligible for a chance to join “P&G Children’s Safe Water Drinking Program,” where you could win $15,000 to donate to a charity of your choice that is helping to spread the word and change the global water crisis.

More importantly, each time a reader votes for or recommends a blog post that spreads the word, Proctor & Gamble will donate 2 liters of drinking water to someone in need in a developing country. You can vote for a blog once each day. So far, P&G has donated two BILLION liters of water to developing countries. Do your part by voting today!

Cosimo, Inc., cares deeply about the environment and promoting environmentally conscious habits and lifestyles. Cosimo is doing its part to highlight the importance of water through our publication Water: the Blood of the Earth: Exploring Sustainable Water Management for the New Millenium, by Allerd Stikker.

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Digital Book World’s Guy LeCharles Gonzales blogged last week about why we should still be excited about books, about publishing, about the who book industry during a time of such rapid change and development, more rapid than any other the publishing industry has ever seen. He interviewed leaders in the publishing and bookselling industry, asking them to simply state why book still excited them.

You can read all the responses at the original post, here.

Cosimo’s own publisher commented on this post, and here’s what he has to say about books and the written word: WHY it still matters.

“The written word has changed the world from pre-historic to historic.

Guttenberg has changed the world from very limited information access to wide availablilty.

The Internet & eBooks will change the world from reading somewhere, sometime to reading whatever, whenever.

The written word & books will keep informing and inspiring humanity.”

To read more comments and leave your own, check out the original post, or leave a comment on twitter with the hashtag #whybooks.

Feel free to let us know why you’re excited about books, too!

Read more at DigitalBookWorld.com: Why Books? 9 Reasons to be Optimistic | Digital Book World

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AN APPEAL TO THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD

August, 2010

Your Majesties, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Premiers, Chancellors and Excellencies,

Much of what is dear to us is at risk of being lost as a consequence of climate change. To be clear, we aren’t just talking about nature and the environment, but also about society as we know it, and in the long term perhaps even large parts of the planet itself. This is not just a loose statement but a very real possibility, as we hope is shown clearly in our book Earth Fever, Living Consciously with Climate Change.

That’s why we make this urgent appeal to you and call upon you to do the following:

1. To deepen your knowledge about the situation. We ask this not just to those of you who have to deal with the problem directly, but to all of you. It is not that difficult to learn the essential facts in a short time (reading the first two chapters of our book, for example, is sufficient to get the basics). But more than that, it requires courage to let the facts sink in. That is what we call for.

2. To create an image of a world in which we as citizens and politicians, both in our own countries and on a global level, collaborate to tackle the climate problem. To create a world in which cooperation and togetherness is our credo and in which we truly care about the wellbeing of all people and all creatures, now and in the future. And to demonstrate that concern in action. To create a world in which our attention is focused on what connects us, instead on what separates us, and in which sharp negotiations that quickly lead to concrete, far-reaching agreements have replaced the molasses-slow processes of today.

3. To communicate about the situation with each other, your staff, us citizens and in international meetings. We ask you to speak not only about the emergency we are in, but also about your vision, the opportunities we still have and the sacrifices that are necessary. Only thus can you escape the dilemma of vacillating between negative thinking and unfounded optimism.

4. And finally: to set much more radical steps than the ones already taken on the road leading to the new world and to do that now. Don’t be dismayed because other countries and the corporate world don’t follow you immediately. You can be an example for them, and be a vanguard in the technical, economical, ecological and social fields. Specifically, we ask you to take in the short term all the measures recommended in international plans and scenarios directed at achieving a maximum level of 450 CO2 parts per million-equivalent.

With these actions you will restore the dignity of your nation, and we, the citizens, will be very pleased. We know ecological policy is a priority though it is often insufficiently thought through and thus inconsistent.

This is what we ask of you, and it would be a radical break from politics thus far. With this you are giving back to politics–and with that to democracy–its rightful place in society. In the beginning you will no doubt encounter much resistance. But you will also encounter support from citizens who, like you and us, hope for a world worth living in: for us, for those who will come after us, and also for our brothers and sisters elsewhere on the planet. In short, we call for a leadership that radiates vision, courage and a love for Gaia, this glorious planet with everything on it.

That is not asking too much, is it?

Yours faithfully,

Judy McAllister, Erik van Praag and Jan Paul van Soest
Authors of Earth Fever, Living Consciously with Climate Change
www.earthfeverbook.com

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On The Third Anniversary Of The Crash Of The Economy

“THOSE WERE THE DAYS, MY FRIEND. I THOUGHT THEY’D NEVER END.” THEY HAVEN’T.

By Danny Schechter

We live in the United States of Amnesia and selective memory. As we debate the breaking news, we easily forget the sequence of events that broke the bank and left us broke.

Three years ago, when the idea of an Obama presidency was still a fantasy in polite company, a non-seismic financial earthquake began to rumble in ways we then could barely anticipate. Buildings didn’t fall as they did in Haiti’s nightmare, only a financial system. And, there are still piles of rubble everywhere here, too.

It was August 2007, and I was blogging about the coming economic collapse even as it appeared that our economy had nowhere to go but up.

continue reading »

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This summer, Flowers that Heal author Judy Griffin is offering special discounts on her healing herbal essences in her website’s store to help you maintain a healthy body and deal with health issues naturally.

To learn more about how to treat your body naturally with Aroma Health Texas herbs and organic ingredients, plus have all your health questions answered, visit the rest of Judy’s website and check out her book, Flowers that Heal.

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In light of the ongoing and tragic oil crisis in the Gulf of Mexico, speaker and writer Barbara Marx Hubbard, co-author of The Power of Yin, a Cosimo title, has taken a stand. She has issued, along with other Evolutionary Leaders from the Foundation for Conscious Evolution, a sacred call to action in an effort to make their voices heard and influence the outcome of the worst environmental crisis to plague our nation.

As a part of this call to action, the Foundation is presenting a series of FREE conference calls, 70-minute telephone gatherings, that anyone can participate in to help make their voices heard. The first two calls are available in the podcast archives on the function’s website; the third call will be held THIS COMING TUESDAY, JULY 13, for anyone interested.

You can sign up to join the calls and listed to the podcasts on their website, where you can also donate any amount to the group’s cause. Visit the site to learn more and become an agent of change!

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