A hundred times a day, we make small choices that influence the future, our own and the planet's. That's where this catalog does most of its work, helping us figure out what some of those choices look like—and why far from being grim, they're mostly sweet. Some of them are for things to buy, but the most important are for things that let you stop buying, that help you see real possibilities for doing things differently. Better. This catalog is a browser book. Like the original Whole Earth Catalog, which helped to define the credo of its age, this is a resource guide to a special kind of life: then, an alternative lifestyle and now, a sustainable one. The reviews in this catalog can foster a fresh way of thinking about where we are in time and in our world. We probably cannot buy our way to sustainability, but we can, with our consumer choices, take steps in the direction of solutions rather than continue—again, with our choices—to move along in familiar ways that only contribute to the larger problems.
We have arrived at a point where it is not a personal compromise to make these choices. To live a sustainable life, it's no longer necessary to forfeit comfort, convenience, and luxury or to freeze, drown, and starve in the dark. Today, we can choose to move in the right direction.
