Politicians are often behind, out of step with, and going in a different direction from the people they represent.  In Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest, Hawken suggests there is a global movement afoot fostering environmental health and social justice that is little known politically but powerful all the same.  Around the planet, “people are working on the most salient issues of our day:  climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights.”  One way to see the size of the movement, he suggests, is to look at the number of nonprofit organizations and institutions involved in the issues.  Over 100 pages of the book is an appendix categorizing the number of institutions by topic.  I grabbed a top handful that are topics Torrey House Press would be delighted to publish something about.  I list them in order of the astonishing number of organizations already involved in promoting their respective issues:

Rachel Carson is often credited with waking up the environmental movement in the 1970′s with her book Silent Spring.  The  Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge manager Bob Barrett credits Terry Tempest William’s book Refuge with making the place what it is today.  President Clinton, saying “this little book made a difference,” held Testimony in his hands on the rim of the Grand Canyon as he declared the Escalante Staircase National Monument into being, a book created by Williams and Stephen Trimble.  Arches and Canyonlands National Parks owe a lot to Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire.  Thoreau inspired Muir and Leopold, who wrote books many of us love, which in turn spurred the foundations of the The Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society.  There are many such examples.  Books make a difference and there is much work for change that remains to be done.

A book of Paul Hawken’s I have also long enjoyed is his Growing a Business.  In it Hawken says that, “The purpose of business . . . is not to take risks but rather to get something done.”  It’s why we created Torrey House Press.  -Mark Bailey