Michael Carolan's No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise is now available! We sat down with Carolan to talk about sustainable food, the process of writing the book, and why he claims that no one eats alone. Have more questions for Carolan? Share them in the comments below.

In today’s world, people are constantly eating alone—whether at their desk or in the car. So why do you claim that No One Eats Alone?

This claim ought to be among the book’s least contentious: that foodscapes are deeply peopled and that to eat is to be connected. People grow much of our food—most already know this. Less known is that people pick a lot of what we eat too, and slaughter, breed, transport, package, invent, cook, fortify, market, and sell it. There are even people tasked with coloring our food. I interviewed a gentleman while he held a color fan, like you would find at a paint store, that allows companies to custom order the color of their salmon (most requested No. 33, a nice rich pink). Then there are the people who study us so we’ll buy what their employer is selling.

No One Eats Alone was both thrilling and challenging to write because while it required interviewing more than 250 individuals from six continents, I only scratched the surface describing and explaining those connections. The real question lies in figuring out ways that better allow us to see and appreciate those connections, which brings us to the next question.

You argue that human connection is essential to achieving healthy, equitable, and sustainable food. At first, this may seem like a hokey or abstract concept. What does this look like, in practice? Can you give an example? Why is human connection essential to the success of food movements?  

I am talking about having more than a human connection, actually. That’s part of the problem, that we conflate human connections with empathetic ones. We connect with humans all the time, but rarely as humans. A few years back I conducted what I refer to now as the strawberry study. I had a group of middle class eaters of different political persuasions get together over strawberries, once to watch a documentary about the industry and again to pick in the field for an entire day.

After watching the documentary, participants were able to recite certain facts, like top strawberry growing US states and countries and that the pesticide methyl bromide was being phased out in California. Having spent a day picking, however, they could not only talk about labor activities, they could feel them. When interviewed a few days later, the physicality of the experience came through—more than one use to term moved, as in “I was really moved by that experience”—shaping how they thought about the industry and those who toil so we can eat “cheap” strawberries. My point: there are different ways to connect with others as humans. It would be hokey to think we need to meet everyone in our foodscapes in order to know and empathize with them.

What role do racism, sexism, and other –isms play in our current food problems?

These –isms pervade society, so it would be foolish to say they do not also exist in our food worlds. Food is often discussed in gender-neutral terms, which is ridiculous when you consider who’s peopling our foodscapes—often women, especially when talking about who buys food and cooks it. So when well intentioned health professionals and food writers—sorry Michael Pollan—make recommendations like “Just cook” or “Plant a garden” I cringe because they reflect an insensitivity to the realities of who is doing what, especially among those struggling under the weight of time poverty.

I give examples throughout the book of how we can create alternative foodscapes that are sensitive to these realities, like community-based cooking classes or urban gardens that provide free childcare or elementary school experiential curriculum centered around food that work to disrupt traditional gendered norms at a very young age. I also tell stories about food and community activists working to avoid creating environments were eaters only eat “white”—a typical European diet. If we are what we eat, then we must make sure that the alternative foodscapes we help nurture recognize the diversity of those who are hungry. 

You prefer the term “foodscape” to the more familiar “food system,” and you argue that we need to shift from a society of food “consumers” to one of food “citizens.” What are the differences between these terms? What power does language have to change the way we think about our relationship to food? To change the way we behave?  

I opt for the term foodscape instead of the more familiar food system because the latter is too narrow for what I have in mind, often reducing the life of food to a commodity chain—producers, processors, distributors, retailers, and consumers. The hows and whys of food are more complex than that, involving questions of power, culture, relationships, feelings, citizenship, and more.

Relatedly, food consumers have a clear predefined location in that commodity chain, with clear predefined interests, namely, getting the best deal. But to be human, and to connect with other humans as humans, is to be more than just a consumer. We do not just buy stuff.  We have lives outside retail markets, filled with families, loved ones, interests, and passions. We all live in a community, somewhere, perhaps in a rural community grappling with poverty and community disintegration. We all also live on this planet and do not want to see it destroyed. And, like or not, we’re all taxpayers and members of a social contract. Those interests are felt as citizens, not consumers. Terms like “foodscape” and “food citizen” are thus used to challenge readers to think about food and their relationship to it in new ways by telling stories about people connecting with others and the planet.

What are two actions someone can take to become a better food citizen? After that, where can they look for more guidance? 

I am a big believer in the power of getting people from different backgrounds—economic, ethnic, religious, political, etc.—together. A recent Gallup study reveals that the best predictor of whether individuals support things like building a wall between the US and Mexico and who believe non-whites have not contributed as much to civilization as those of European descent is how white their social networks are. This also speaks to why I repeatedly take critics of the status quo to task whenever I hear them valorize spatial distance, as if that’s the endgame, the creation of something like a bikeable foodscape.  I have seen plenty of “local” foodscapes crippled by social distance—there was a farmers’ market in a gated community, true story.

So what can you do? Work in a community garden or a soup kitchen. Join a cooperative. With others in your community, organize free cooking classes, making sure to supply childcare and transportation, if possible. Remember, we’ll never learn to break bread with someone different from ourselves if we can’t even stand having “them” in our community.

No One Eats Alone take a critical look at Big Food, as well as alternative food movements encouraging people to “eat local” or “eat organic,” but you are ultimately hopeful about the future of our foodscape. What gives you that hope?

My hope is not unfounded. I have been studying food since the late 1990s. During that time, I have seen a flourishing of alternative foodscapes around the world. Here are some data explaining my optimism: there were 8,268 farmers' markets operating in 2014, up 180 percent since 2006; since 2007, the number of food hubs — local groups that connect farmers to food-using businesses — increased by roughly 300 percent; and since 2006, the number of school districts with farm-to-school programs jumped almost 500 percent.

But those are just numbers.  The real source of my optimism is experience, talking with the likes of students, young farmers, and food and community activists. The rate and intensity of these conversations increases with every passing year. I dare say anyone who reads No One Eats Alone will leave it more hopeful than when they started. 

You interviewed over 250 people for this book. Is there a particular conversation or story that sticks out in your mind? 

When you talk to that many people you end up with quite a collection of memorable stories.  I regularly retell the story of my meeting with a gentleman who had worked many years for a Chinese company in charge of supplying most of the world’s vitamin D. Here was a company whose mission was to make the world healthier and yet most of our interview was spent discussing how unhealthy the industrial vitamin process in China was—polluting, exploitive, and energy intensive. I had a lot of great conversations like that, where you start out thinking one way and leave with your head spinning. 

What do you hope readers take away from this book?

For a lot of readers, I expect they will discover that what they thought they knew about food, and about solutions to our food-based ills, were woefully incomplete in their reach and scope. Everyone will find nourishment in the countless examples where issues like hunger, malnutrition, food access, sustainability, and social justice are being tackled to benefit all and not just the one percent. And from that nourishment I hope to help spawn a desire to change the way we organize around food.

While researching No One Eats Alone, sociologist Michael Carolan interviewed more than 250 individuals, from flavorists to Fortune 500 executives, politicians to feedlot managers, low-income families to crop scientists, who play a role in the life of food. Advertising consultants told him of efforts to distance eaters and producers—most food firms don’t want their customers thinking about farm laborers or the people living downstream of processing plants. But he also found stories of people getting together to change their relationship to food and to each other. Ultimately, it is a book about becoming better food citizens, and a story of hope: "Unlike many easy-fix food books touting local food as the answer, No One Eats Alone tackles both food and health from a systemic perspective. Its conclusions are likely to challenge eaters on all sides of the food conversation...No One Eats Alone is a singular specimen: a well-researched, thoughtful, and ultimately optimistic book on a popular subject that presents, and successfully defends, the point of view it expresses" (Foreword). 

Check out an excerpt from the book below.

Earlier this year, if you had asked me to tell you what a “gardener” looked like, I might have painted you a mental picture of someone not unlike my father: a white, middle-aged man who decided to take up gardening as a hobby after realizing he had more empty space in his rural Texas backyard than he knew what to do with. After spending a weekend shadowing the nation’s largest garden-building event, however, I have to admit that my idea of who a “gardener” is and what a “garden” looks like has dramatically changed.

Now, I’m more apt to picture an African American mother and daughter in the city, growing vegetables in a 4’x8’ victory garden and using their culinary skills to provide sustenance to malnourished neighbors. Or I might tell you about the Syrian refugee families using a small patch of soil in their front yard as a way to bring back a sense of normalcy to their uprooted lives.

And yet these were just two of the countless “faces of gardening” that I encountered during this spring’s annual Victory Garden Blitz in Milwaukee. Organized by the local non-profit Victory Garden Initiative (VGI), the annual Blitz aims to engage Milwaukee residents to grow their own food, and in the process help cultivate a community-based, socially just, environmentally sustainable food system. With the help of over 300 volunteers, VGI manages to install hundreds and hundreds of raised bed gardens to residents of diverse backgrounds and housing situations each year; no backyard needed! All that’s required is a 4’x8’ outdoor space to put the garden, and a willingness to get your hands a little dirty!

 “One of the great things about gardening is that it brings people of all faiths and political backgrounds and races and ethnicities together,” VGI Community Programs Manager Kelly Moore Brands told me during the event. “Because everybody needs to eat, right?”

Beyond the diversity of the gardeners themselves, one of the other noteworthy things was the sheer variety of reasons why people took up urban gardening in the first place. Here are just a few of the things I heard while out and about in Milwaukee:

•  “It’s traditional, it’s multigenerational, it’s cultural, it’s for everybody. Everybody eats.”
• “It’s so motivating when you know the people that you’re working with and providing food for. Urban gardening really strengthens neighborhood bonds.”
• “Technology is making our connection to nature seem unnecessary. We’re becoming dependent on it. Gardening helps give me a sense of self-sufficiency. Of returning to my roots”
• “Having access to affordable healthy food no matter where you live is important to me. Nothing beats grabbing a tomato from your garden and putting it on a sandwich.”

After a weekend of memorable quotes and colorful characters, I really got a sense of what Island Press author Michael Carolan identifies as the crucial missing ingredient from our current food movements: human connection. In his new book No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise, Carolan argues that building community is the key to healthy, equitable, and sustainable food. 

Victory Garden Initiative is doing just that, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store for their big 10^th anniversary Blitz in 2018 as they continue the food movement to MOVE GRASS and GROW FOOD!

For more on my exciting, inspiring weekend in Milwaukee, check out the video below where I interview VGI staff and victory garden recipients about the power and promise of urban gardening.

Want to experience the magic of Milwaukee yourself?  Don't forget to enter our fall sweepstakes for a chance to win a farm & food trip for two to Milwaukee!

On the heels of nutritional literacy campaigns, restaurants, grocery stores, and health officials are busy promoting the benefits of nutritious foods to encourage people to choose them. There is a significant problem with that strategy, however: it risks turning people away from these foods, as eaters tend to rate foods they perceive as healthier as less tasty. So why not draw upon some of the same language used to describe, say, sizzling crispy bacon to talk about a zucchini dish? Sizzling crispy zucchini anyone? 

In a recent article for Fast Company, Adele Peters describes research findings that reveal that our use of words and descriptions of foods shape choices and dietary behaviors.  It is certainly makes sense that we should not expect people to choose healthy foods if they are not described in ways that align with what we are motivated to eat.  But why stop there? Once we start talking about our veggies, beans, and fruits using tastier descriptors, what then? Sizzling crispy zucchini or sizzling crispy bacon? To me, both sound delicious.  But While Peters’ article, The Simple Menu Innovations that Science Says Can Get People to Order Vegetarian Options, speaks of getting people to order vegetarian options, really the goal should be about something larger. In addition to what Peters is urging, we should also be asking  how  do we draw eaters to vegetarian options more often once we make those dishes sound like something even meat eaters would enjoy?

Not long ago I conducted research, bits of which I later published in a peer-reviewed article and in my book No One Eats Alone, which involved interviewing roughly 100 eaters, twice: first, just before they engaged in alternative food practices (e.g., farmers markets, community supported agriculture arrangements, food cooperatives) and again, after two years of exposure to these spaces. I was curious about how these experiences shaped participants’ feelings about food. I discovered that while many spoke about taste and health as principle reasons for trying in these offerings when first interviewed, those justifications changed by the time of the second interview, and as I previously described, I was able to link directly to their continued involvement in these alternative food practices. For most, the new or revised rationale for eating these foods and buying from these networks centered on wanting to support local growers and communities; quite a few also justified buying these foods for reasons related to environmental sustainability.

Our food systems, or what I prefer to call foodscapes, can pull us in different directions, leading us to exhibit extrinsic and/or intrinsic values.  

Extrinsic values, those that pull us inward, concern social standing and self-advancement. People with deeply held extrinsic values are likely to obsess over financial success, status, and fame. Conversely, intrinsic values, those that lead us outward, concern finding worth and reward with and through the support of, rather than at the expense, of others. Research suggests that when individuals place greater importance on extrinsic values they are more likely to express prejudice toward others, be less concerned about the environment, human rights, and animal welfare, and express lower levels of personal wellbeing and happiness. Can you guess about which values advertisers tend to target?

I mention this because Peters links taste to indulgence, asserting that we need to make healthy food sound more pleasurable and hedonistic. I counter that in looking for solutions to poor nutrition, for ways to encourage people to try or eat more vegetarian options, we need to think about the type of eaters we seek to create while being aware of those we might unintentionally create. In turning people on to vegetarian options, we should avoid unintentionally creating eaters who think only about themselves when making dietary decisions. For example, while we want them to eat properly for their health, we also would like them to incorporate thoughts of how their eating impacts community health.

This brings me back to my study: how we engage with food and those responsible for producing it matters greatly in shaping our feelings about what we ought to eat and why we ought to be eating it. I offer that we should be able to agree that while we do aim to create healthier eaters, we also seek to develop eater-citizens who give a damn about whether that sizzling crispy zucchini was picked under exploitive labor conditions or produced using methods that were unsustainable.

For additional insights into this topic, see Michael Carolan’s most recent book, No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise, published by Island Press.

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It can seem like every news story spells bad news for the environment—from the ongoing clean water crisis in Flint, Michigan to Earth's hottest summer ever recorded. But it's not all doom-and-gloom. With so many dedicated people working on environmental issues, there are also stories of hope. We asked Island Press authors to share good news in their field. Check out the inspiring stories they shared below and if you know of other environmental success stories, share them in the comments.

Abbie Gascho Landis, author of Immersion:

Last summer, mussel biologists and crew worked to relocate over 100,000 mussels, many federally protected, prior to the construction of the I-74 bridge over the Mississippi River. There's also the creation of the Fairmount Water Works' Mussel Hatchery in Pennsylvania, and the proposed listing of the yellow lance mussel as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. While it's sad that the mussel needs to be listed, the act of listing it means that its habitat (which is significant!) might benefit from more protections. Better to list a declining species than to ignore it. There's also this video of mussel sexy time, which is awesome, if not newsy.

Laurie Ann Mazur, editor of the Urban Resilience Project and Resilience Matters:

Left behind by the globalized economy, Buffalo New York has lost more than half its population since 1950. By 2005, when the community group People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH) Buffalo was founded, West Side residents were struggling with unemployment, rampant blight and high energy costs.  

At that time, there were an estimated 23,000 vacant homes in Buffalo.  PUSH took on a state housing agency that was using vacant buildings to speculate on Wall Street, and got the buildings turned over to the community—with funding to fix them up. Next, PUSH brought together hundreds of community residents to craft a plan for a large, blighted area. The result is a 25-square block Green Development Zone (GDZ) that is now a model of energy efficient, affordable housing. PUSH and its non-profit development company rehabilitate homes in the GDZ, installing efficiency upgrades like insulation and geothermal heating that dramatically lower residents’ utility bills.  PUSH also won a New York State grant to build 46 new homes—including a “net zero” house that produces as much energy as it consumes.

The GDZ doubles as a jobs program. Through its construction projects, PUSH has cultivated a growing network of contractors who are committed to hiring locally. And PUSH successfully advocated for New York’s Green Jobs - Green New York program, which seeks to create 35,000 jobs while providing energy upgrades and retrofits for 1 million homes across the state.

Excerpted from an Urban Resilience Project piece in Yes! Magazine by Taj James and Rosa Gonzales

Carlton Reid, author of Bike Boom and Roads Were Not Built For Cars:

There have been a gazillion studies which say how cycling is good for public health, but one new one is a biggie—with a sample size of more than 250,000 Brits—and led to global media coverage. The Scottish study was published in the British Medical Journal and, staggeringly, it said cycling to work lowers the risk of dying by 40 percent. If medical science created a pill with that sort of impact it would be quickly bigger than Viagra! Cancer is a huge worry for the Western world, yet cycling to work halves your chance from dying from it. Amazing, really.

Michael S. Carolan, author of No One Eats Alone:

If you go back to the first 100 years of this nation, our food system was built on people sharing seeds. That was, in fact, the *only* way new seeds were acquired—that and saving seeds from the prior year's harvest. Seed saving and sharing is not only becoming a lost art, it is also illegal in certain instances.   

For example, take the case, from 2014, when the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture informed a seed library in its state that they were in violation of a 2004 state law—the Pennsylvania Seed Act of 2004. The seed library, its officials were told, fell under the definition of a “seed distributor,” which meant they needed to start acting like one. That required that they meet stringent labeling requirements. The labels, which need to be in English, must clearly state the name of the species or commonly accepted name of kind of plant. If it is a hybrid plant, the label must explain something about whether the seed has been treated. Lastly, labels must include the name and address of the seed-sharing entity. As a seed distributor, the library was also told they must conduct germination and purity analyses.  

On a more encouraging note: In September 2016, the Seed Exchange Democracy Act (Assembly Bill 1810) was signed into law in California. The bill amends the “seed law” chapter of the state’s Food and Agricultural Code thus exempting seed libraries from burdensome testing and labeling requirements.

The Sustainable Economic Law Center offers a toolkit of resources to help concerned citizens make the Seed Exchange Democracy Act a reality in their own state.  It includes sample legislation, local resolutions, letters of support, and more.

Joy Zedler, co-author of Foundations of Restoration Ecology:

Restoration ecology and our book on its foundations support new pathways for restoring watersheds to protect wetlands. After decades of teaching conservation and restoration of ecosystems, I'm using the wisdom captured in our book to practice what I've been preaching. I'm one of the fortunate few who have wetlands in our back yards. I live near intact natural ecosystems among citizens who tax themselves so our township can purchase development rights and create conservation easements. The challenge is to extend voluntary approaches upstream to achieve watershed restoration goals and protect downstream wetland gems. The solution won't be top-down governance in this state—or in this country at the present time—but the solution could be bottom-up watershed-care based on strong science and wetland ethics.

Donald A. Falk, co-author of Foundations of Restoration Ecology

To me the really big and encouraging news is that ecosystem restoration is understood increasingly as a central component of global efforts to reverse anthropogenic climate change. This means that the streams of ecological restoration, ecosystem and biodiversity protection, and climate action are fusing, creating a powerful incentive to both protect and restore ecosystems which are absorbing at least a quarter of all GHG emissions annually (for an essay on this, see Ecosystems are critical to solving the global climate crisis).

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Commentary Was Originally Published September 7, 2017 in The New Food Economy.  

President Trump rode to the White House on a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment — stirred by his frequently repeated claim that undocumented immigrants are (among other things) “stealing our jobs.”

Putting aside the hype and the hate, consider agriculture — the sector of our economy that employs the highest percentage of undocumented workers. American citizens are not exactly clamoring for these jobs: One study found that less than 0.1 percent of “legal” job seekers asked to be referred for farm jobs, and of those, less than half reported to work on the first day.

A couple of years back, while in the thick of conducting research for my book, No One Eats Alone: Food as a Social Enterprise, I got to thinking that people who believe immigrant laborers are stealing our jobs have never picked strawberries for a living. That stray thought led me to what I now call the “strawberry study,” in which a dozen Coloradans from middle-class and higher economic backgrounds got schooled on what it takes to put fresh fruit on their table.

To understand and appreciate where participants ended up, it helps to know a bit about their backgrounds. All lived in or near Fort Collins, Colorado, a community of roughly 165,000 people located 65 miles north of the Colorado State Capital in Denver. Household salaries of this group ranged from $80,000 to $175,000 a year — not an especially rich group, but far from poor. (At the time, medium annual household incomes for the area hovered around $62,000 and average home sale prices had just topped $310,000.) While ethnically homogenous (everyone self-identified as “white”), education levels spanned the gamut: Two never went beyond high school; some reported having two year vocational degrees; still others possessed four-year university degrees, and beyond. Jobs reported included car sales, registered dietician, electrician, computer technician, accountant, real estate agent, and high school science teacher. Age range: twenty-five to fifty-six.

When interviewed initially, the participants knew very little about how strawberries get from farm to market. Not one could accurately state where strawberries from their neighborhood store came from, which also meant none knew who did the picking. A few mentioned the terms illegals and aliens; Jeff (the electrician) even went so far as to suggest that “they’re stealing our jobs.”

Later they were shown a documentary, which at least taught them the names of the top strawberry-producing locations in the U.S. and Mexico and some of the labor conditions common during the harvesting process.

But while they learned to talk about the labor considerations involved in industrial strawberry production, it was not until we all picked strawberries together for seven hours that some participants seemed to feel differently about the effort that goes into harvesting this food. (A lesson for educators the world over: It is often not enough to simply tellpeople to think, act, or eat differently.)

The day began at sun-up, at approximately 6 o’clock. Gathering together in a circle, drinking coffee and eating donuts — a little incentive to pull them out of bed at that early hour — I immediately noticed everyone’s attire. When we last met, I asked that they dress in layers — men in work boots, if they had them. All were told to bring something to cover their heads, like a baseball cap or bandana. While the day was forecasted to be hot, I reasoned that if they were to experience a day in the life of a strawberry picker it would not hurt to dress like one.

The local weatherwoman was right. By early afternoon, the weather app on my phone registered a cloudless 88 degrees. Participants could be seen scattered across the four-acre field, all bent at the same 90 degree angle, a stance that allowed them to pick with both hands. They had seen that picking position weeks earlier when shown the documentary and were asked to replicate it that day. With the hot sun overhead — rays that are especially intense at 5,000 feet elevation — those bent backs had all but disappeared. Before breaking for lunch, many could be seen working from their knees, a few were sitting, and one was experimenting with an all-fours picking position. The day ended at two in the afternoon, though in truth the actual picking ended earlier as participants found conversation a suitable distraction from the heat.

A week later, after lower backs had time to heal, I met individually with the participants to discuss their experience out in the field. Most talked about being “moved” by the experience. Some painfully so. In the words of Jeff, who made the earlier remark about job theft, “The work was hard as hell!” More than half of the group admitted that the experience gave them pause and led them to think about those who toil, often invisibly, so we can eat.

Participants were also instructed to take pictures while picking. Initially, images were overwhelmingly of people and landscapes: very generic, about nothing in particular other than to chronicle who was there and what the general experience looked like. But as the day progressed, so did the feel of the photographs. By late afternoon, there were selfies of sweaty faces and wet, matted hair; one of a sweat ring in a baseball hat; a pair of soil-stained bare knees; and trays at various stages of fullness held by fingers caked with dirt and stained red.

By the day’s end everyone had taken photos documenting their physical exertion. For in the end it was precisely that “hard as hell” work that stuck with them long after we left the field for our respective middle-class homes. That work, as I learned during the exit interviews, even made some reevaluate what they thought about the people doing the work so we can eat “fresh” fruits and vegetables. Rebecca, the real estate agent, swore off “industrial strawberries,” vowing in the future to buy only local. Another claimed to have bought only Fair Trade strawberries since that day in the field. As for Jeff, the gentleman who had unapologetically called immigrant laborers “illegals,” he described how that day “softened” his stance on national immigration policy. “We need them to feed us,” he admitted sheepishly.

To put the matter plainly, the experience, for some, created empathy.

Social distances have grown so great in countries like the United States that bringing people together for face-to-face encounters is becoming a real challenge. Forget about getting people around the same table to eat; even getting them to meet in a room is harder than ever. We know, for example, that people with higher social status generally ignore those with less power, a dynamic that has been observed in numerous studies.

But I am hopeful. We need to figure out how to heal today’s social divisions in our politics — heck, in our society. Perhaps we can learn from the strawberry study.

They’re stealing our jobs! Spoken just like someone who has never met, let alone worked like an immigrant laborer — even if just for a day.

This summer, three environmentalists banded together to counter Trump’s inaction on climate by planting trees. So far, the crowd-sourced forest is at 840,000 trees pledged and growing.

We asked Island Press authors to reflect on the idea of Trump Forest and offer their own suggestions for offsetting the damaging effects of the Trump administration. Their ideas—from Twitter-based fundraising to more walkable neighborhoods—are below. Have your own creative idea? Share it in the comments.

How about the Trump Military-Industrial Parks Funding Bill: for every dollar that the Trump administration's EPA saves for corporate polluters, a dollar is transferred from the budget for Defense Department and applied to funding for National Parks. 
—Emily Monosson, Natural Defense

Planting trees for—or, more accurately, against—Trump and his policies is a great idea. We know that it’s not going to solve the problem of climate change, although every tree helps a little, and if we plant enough trees they will have a significant effect. But, perhaps just as important in the short term, every little gesture against the awful Donald contributes to the tide of protest by millions of people saying  “we will not accept the attitudes of this president and we will not go along with his agenda."

Continue reading the full post here.
—Joe Landsberg and Richard Waring, Forests in Our Changing World

I suggest creating an online platform where everyone who voted for Hillary (all 68 million of them) can sign up and pledge to give 1 cent—which would be automatically deducted from their bank accounts (if they have one)—every time Trump tweets. This money would then go to combating climate change denial organizations/agendas, which are (demonstrably) incredibly well-funded.

If even half of everyone who voted for Hillary did this, we could generate $3.4 million in one day alone. (34 million votes equals 34 million cents multiplied by 10—the amount of times he tweets daily, on average.) The environmental cause he donates to could change every day. Even changing the monetary amount to half or a quarter of a cent for every tweet would still generate a lot of money.” 
—Michael Carolan, No One Eats Alone

The best way to offset the environmental impacts of the Trump administration is to advance smart policy at the state level and be prepared to do the same at the federal level once Trump leaves office… or if he changes his mind while in office! I am very worried that the GOP’s “Obamacare repeal” moment will be repeated in climate policy in a few years, and I speak from experience: 2016’s pioneering I-732 carbon tax ballot measure campaign in Washington State (which I founded and co-chaired) lost in part because of opposition from the “environmental left,” including the Sierra Club and Washington Conservation Voters. The same dynamic played out in California earlier this year, with the Sierra Club and 350.org opposing the extension of California’s cap-and-trade system.

And you can watch it happening again in Washington State as the groups that splintered with the grassroots I-732 campaign are now splintering with each other about a 2018 ballot measure. So: If you’re on the right side of the political spectrum then there’s lots of work to do getting conservatives to pay attention to the risks of climate change (Bob Inglis and his compatriots at RepublicEn are one great resource), and if you’re on the left, well, as the Washington Post editorial board put it, “The left’s opposition to a carbon tax shows there’s something deeply wrong with the left.” Fix it. 
—Yoram Bauman, Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change

A good place to plant many of those trees is along the streets of America’s cities, towns, and villages. It’s been shown again and again that a canopy of street trees can significantly lower the air temperature of a block or a neighborhood or a larger area during the height of summer. That makes for more comfortable living. It reduces the need for air conditioning. It encourages people to walk or bike to nearby destinations rather than drive a car. Moreover, street trees make a place more beautiful. They persuade people—at least some people—that living in a somewhat dense neighborhood is not a sacrifice—it’s an advantage. 

Along with planting trees, we should put more emphasis on making the street network safer for pedestrians. Especially important is what happens at intersections, the most dangerous parts of the street network. Some intersections need to be narrowed, to get motorists to slow down and to reduce the distance that pedestrians have to cross. On long or especially busy blocks, segments of the planter strips could be extended into the street, causing vehicles to move at a more reasonable speed and helping people to cross the street safely. 

Follow examples from cities like Portland, Oregon, where centers of many neighborhood intersections have been planted, moderating the speeds on residential streets. In front of some neighborhood shops, encourage merchants to create patios where people can come together, eat and drink, and get to know one another. On Orange Street in the East Rock section of New Haven, Connecticut, where small stores are interspersed among houses and apartment buildings, patios of this sort have been created, giving the neighborhood a more congenial atmosphere than previously existed. 

Making a greener, more beautiful, more sociable environment benefits people in many different ways.
—Phil Langdon, Within Walking Distance

There's no lack necessary actions we can take. But where to start? Or perhaps better asked: How can I channel my outrage into something that's constructive but also as satisfying as ripping out part of my sink? (After all, outrage is an itch best scratched soon lest you turn into a humorless crank.)

Seed-bombing Trump golf courses with wildflowers and edibles immediately comes to mind, though admittedly that ranks high on "satisfying" and not much else. Punching literal Nazis on the street is constructive, in a way, though it's not a skill I currently possess. Keeping up with my curated Twitter roster of political and environmental experts is more important than it sometimes feels (especially when the underrated Sarah Kendzior has a new post) but it's also far from satisfying.

Of course, anything that makes a whit of difference is generally going to be neither easy nor quick. Meaningful changes take time, time spent in setting intention, executing action, and curating results. I think this holds true whether you're raising a garden, starting an activist organization, or making a footprint-reducing lifestyle change.

Continue reading the full post here.
—Daniel Lerch, Community Resilience Reader

This holiday season, consider the Icelandic tradition of gifting books. They don't go bad, are one-size-fits-all, and are sure to make anyone on your shopping list smile.With a library of more than 1,000 books, make Island Press your one-stop shop for book buying, so you can get back to enjoying the holidays. To help you out, we've compiled a list of staff selections and mentions on various best-of lists. 

Get any of these books at your favorite neighborhood bookstore or online retailer!

For the health nut in your life – Whitewash

Let me just say I am unequivocally a health nut; I am definitely that friend who will straight up say “you so should not eat, it is so unhealthy for you.” So If you have a friend or family member that is kind of like me and cares about the kind of food and chemicals they put in their body; Carey Gillam Whitewash is the book to have!  This riveting number exposes just how far one company is willing to go to line their pockets while showing total disregard for public health and safety. You think you know what is being sprayed on your food, well this book is here to say think again!

Whitewash is aslo one of Civil Eats' Favorite Food and Farming Books of 2017

For the Lego lover in your life – Design for Good

What good is building something if it doesn’t help the people it’s build for? In John Cary’s Design for Good, readers are presented with colorful, character-driven stories about project around that are designed with dignity in mind. Did we mention it also contains a ton of drool-worthy photos of architecture?

Design for Good is aslo featured on the San Francisco Chronicle's 2017 holiday books gift guide. Check it out!

For the peacekeeper in your life – The Spirit of Dialogue

Know someone who always serves as the conflict resolver for your friends or family? Give them some new ideas of masterful mediation with The Spirit of Dialogue which draws lessons from a diversity of faith traditions to transform conflict. Whether atheist or fundamentalist, Muslim or Jewish, Quaker or Hindu, any reader involved in difficult dialogue will find concrete steps towards meeting of souls. 

For the history buff in your life – Toms River

Toms River recounts the sixty-year saga that plagued this small New Jersey town. Your history-loving friend will meet industrial polluters and the government regulators who enabled them, the pioneering scientists who first identified pollutants as a cause of cancer, and the brave individuals who fought for justice. Longtime journalist Dan Fagin won the Pulitzer Prize for this page-turner, and gives us all a reason to think twice about what’s lurking in the water.

For the person in your life who thinks the environmental movement is made up of white outdoorsmen (or for the person in your life who thinks that the environmental movements doesn’t include them) – Energy Democracy

Energy Democracy frames the international struggle of working people, low-income communities, and communities of color to take control of energy resources from the energy establishment and use those resources to empower their communities—literally providing energy, economically, and politically. The diverse voices in this book show that the global fight to save the planet—to conserve and restore our natural resources to be life-sustaining—must fully engage community residents and must change the larger economy to be sustainable, democratic, and just.

For the lazy environmentalist in your life – Design Professionals Guide to Zero-Net Energy Building

We all know someone who really means well and cares about the environment, but cannot be bothered to change his lifestyle. With the Design Professionals Guide to Zero-Net Energy Building, you can introduce the zero-net energy building, which offers a practical and cost-effective way to address climate change without compromising quality of life.

For the foodie in your life – No One Eats Alone

For your favorite gourmand, give the gift of No One Eats Alone, an exploration of how to deepen connections to our food sources and to our own communities. Through over 250 interviews, Michael Carolan shows concerned food citizens opportunities for creating a more equitable and sustainable foodscape

For the conservation warrior in your life – Nature’s Allies

Worried about the state of nature in our divided world? Or know someone who is? Nature’s Allies is a refreshing antidote to helplessness and inertia. Within its pages Larry Nielsen brings alive stories of brave men and women around the world who have responded to the conservation crises of their time by risking their reputations, well-being, and even lives to stand up for nature when no one else would do so. These stories provide inspiration for a new generation of conservationists to step up in the face of adversity and challenge social and environmental injustice occurring today—and to assure them that they can make a difference by speaking out. This year, give a holiday gift of courage and inspiration: Nature’s Allies.

For the traveler in your life – Let Them Eat Shrimp

This book brings to life the importance of mangroves. Mangroves have many jobs: protecting coastlines, acting as nurseries for all kinds of fish, provide livlihoods and food for people. Kennedy Warne dives into the muddy waters of the mangrove world and shares the stories of the people who depend on them. The book is both a well-written travelogue and exploration of the science of the mangroves ecological service they provide.

Don't just take our word for it, check out these best-of lists:

For the nature-in-cities lover in your life – Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design

Featured on the ASLA's The Dirt Best Books of 2017

For the bike lover in your life – Bike Boom

One of Planetizen's Best Books of 2017 and one of the four books in Bicycle Times' Gift Guide Cycling Enthusiast

This Valentine’s Day, we thought it would be fun for Island Press authors to share the love. We asked a few authors to choose their favorite Island Press book—other than their own, of course—and explain what makes it so special. Check out their responses below, and use code 4MAGICAL for 25% off and free shipping all of the books below, as well as books from participating authors.

What’s your favorite Island Press book? Share your answer in the comments.

My favorite IP book—not that I’ve read them all—is Mike Lydon’s Tactical Urbanism. This book shows how ad hoc interventions can improve the public realm, especially if they’re later made permanent. I discussed the concept on the latest Spokesmen podcast with architect Jason Fertig and illustrator Bekka “Bikeyface” Wright, both of Boston. 

—Carlton Reid, Bike Boom and Roads Were Not Built for Cars

Last year I wrote a cover story for SIERRA magazine about how Donald Trump's proposed wall along the US-Mexico border would all but eliminate any chance for recovering jaguar species in the Southwest. In the course of my research I came across Alan Rabinowitz's An Indomitable Beast. It's a great read, blending Rabinowitz's own experiences as a big cat biologist with cutting-edge findings on this amazing species. As a writer, this book and its amazing details helped me bring the jaguar to life for readers. 

—Jason Mark, Satellites in the High Country

This day is a time for reaching beyond data and logic to think about deeper ways of knowing. Love, specifically, but I would add to that faith, tradition and ethics. That's why I love Aaron Wolf's new book, The Spirit of Dialogue: Lessons from Faith Traditions in Transforming Conflict. Going beyond the  mechanical "rationality" of the typical public meeting is necessary if we are to address the big issues of global sustainability and the smaller issues of how we sustain our local communities. Aaron Wolf provides the experience, tools and promise of a better, deeper approach.

—Larry Nielsen, Nature's Allies

Like many others, I am indebted to to Island Press for not one but three books that profoundly influenced my thinking. Panarchy (2001, edited by Lance Gunderson and C.S. Holling) introduced me to the concept of socio-ecological systems resilience. Resilience Thinking (2006, by Brian Walker and David Salt) taught me what systems resilience really means. And the follow-up book Resilience Practice (2012) helped me start to understand how systems resilience actually works. The latter remains the most-consulted book on my shelf—by Island Press or any other publisher—and I was thrilled and frankly humbled when Brian and David agreed to write a chapter for our own contribution to the field, The Community Resilience Reader (2017).

—Daniel Lerch, The Community Resilience Reader

"A large percentage of my urbanism bookshelf is comprised of Island Press books, so it's very difficult to share my love for just one! So, I won't because the books we pull of the shelf most often these days are the NACTO Design Guides. Finally, a near complete set of highly usable and mutually supportive design standards that help us advocate for and build better streets, better places." 

—Mike Lydon, Tactical Urbanism

Nicols Fox's Against the Machine is a book that’s becomes more relevant each year as technology impinges ever further on our daily lives. It’s a fascinating, deeply researched look at how and why people have resisted being treated as extensions of machines.

—Phil Langdon, Within Walking Distance

Lake Effect by Nancy Nichols. I read this book several years ago. It is so important to hear the voices of those whose lives are impacted by industrial age pollutants, lest we slide into complacency. In this case, the story of the chemicals of Lake Michigan. It is a short, beautifully written, disturbing read.
—Emily Monosson, Natural Defense and Unnatural Selection

Peter Gleick’s series, The World’s Water, is one of the most useful surveys of the cutting edge of global waters there is. Each edition brings in-depth coverage of the issues of the day, always eminently readable and backed up by the crack research team that he puts together for each topic. I use it in my classes, always confident that students (and I) will be kept abreast of the best of The World’s Water.
—Aaron Wolf, The Spirit of Dialogue

Mark Jerome Walters' important book, Seven Modern Plagues, places great emphasis on linking emerging diseases with habitat destruction and other forms of modification natural processes. This book is a call for us to recognize that each new disease reflects an environmental warning.
—Andy Dyer, Chasing the Red Queen

My favorite Island Press book is The New Agrarianism: Land, Culture, and the Community of Life, edited by Eric T. Freyfogle. Perhaps it remains my favorite IP text because it is the first IP text I remember reading front to back, twice! I first encountered the book as a graduate student and was struck my its scope and tone. The book is thought provoking. But it's also a joy to read, which isn't surprising in hindsight given the award-winning contributors.   
—Michael Carolan, No One Eats Alone

Don't see your Island Press fave? Share it in the comments below!