Green Books Campaign: WorldShift 2012

Introduction:

This review is part of the Green Books campaign.Today 200 bloggers take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by simultaneously publishing reviews of 200 books printed on recycled or FSC-certified paper. By turning a spotlight on books printed using eco- friendly paper, we hope to raise the awareness of book buyers and encourage everyone to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books.

The campaign is organized for the second time by Eco-Libris, a green company working to make reading more sustainable. We invite you to join the discussion on "green" books and support books printed in an eco-friendly manner! A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

WorldShift 2012, Making Green Business, New Politics & Higher Consciousness Work Together the book Ecolutions blogger Kara Mitchell chose to review in this campaign was written by Ervin Laszlo and published in 2009 by McArthur & Company of Toronto with FSC certified mixed sources of paper with 85% recycled content. 

Book Review:

I chose this book to review in launching the Ecolutions blog because its title and its brief description as "A handbook for conscious change that could transform the current world crisis into planetary renewal" certainly fits the quest for sustainable solutions and theme of sharing them here.  I found the book a hopeful and informative, perspective expanding, motivating and connecting description of why and how we as individuals and humanity might launch ourselves into this global evolution.  The book defines WorldShift as " A worldwide shift from a path of unsustainability, conflict, and confrontation to a path toward sustainability, well-being and peace."  

Written in only 120 pages, including valuable forwards and appendixes by other authors, and with generally not-too-academic language, this book is approachable and answers in a general terms questions many of us ask within movements working for sustainability or stressed about the fate of humanity and the Earth in what sometimes seems an insurmountable combination of environmental, economic and social crises.  It shows a path to sustainability and world peace from a global perspective, offering an occasional zoom into specific contributions that are and can be made at national, community, business and individual levels.  

Questions the book is organized to address in different sections include:

• What would happen if we let things go on as they are?  And what could happen if we wake up and change?
• Why do we need timely change?  What is the nature, and what are the roots, of the present world's unsustainability?
• How much time do we have for this shift to be successful?  What is it about the year 2012 that makes it a plausible point of no return for humanity as a whole?
• What new or renewed objectives will we need to adopt in this conscious and timely change in politics, business and on a personal level?
• How can objectives of conscious change be adopted in practice?
• What might a world transformed by or around 2012 look like in the near future (2032)?

What i liked particularly about this book is that it works as an empowering call to action, distributes responsibility for making required change equitably, focusing particularly on what every person can do to be an important part of it while identifying key roles of business and political leaders as well.  In his forward to the book, Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the reader directly without talking down to us and the feelings of being respected and engaged that this drew from me continues through Laszlo's writing.  The path to sustainability described is hopeful without being too naive in focusing on rewards of the shift, "a new way to be happy" as Deepak Chopra describes it in his forward and the values of consciousness that form the base of sustainable choices and so will underlie new ways we organize ourselves and connect with each other through the WorldShift.  The voice and evidence of science and reason is also not ignored but used in balanced form through the books' arguments.

I also appreciated the unique offering of this book in comparison with other guides to global sustainability or even revolutions of consciousness required for that; the explanation of why 2012 has been identified as a significant point of change.  I haven't wanted to pay much attention to apocalyptic predictions i've heard of associated with this year as i don't find them useful in a quest for sustainable solutions and have often associated them with purely spiritual or "new age" pursuits.  Laszlo in addressing the significance of 2012 quotes and references Mayan elders and spiritual leaders directly in describing how this culture has identified it as not the end of the world but of the end of the world as we have known it in many ways and a point for a new beginning and evolutionary leap.  Links to the Mayan prophesies are provided from not only a variety of the worlds spiritualities and philosophies but from the world of science too in researched predictions of changes in the sun and galaxy and unique alignments that will happen around the winter Solstice of that year and in what physics is finding in Ether and vacuums, elements we are only just making ground breaking discoveries in.  This potential of 2012 being a starting point where a much greater percentage of humanity start using more of the still much unknown capacity of our brains is definitely more hopeful and certainly more plausible in my eyes than the brimstone flying predictions of fundamentalists.

This book was my first introduction to twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, author Ervin Laszlo and thankfully also to the Club of Budapest he has founded.  This international think tank is dedicated to developing and sharing between different parts of the world, new ways of thinking and acting to help resolve the social, political, economic, and ecological challenges of the twenty-first century.  There is an impressive list of honorary members leading in the worlds of science, politics and philosophy/spirituality at the beginning of the book, offering credibility.   The club through active national sub-groups initiates and sustains a dialogue between different belief systems and world views in order to cocreate effective strategies for responsible local action with a global focus.  The mission and some declarations of the club are included in the appendixes of the book.

This book left me hungry for more; (though recognizably for content that could not be provided in the general and approachable format of this call to action)

• for more detail and plausible explanations of the bridges between the 2 worlds described, the major changes in physical terms and international communications, agreements that we will need to go through on the path to sustainability
• for more concrete examples of how this WorldShift is already and will be done

Here's to this hunger being satiated in further work of this blog, the Club of Budapest, ecolutionaries worldwide.