As we move into the beginning of our 30th anniversary year at Real Goods, I’m struck by the acceleration of change in the last 12 months. All of a sudden the environmental message has caught on (we’ve only been saying it for 30 years!), and everyone and everything seeks to be “green.” What a refreshing change! Our species is finally peeking beyond the veil of denial to see that we can’t put off reducing our carbon footprint any longer — not for a year or a decade. I just read an insightful book on global warming called Heat by George Monbiot who contends that we must reduce our CO2 emissions 90 percent by 2030 if we are to stabilize our climate at a tolerable 2°C temperature rise. The good news is this is not only possible, it’s easy to tackle your own direct footprint by following a few simple steps and incorporating off-the shelf products that Real Goods has provided for years. We demonstrate with this catalog cover by our old friend, the very talented cartoonist Matt Wuerker, how very easy it is to reduce your personal carbon footprint by more than 80 percent, using off-the-shelf Real Goods products.
To celebrate our 30th anniversary, we offer a brand new and fully updated edition of our venerable Solar Living Sourcebook, hot off the press. The new Sourcebook opens with a chapter on Relocalization, which we think is the primary solution to our dual crises of diminishing oil supplies and global climate change. Together, we can make a strategic response that honors, encourages and nurtures local businesses, farmers’ markets, energy production and community involvement, while rejecting the malign aspects of globalization and our current fossil-fuel-dependent economy. In addition, we’ve greatly expanded the chapters on Land and Shelter and Alternative Transportation — including electric vehicles, biofuels and solar water heating — and we finish it up with a brand new chapter on Green Burial — the ultimate back-to-the-land movement. You’ll find some shocking statistics here on how perverted, wasteful and denigrating our current burial system really is and how easy it is to repair.
I was gratified to meet so many of you at our most successful ever SolFest in August, the 12th annual event. To spend so much time with so many kindred spirits who’ve been working to bring some sanity to our planet for so many years really recharged my batteries. I thank you all for your continued support of Gaiam Real Goods’ mission and look forward to accelerating the much-needed change in the near future toward global climate stabilization.
Thank you for your continued support!
For the Earth,
John Schaeffer, President and Founder
