Courtney White

Our planet is approaching a critical environmental juncture. Across the globe we continue to deplete the five pools of carbon  soil, wood, coal, oil, and natural gas  at an unsustainable rate. We've burned up half the planet's known reserves of oil  one trillion barrels  in less than a century. When these sources of energy-rich carbon go into severe decline, as they surely will, society will follow.Former archeologist and Sierra Club activist Courtney White calls this moment the Age of Consequences a time when the worrying consequences of our environmental actions or inaction  have begun to raise unavoidable and difficult questions. How should we respond? What are effective (and realistic) solutions?In exploring these questions, White draws on his formidable experience as an environmentalist and activist as well as his experience as a father to two children living through this vital moment in time. As a result, The Age of Consequences is a book of ideas and action, but it is also a chronicle of personal experience. Readers follow White as he travels the country --- from Kansas to Los Angeles, New York City, Italy, France, Yellowstone, and New England. Along the way he recounts stories of Amish farmers in Ohio, cattle ranchers in the Southwest, creek restorationists in New Mexico, local food entrepreneurs in Arizona, and carbon pioneers in Australia. Their stories inform and entertain, but they also reveal encouraging and hopeful answers to anguished questions about our collective future, including issues of sustainability, climate change mitigation, resilience, land health, collaborative conservation, ecological restoration, and regenerative agriculture.The Age of Consequences is an engaging and informative look at our current environmental predicament, as well as an important contribution to the growing body of environmental literature by writers such as Wallace Stegner, Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, Bill McKibben and E.O. Wilson, and Michael Pollan. For fans of Paul Hawken's Blessed Unrest and Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes of a Catastrophe.

Our planet is approaching a critical environmental juncture. Across the globe we continue to deplete the five pools of carbon  soil, wood, coal, oil, and natural gas  at an unsustainable rate. We've burned up half the planet's known reserves of oil  one trillion barrels  in less than a century. When these sources of energy-rich carbon go into severe decline, as they surely will, society will follow.Former archeologist and Sierra Club activist Courtney White calls this moment the Age of Consequences a time when the worrying consequences of our environmental actions or inaction  have begun to raise unavoidable and difficult questions. How should we respond? What are effective (and realistic) solutions?In exploring these questions, White draws on his formidable experience as an environmentalist and activist as well as his experience as a father to two children living through this vital moment in time. As a result, The Age of Consequences is a book of ideas and action, but it is also a chronicle of personal experience. Readers follow White as he travels the country --- from Kansas to Los Angeles, New York City, Italy, France, Yellowstone, and New England.

This book tackles an increasingly crucial question: What can we do about the seemingly intractable challenges confronting all of humanity today, including climate change, global hunger, water scarcity, environmental stress, and economic instability? The quick answers are: Build topsoil. Fix creeks. Eat meat from pasture-raised animals. Scientists maintain that a mere 2 percent increase in the carbon content of the planet's soils could offset 100 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions going into the atmosphere. But how could this be accomplished? What would it cost? Is it even possible? Yes, says author Courtney White, it is not only possible, but essential for the long-term health and sustainability of our environment and our economy. Right now, the only possibility of large-scale removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is through plant photosynthesis and related land-based carbon sequestration activities. These include a range of already existing, low-tech, and proven practices: composting, no-till farming, climate-friendly livestock practices, conserving natural habitat, restoring degraded watersheds and rangelands, increasing biodiversity, and producing local food. In Grass, Soil, Hope, the author shows how all these practical strategies can be bundled together into an economic and ecological whole, with the aim of reducing atmospheric CO2 while producing substantial co-benefits for all living things. Soil is a huge natural sink for carbon dioxide. If we can draw increasing amounts carbon out of the atmosphere and store it safely in the soil then we can significantly address all the multiple challenges that now appear so intractable.