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After centuries of economic activity based on extraction, exploitation, and depletion, we now face undeniable environmental threats. New business models that save or restore natural resources are critical. But how can we translate that insight into more sustainable practices?

Building the Green Economy shows how community groups, families, and individual citizens have taken action to protect their food and water, clean up their neighborhoods, and strengthen their local economies. Their unlikely victories—over polluters, unresponsive bureaucracies, and unexamined routines—dramatize the opportunities and challenges facing the local green economy movement.

Drawing on their extensive experience at Global Exchange and elsewhere, the authors also:

  • Lay out strategies for a more successful green movement
  • Describe how communities have protected their victories from legal and political challenges
  • Provide key resources for local activists
  • Include conversations with Rocky Anderson, Lois Gibbs, Anuradha Mittal, David Morris, Michael Shuman, and other activists and leaders.
Described by The New York Times as the “Paul Revere of globalization’s woes,” Dr. Kevin Danaher is a cofounder of Global Exchange, Executive Director of the Global Citizen Center, and Executive Co-Producer of the Green Festivals in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Chicago and Seattle. He is the author or editor of eleven books, including Ten Reasons to Abolish the IMF and World Bank (Seven Stories Press), and (with Jason Mark) Insurrection: Citizen Challenges to Corporate Power (Routledge).

Shannon Biggs directs the Local Economy project at Global Exchange. As a former senior staffer at the International Forum on Globalization (IFG) she wrote for and edited IFG publications, and was a lecturer on International Relations at San Francisco State University. She holds a Masters degree from the London School of Economics in economics, empire and post-colonialism.

Dubbed a “rebel with a cause” by TIME magazine, Jason Mark is an author-activist who helped launch the national Freedom from Oil campaign. His writings have appeared in Orion, The Nation, Grist, Alternet, and E, among other publications. He lives in San Francisco, where he co-manages an urban organic farm (www.alemanyfarm.org) and edits the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal.

“This is a practical book about on-the-ground successful green businesses
and neighborhood initiatives that live sustainability, not just talk it.
There are also pages of Crisp interviews with practitioners and thinkers
including Rocky Anderson, Mayor of Salt Lake City and Lois Gibbs, the
extraordinary organizer against toxics regarding this emerging sub-economy
that challenges greed, concentrated power and destruction.”
—Ralph Nader, www.nader.org, Dec 17, 2007

“Like politics, all sustainability is local. A sustaining world can only be measured as the sum of trillions of answers executed at the grassroots level.
This book inspires us to look closely for the issues that face us all everywhere.”
—William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things

“Building the Green Economy tells the real stories of what is both possible and necessary to restore power (metaphorically and literally) to the people, to save the nation, and save our world. It should be on every American’s ‘A’ reading list.”
—Thom Hartmann, Air America radio host and author of Cracking the Code: The Art and Science of Political Persuasion

“Building the Green Economy: success stories from the grassroots, by Kevin Danaher, Shannon Biggs and Jason Mark will help you see us, humanity, again. It is a manual for those of us who need to remember we are a can-do people, full of intelligence, heart, courage, and, sometimes, wit. A staff of a book, to lean on in these hard times.”
—Alice Walker author of The Color Purple

July 2007

The greening of global commerce is the business story of the new century.
In BUILDING THE GREEN ECONOMY: Success Stories from the Grass
Roots (PoliPointPress, $16.00, September 2007, ISBN: 978-0-9778253-6-3)
Kevin Danaher, the internationally recognized co-founder of Global Exchange
and the Green Festivals, shows us how to become involved in this exciting area
of growth.

Building the Green Economy tells the stories of individual citizens, families, and
community groups that have achieved unlikely victories in the fight to bring
environmental sustainability and economic fairness to such vital areas as water
management, food, toxics, urban renewal, clean energy, and local politics.
Taken together, these stories illustrate and define challenges and opportunities
facing those who choose to join the local green economy movement.

Danaher and his co-authors, Shannon Biggs and Jason Mark, explain why these
efforts are so important and describe the forces that frequently gather to defeat
them. They provide strategies for leveraging existing resources and networks into
economic and political success at the local level. The book concludes with an
essay on where the movement should go from here and a list of useful resources
and strategies for green activists.

This is a book for Green activists, entrepreneurs and the millions of people
interested in applying the principles of environmental sustainability to their
lives and work.

Dr. Kevin Danaher has been described by The New York Times as the “Paul
Revere of globalization’s woes,” He is co-founder of Global Exchange in San
Francisco. He has appeared on television and radio nationally in support of
environmental sustainability and economic fairness. Shannon Biggs is director
of the Local Green Economy program at Global Exchange. Jason Mark edits
the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal and manages San Francisco’s
largest urban farm.