Includes bibliographical references and index.

An Introduction to Practical Environmentalism and the Four Pillars A Short History of Environmentalism in the United States The Ethics of Environmentalism Issue-Driven Environmentalism Process-Based Environmentalism Regulatory Environmentalism Protest Environmentalism Perspective-Based Environmentalism The Nonbeliever The Live Earth Spaceship Earth Back to Nature Doomsday Anticonsumption Cornucopia The Confounding Factors Competing Objectives Uncertainty Measures of Success Fallacy of Prediction Assumption of Future States The Problem with Percentages History of Paranoia Crisis Mentality Environmental Degradation--The First Pillar Resource Conservation--The Second Pillar The "Human" Pillars of Economic Progress and Personal Benefit Economic Progress Personal Benefit Scoring with the Pillars--A Few Simple Examples to Illustrate the Method The Pillars in Daily Life The Pillars and the Really Big Issues More Really Big Issues--The Sacrificial Ones The Pillars and Global Warming Other Measures of Environmental Performance Carbon Footprint Carrying Capacity Life-Cycle Costing Government and Scientific Reports Green Accounting--ISEW (Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare) Simple Monetary Economics Some Final Thoughts Index Most chapters include references.

Drawing on some 20 years of professional engineering experience, resource conservation engineer Weldon (PepsiCo, Cedar Rapids, Iowa) introduces readers to a valuable tool for improving their daily interactions with the environment. Written for activists, policymakers, researchers, resource managers, government agencies, and students, the text opens with an overview of practical environmentalism and its four main components--environmental degradation, resource conservation, economic progress, and personal benefit--followed by a concise history of environmentalism in the US, environmentalism ethics, and elements that make environmental decision making difficult. Subsequent chapters explain each of the components in detail, including their combination into a holistic metric to guide environmental actions. Using real-world examples, Weldon demonstrates use of the metric to conduct practical and meaningful analyses of environmental issues and actions, both the individual and large scale.