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.