Home Ecology (aka Eco Living & more)
Home Ecology: Making Your World a Better Place was published in London when I was 31, with a 3-month-old baby and a toddler. The book was a surprise bestseller thanks to its being chosen one of Britain’s Top 20 Green Books in a national promotion sponsored by The Observer. You can see the time I was interviewed on national television while changing my baby’s nappy (diaper) – a truly terrible first media experience! You can read about the financial disaster I suffered as a result of threats from the law firm representing McDonalds in what became the infamous McLibel case, when the US hamburger chain McDonalds spent vast sums attacking UK environmentalists in a way that was impossible in the US.
The PDF eBook of the 1989 book is available free at Berkshire Publishing’s website. Click here to order at $0.00 by adding the eBook to your cart.
In addition to publishing on sustainability and running the Train Campaign in western Massachusetts (see our Climate March video), I’m now working on a relaunch of Home Ecology aka Eco Living aka The Armchair Environmentalist. This won’t be just a book, but the online guide I first imagined in the 1990s, along with a weekly Home Ecology edition of my Substack newsletter. My current tagline for it is “Preparing for climate change without losing our minds.” More coming very soon. Sign up at https://karenchristensen.substack.com/.
Here’s how I started Eco Living, published by Piatkus Books in 2000 (and mentioned in Judy Piatkus’s recent book Ahead of Her Time), with a foreword by Jonathon Porritt:
Most worthy authors of environmental books don’t realise how much most people have to think about: day-care, the company’s plan to relocate, finding a date, doing taxes. They bombard us with statistics and indigestible lists of advice, and mix good practical suggestions with completely nutty ideas (‘Write small so you use less paper’). They think we have endless time and money to devote to the cause. But in between figuring out how to afford a new suit or find time to go to the gym, we want to know where our choices can have the greatest environmental impact. And we want environmental thinking to contribute to a sense of well-being and balance in our lives, not to unhinge us altogether!
A few of the comments that have meant most to me:
The Armchair Environmentalist is filled with wisdom and Karen Christensen has incorporated more environmental advice in this crisp, tightly written volume than in anything I’ve seen.” —Lester R. Brown, founder of Worldwatch Institute
“Karen Christensen demonstrates how we can enrich our lives, have fun, and save money while dramatically reducing our ecological footprint.” —Denis Hayes, principal organizer of the first Earth Day
“We can make a difference – Karen Christensen shows us how.” —Anita Roddick OBE, founder of The Body Shop
Home Ecology Tips in English and Chinese
Our friend and colleague Catherine ZHOU kindly translated some introductory sections from Karen Christensen’s in-progress book Home Ecology. Versions of these tips were included in some of her previous books, and she is busy compiling [...]
Rio +20, World +20, Karen +20
2012 is a year of environmental anniversaries: 20 years since the first Rio Conference, 25 years since Our Common Future (known as the Brundtland Report) gave the world a definition of sustainability, and 50 years [...]
A wholesome loaf
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Cooking through a crisis
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Foraging & fiddleheads
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Where has the toilet paper gone?
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To Cook A Wolf – Baking with M F K Fisher
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Walking down Broadway at the Climate March
I'm not a fan of big crowds, and my activism generally starts with fingers on a keyboard, but there was no way I wasn't going to be in New York last Friday, the day of [...]
Don’t Call Me A Green Consumer
It was the early 1990s and “green” was going corporate. A book called The Green Consumer Guide had become a bestseller in the UK. I lived in London and my first book had just been [...]