Live Close to Home

This thoughtful third book (following Technology and Sustainability) in Denton’s trilogy about shaping a sustainable future tackles the seemingly impossible challenges of resource depletion, severe climate change, and humans’ increasing disconnection from the nurturing qualities of the natural world. Denton employs his background as an environmental advocate and ordained minister to explore responsible stewardship in the age of globalization. His gospel of living simply recalls Thoreau as he reminds readers that solutions to today’s obstacles can often be found in returning to simpler ways of living, and that many elders can still share this wisdom. Arguing that the arrangements for daily life must start from the place called home—for example, sourcing food and material goods within close proximity—he finds the global village concept an illusory one that works against society’s best interests, as people communicate digitally with distant individuals they’ll never meet but don’t speak with next-door neighbors. Denton provides plenty of good food for thought, but it remains unclear how ideas that would appear to work perfectly in a smaller, rural community can be translated into the large cities where most of the world’s population continues to survive. (Oct.)