Northwest Environment Watch
Seattle, WA

General Support

Human ways of life are out of balance with the Earth's ability to sustain life. Our species now uses or degrades one-fourth of the plant matter that grows on Earth each year, along with one-third of the fresh water that flows through inhabited regions. By some accounts, it would take four planets to support the Earth's population at US levels of consumption.

Sustainable development--progress that comes without lasting harm to life on Earth--is the defining challenge for the present generation, and people everywhere are struggling to implement it. Credible evidence of the costs of business as usual and the benefits of sustainability can make all the difference in policy debates and, ultimately, in shaping the values that drive society.

Founded in 1993, NEW conducts action-oriented policy research and publishes its findings each year in short books, which it distributes to thousands of concerned citizens, elected officials, community leaders, educators, and journalists, arming them with authoritative and provocative information about how to achieve sustainable development. NEW also distributes its findings through additional channels, including lectures, articles, and other publications.

NEW's publications include:

The Car and the City (April 1996) is a fascinating conversation with people who are quietly, but radically, rearranging the furniture of the modern city.

Stuff :The Secret Lives of Everyday Things (January 1997) takes you to the places and people you touch every day- -when you sip your coffee, tie your shoes, click your mouse, or step on the gas.

Tax Shift: How to Help the Economy, Improve the Environment, and Get the Tax Man off Our Backs (April 1998) argues that we tax the wrong things--things we want, like paychecks and business-and suggests that we should tax instead the things we don't want, like pollution and gridlock.

The Seven Sustainable Wonders of the World (forthcoming, November 1998) again looks at everyday things, but this time, things that can move us toward a sustainable way of life instead of away from it.