Australian transportation planner Paul Mees has good news for people who want real action on global warming -- good quality transit is within reach even in the suburbs. But they might have to participate in a revolt against something as reasonable sounding as "balanced transportation" first.

Transport of Suburbia: Beyond the Automobile Age includes a strong argument for public participation in transportation decision making. Mees claims that "citizens have a keener understanding of the need for change than transport planners, with environmental awareness particularly strong among younger residents."

Evo Morales, Bolivia's indigenous president, has said that the challenge of the 21st century is to respect and restore the rights of Mother Earth. And the stakes are high. Ultimately, the fate of our species -- and millions of others -- hangs in the balance.

Already, thousands of young people worldwide have woken up to their historic task, as the first decade of this century has seen the rise of the climate justice movement. For many among this new generation, the December 2009 UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen was a rude awakening.

Published since 1971, Alternatives is Canada's oldest environmental magazine. The current issue of the magazine celebrates the best in environmental reading. This week the book lounge is highlighting the Alternatives podcast which released their second annual books edition to complement the print issue.

Listen for interviews with contributors to the magazine about the latest trends in environmental books and recommended reads plus four of the leading voices advocating for Canada's transition to a green economy -- Alexander Wood, Keith Neuman, Marlo Raynolds, Tzeporah Berman -- invite Stephen Harper to read their environmental choices.

In 2009, just before the Copenhagen conference, some scientists working on climate change models at the University of East Anglia were exposed for proposing that some data should be concealed. The chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was then widely criticized for predicting the precise year that Himalayan glaciers will disappear without any peer-reviewed evidence.

As the world debates the climate crisis and it's solutions in Copenhagen, Albertans are being asked to take command of their own contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. In his new book, Green Oil, Satya Das believes Albertans need to take charge of their own backyard. Green Oil asserts that Albertans can take the tar sands and develop them in a sustainable manner while generating profit to dedicate to green energy alternatives.

All of us with an interest in the health of our natural environment have at some point felt the symptoms of "green fatigue." Green fatigue describes that burned-out feeling that results from the amount of effort needed to understand how to live a (more) responsible life. It is a confusing world to make sense of.

One day we read an article that says buy local, the next day a radio special talks about how buying local in northern climates is more energy intensive because of the heating of greenhouses in the colder months, and therefore worse than certain importing. One website says don't idle, another says turning a truck off then on again uses more fuel than idling for 30 minutes. Paper/plastic? Local/organic? Hybrid/low-emission?

It's a depressing task to monitor the state of the world's environmental degradation and track pending threats to the ability of our planet to sustain life. But the folks at the Worldwatch Institute, an independent environmental think-tank based in Washington, D.C., have been keeping their chins up and braving the job since 1975.

Their yearly State of the World reports are translated into over 20 languages and look at such things as the safeguarding of freshwater ecosystems, natural disasters and their relationship to peacemaking, the nanotechnology industry, and the global meat industry.

The focus of this year's collection is on China and India's twin rise in the global economy and the expected impact on global sustainability.