The last few years have seen an extraordinary surge of awareness about the state of Planet Earth. However, as Director of Friends of the Earth, Jonathon Porritt has seen just how slowly things are moving in practice. Despite the fact that solutions do exist and are running on a small scale in many places the political response in most countries has been totally inadequate. So why are these examples not being followed by governments and industry around the world? This book, published to accompany a six-part series on BBC 2, considers food and agriculture, energy and transport, work and industry, health and education, international relations, and politics and religion. In each case the problems are briefly described to put the issue in context and give a rough projection of what might happen if things continue as they are at present. The ecological aternative is then presented, focussing on actual examples of best practice taken from the United States, Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Germany, France, Costa Rica and the UK. The other side of the argument is provided by six dissenting experts who explain why they are sceptical or firmly opposed to these ideas and examples. Porritt answers their criticisms. Jonathon Porritt's most previous books are Seeing Green and The Coming of the Greens.