{"id":10048,"date":"2011-01-21T14:26:31","date_gmt":"2011-01-21T20:26:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=10048"},"modified":"2017-09-19T20:15:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T00:15:07","slug":"bryan-welch-beautiful-and-abundant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/bryan-welch-beautiful-and-abundant\/","title":{"rendered":"Bryan Welch’s Beautiful and Abundant: a Positive Paradigm for Thinking about Sustainability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author’s note: <\/strong>More and more, I’m privileged with the opportunity (and challenge) of reviewing a book or other work by someone I’ve come to know; that’s the case with this review. Bryan is a friend, and someone I admire — those facts, no doubt, color my perception. I hope you’ll take the time to read <\/em>Beautiful and Abundant, and share your own thoughts… whether you agree with my opinions or not.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"BryanThough the “English professor” part of my “English professor turned green blogger” personal brand becomes a smaller and smaller part of the equation over time, it kicked in pretty early while reading Bryan Welch’s new book Beautiful and Abundant: Building the World We Want<\/a><\/em> <\/em>(affiliate link). No, I didn’t get the red pen out to correct grammar (no need); before finishing the first one hundred pages, though, I did start to think of Bryan’s main argument in terms of grammatical structures (and bear with me here… no lessons on participial phrases or pronoun reference coming). So many of the points we environmentalists (as well as our opponents in debate) try to advance take on an “If…then” structure: think “If we don’t reduce carbon emissions, then we’re heading for catastrophe (or “If we do reduce carbon emissions, then we’ll kill the economy”).<\/p>\n

While Bryan’s book covers a wide range of topics and issues, he argues overall for a “both… and” approach to thinking about sustainability: human beings are both “unique and brilliant creatures” and a part of the larger natural order. Facing challenges requires both reason\u00a0and imagination. And we can create ways of living that both lighten our impact on the planet and\u00a0create beauty and abundance.
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Bryan Welch: Publisher, Rancher, Dreamer<\/h2>\n

Bryan’s in a unique position to deliver such a message, as he’s the publisher of Ogden Publications<\/a> (which owns titles such as Mother Earth News<\/a><\/em>, Natural Home<\/a><\/em>, and Utne Reade<\/a>r<\/em>), and a small farmer and rancher: his family’s 50-acre Rancho\u00a0Cappuccino<\/a> homestead sits a few miles outside of Lawrence, Kansas. These two roles create tensions that might make the typical ideologue’s head explode: as a publishing executive of many “green” magazines, he logs a lot of flight miles. As a rancher concerned about animal welfare, he works to create a humane, natural setting for the goats, cattle, and sheep he raises… before sending them to slaughter. And as a business person concerned with making a profit for his investors, he realizes that some of the challenges we need to face — population growth particularly — present real impediments to economic growth (which he argues we also need).<\/p>\n

\"Bryan
Bryan with his donkeys at Rancho Cappuccino<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Those of us most convinced of the rightness of our convictions and choices might be tempted to point fingers, and start with the “if…then” criticisms involving carbon emissions, resource use, and even meat consumption (or forced family planning, economic stagnation, and traditional notions of progress). Bryan, however, uses his own life experiences, as well as data and information from experts such as Lester Brown, Wes Jackson, and Derrick Jensen, to argue for a different context for evaluating our actions. Drawing on the Quaker’s tradition of queries designed to “shape their daily behavior without blocking out people who don’t share all their beliefs,” he posits four queries that allow us to examine the impact and well-being created by our choices and actions:<\/p>\n