Ellen LaConte - Life Rules: Natures Blueprint for Surviving Economic and Environmental Collapse

Praise for Life Rules

Ellen LaConte convincingly uses AIDS as a metaphor for the compounding impacts of climate change, peak oil, water and topsoil depletion, overpopulation and economic collapse a critical mass of problems currently overwhelming the immune system of the planet. Only another critical mass this one of informed behavior changes toward conservation and localization can reverse the progress of the disease. This book succeeds in being both comprehensive and inspiring in its diagnosis and prescription.

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow, Post Carbon Institute, author of The End of Growth and Peak Everything

If you read just one book about the sickness that threatens the Earth, you cannot choose better than this one. In eminently readable style and with memorable images, LaConte diagnoses the disease and proposes promising responses. She finds seeds of hope without obscuring the imminence of catastrophe. Her message needs to reach a mass audience.

John B. Cobb, Jr., Professor Emeritus, Claremont School of Theology, author of Sustainability: Economics, Ecology & Justice (with Herman Daly) and For the Common Good

In the world as it operates today, even the most serious politicians persist in pontificating about matters future history will show were irrelevancies and distractions. If there were someone with authority to require all candidates for high public office to read certain books in preparation for the responsibilities they aspire to undertake, Ellen LaContes Life Rules should be high on the list of urgently required reading.

William R. Catton, Jr., author of Overshoot and Bottleneck

There are no easy answers to the present challenge of overcoming the obstacles to the survival of our species, but LaContes book offers the wisdom we need to face up to it.

James Robertson, Founder, TOES and The New Economics Foundation, author of Future Money, Future Work and Future Wealth

Ellen LaConte is the steward of the kind of holistic mind that we humans were born into but that, amid the myriad fragmentations of mass global society, so many have lost. She applies her elastic intelligence to the most important topic we face: the destruction of life and the means by which we may survive. Life Rules is a tour de force and a book to carry with you in the years to come.

Chellis Glendinning, author of Off the Map: An Exploration into Empire and the Global Economy

Elegant and eloquent an important work.

Derrick Jensen, author of Endgame, A Language Older than Words and Deep Green Resistance (with Aric McBay and Lierre Keith)

It is the genius of this book that its hard-hitting diagnosis of our global crisis provides the groundwork for its prescription. What we can and must do for the survival of complex life-forms shines ever clearer, as we follow Ellen LaContes invigorating portrayal of lifes systemic principles. Crackling with intelligence and verve, Life Rules immediately became required reading among colleagues in the Work That Reconnects.

Joanna Macy, author,
Active Hope: How to Face the Mess Were in Without Going Crazy

I am SO enjoying every word of Life Rules and learning from you. You are carrying the ball now! I will tell many about it and wish you a wonderful new year from my paradise on Mallorca.

Elisabet Sahtouris, evolution biologist, author of EarthDance, A Walk Through Time and Biology Revisioned (with Willis Harmon)

Its as if LaConte googled the worlds environmental and economic woes and distilled them down into a construct that we can all easily understand and digest. Critical reading for anyone who cares enough about our planet to try to save it.

Miles Frieden, Director, Key West Literary Seminar

A very valuable and important book. I will gladly recommend it to colleagues in the Great Work. It anticipates readers questions and makes the vast complex of present problems comprehensible.

Herman Greene, Director, The Center for Ecozoic Studies, publisher of The Ecozoic

Wonderful summary of whats wrong and what we need to do, not just economically and ecologically, but also politically. The logic is very persuasive. By the time I put down the book, I was laughing at myself for ever thinking that broad national or global policies would be any use in getting us out of this mess.

Edmund Terry Fowler, author of From Galileo to the Greens: Our Escape From Mechanical Thinking and Building Cities That Work

While Deep Ecologists explore ways humans can break through to a new level of consciousness in harmony with life, LaConte offers us a compelling reason to provide for ourselves in ways that mimic life: our survival as a species on a livable planet. In a critically challenged world, sustainable means not just Earth-friendly but also lifelike. A very important attempt to wake us up before our global economy puts us and life as we know it as well as itself out of business.

John Seed, Founder/Director, Rainforest Information Network, co-author of Thinking Like a Mountain: Toward a Council of All Beings

Looking back with more than seventy years of experience, Im of the opinion that LaContes conception of democracy, as both characteristic of living systems and the ultimate objective of humanitys political enterprise, is the most inspired and comprehensive I am aware of.

Lloyd P. Wells, co-founder, The Center for Consensual Democracy, author of Recreating Democracy: Breathing New Life into American Communities

Life Rules brings fresh clarity and urgency to the serious, complex and interrelated issues and crises that we face as a species to either evolve or perish. Any faith unexamined means another life, another generation, unlived. This book examines those value systems and beliefs that have brought on what some see as the End Time, and offers alternative ways of being and doing that can help our species not only survive, but also evolve. As Albert Schweitzer advised, Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.

Dr. Michael W. Fox, veterinarian, author of Bring Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society

There are many books that focus on one aspect of the ecological problems that mankind is generating, but it is rare to find a book like Life Rules that looks at the whole picture. It is a sobering read, and leads to the conclusion that there is a systemic problem in our treatment of Gaia that can justly be compared to a disease process. The current individualistic paradigm can be summed up as Blow you, Jack, Im all right. Paradigms can change, and Ellen LaConte shows in which direction our present mind-set should move if humanity and Gaia are to recover from the present disease.

Dr. Richard Lawson, Parliamentary candidate, Green Party UK

This is not just one more cultural, economic and ecological Jeremiad. Rather, LaConte accomplishes a brilliant synthesis of the work of visionary economists, environmentalists and social critics alike. Shes done our homework for us. But shes much more than an artful synthesizer of others work. Her perspective, big picture observations, guiding metaphors and incisive, scrappy prose are all her own. She deftly manages to speak to young people and scholars with equal clarity and force. She tells it like it is, but never leaves us feeling helpless. Its rare to find a book that tells the dark truth about our current human and planetary condition while simultaneously motivating us to re-think, re-act and step toward the light. This book does.

Rebecca Kneale Gould, Associate Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies, Middlebury College, author of At Home in Nature

Life Rules