ECOSHIFT: Transforming the Relation of Humanity to Earth

Your web browser should show the Table of Contents for ECOSHIFT on the left side of a window and this text on the right side. If not, go to www.ecoshift.net.

Humanity now requires more from the Earth than Earth can supply. We finally seem to be waking up to the fact that our impact on the Earth cannot be sustained. This book describes a multi-faceted grassroots movement that seeks to promote changes from a global consumer culture to a sustainable Earth community and from an anthropocentric to an ecocentric world-view. Browsing or reading through ECOSHIFT will help you to realize the breadth and depth of the movement, will help you to joyfully modify the way you live, will make you feel that you are not alone in your practices, concerns, and beliefs, and will help change the relationship of humanity to the natural world.

The following graphic shows some of the directions, practices, and beliefs of the movement, and suggests that they all overlap and interlink. Some of these terms are titles of chapters in ECOSHIFT.

ECOSHIFT contains three styles of text:

• Normal text represents the knowledge and writings of others.
• Italic text indicates my own opinions where they may not be widely accepted or stated.

• Boxes are used to describe my personal practices and actions for illustrative purposes.

Full caps "ECOSHIFT" is used to refer to this book itself, whereas "Ecoshift" is used for the paradigm shift and the movement for change.

Initially much of ECOSHIFT's content will be that of my former web site "TF's Ecocentric Pages", which are hereby subsumed into ECOSHIFT. As energy or inclination allow, I will work on fleshing out and updating the material. Progress may be intermittent and the book will never be "completed". Chapters (web pages) marked have been rewritten for ECOSHIFT; others remain essentially unchanged from TF's Ecocentric Pages.

The page Tips for Reading and Printing gives some pointers to make reading and printing this web-based book easier.

The term "ecoshift" is already in use for a type of gear shift for vehicles, for a lawn sprinkler, for a card in a game, for a music group, and as a personal e-mail name, so Google finds thousands of web pages that use it . The web domain ecoshift.com has been parked. Fortunately for me the domain ecoshift.net was available.

Bruce Bassett plans to develop a web site at www.ecoshift.org , which "aims to become a roadmap to personal change in a time of growing ecological concern".

ECOSHIFT will benefit from feedback about subject areas and about formatting.
Please e-mail comments to me at

On to the first chapter - Introduction: Why ECOSHIFT?