An essay by John Wear, executive director of the Center for the Environment at Catawba College, will be published in the upcoming book Less is More: Embracing Simplicity for a Healthy Planet, a Caring Economy and Lasting Happiness.
New Society Publishers will officially release the book in September, but advance copies will be available at a dinner and book-signing scheduled at the Center for the Environment facility at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20.
Wear is one of 29 authors who appear in the book. His essay is called "Creating the Educational Foundations for Change."
Less is More, edited by Cecile Andrews, author of Circle of Simplicity and Slow is Beautiful, and Wanda Urbanska, author, and producer/host of "Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska," also includes essays by the editors.
"People are afraid and anxious," Andrews and Urbanska write. "We're destroying the planet, undermining happiness, and clinging to an unsustainable economy. Our obsessive pursuit of wealth isn't working.
"But there's another way. Less can be more. Throughout history wise people have argued that we need to live more simply – that only by limiting outer wealth can we have inner wealth."
The book features such notables as Bill McKibben, educator and author of numerous books, including The End of Nature; Duane Elgin, author and acclaimed proponent of voluntary simplicity; Juliet Schor, educator and author renowned for her research on trends in working time and leisure, work and family, women's issues and economic justice; and John de Graff, filmmaker who produced Escape from Affluenza, among other documentaries.
Wear is the founding director of the Center for the Environment and an associate professor of environmental science at Catawba College. During his tenure at Catawba, he assumed responsibility for establishing the college's Environmental Program, coordinating the faculty's creation of four different degrees.
Wear has been highly involved in a diverse array of environmental areas over the last 15 years, including land conservation, watershed protection and efforts to make communities and the built environment sustainable. He was named Conservationist of the Year by the Governor's Conservation Achievement Awards Program in 2003; "Guardian of the Earth" by The Charlotte Observer in 2002; and Green Builder of the Year in 2001 by the Carolina Recycling Association (the nation's largest recycling association). He holds a Ph.D. from Wake Forest University.
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