What’s an Eco Baron?  It’s sort of like a robber baron, only way cooler.  Here’s how Ed Humes describes them:

In an era in which government has been either broke, indifferent or actively hostile to environmental causes, a band of visionaries — inventors, philanthropists, philosophers, grassroots activists, lawyers and gadflies — are using their wealth, their energy, their celebrity and their knowledge of law and science to persuade, and sometimes force, the United States and the world to take a new direction …

Hume’s book Eco Barons is about visionaries, men and women who look at our planet in peril and act.  They are “writing the next chapter in the story, and theirs is a message of hope:  The world can be saved,” Humes writes.

The men and women described in Eco Barons range from controversial to mainstream; from rich to poor, from celebrities to obscure unknowns.  But they all have one thing in common – they have seen environmental devastation and are acting to prevent it.  Doug Tompkins began to buy up the rainforests of southern Chile in order to preserve them from deforestation; Kierán Suckling and Peter Galvin began using the Endangered Species Act to protect the forests of the American southwest and went on to found the Center for Biological Diversity; single mom Carole Allen has spent her entire life working to save the endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle; Roxanne Quimby, who started Burt’s Bees, has used her fortune to preserve the Maine woods.  And then there is Andrew Frank, who has championed electric cars for decades; Terry Tamminen, promoter of California's Global Warming Solutions Act, one the nation's most comprehensive environmental laws; and Ted Turner who, well, has lots of money and uses it to do good things.

Despite its inherent flaw – there are way more Eco Barons than Humes could ever describe, and therefore he leaves out too many of them  – it is a wonderful book, an easy read, a hopeful script about what people are doing, what can be done, to protect the planet.  It is also an optimistic and timely reminder that individuals can make a difference.  These folks have.  So, you can too.