Book Review: "Blue Planet Run–The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World"

“Required reading” gets thrown out a lot in environmental circles—in all reading circles for that matter. Any time anyone reads a book that moves them they declare to the world (read: anyone who will listen) that book X “should be required reading”. The problem is, if you do it too often people stop listening, ie.“The Boy Who Cried Wolf (should be required reading).

So I am here to clean my slate of the books I have declared in the past that should be required reading. Wipe “Rule of the Bone”, “The Lorax”, “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train”, “Black Elk Speaks”, “In Defense of Food”, and “A Walk in the Woods” off the list. And replace them with the book that won the Independent Publishers Award for the book “Most Likely to Save the Planet”…

…BLUE PLANET RUN: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World

In order for a book to appeal to the masses (as “required reading” should) I feel it should:
a) move you
b) change your lifestyle—for the better of course
c) be visually appealing (the masses like pictures)
d) and most importantly, make you want to share it with others while causing you to deal with the inner turmoil of not wanting to share it with anyone because you want it forever in your presence (maybe I just have sharing issues).

Blue Planet Run is all that–and much more…


Blue Planet Run began (as its name suggests) as a run that would circumnavigate the planet to raise awareness of, and funds for, the worldwide freshwater crisis.

Founder Jin Zindell began the Blue Planet Run Foundation with the goal of providing safe drinking water to 200 million people by 2027. The mission statement of the foundation is to:

Create global awareness of the world’s safe drinking water crisis, and mobilize citizens of the world to solve the problem, today.

The Blue Planet Run book builds on the hope and energy of the run. The book is not what naysayers may call another environmental “gloom and doom” book. I’m an optimist and I too, avoid such books. This book, although filled with its fair share of doom and gloom (facts are facts), focuses on the hope and technology of the present and future in order to make the situation better. When you consider the effect that pollution and worldwide droughts are having on our fresh water supply, and the fact that 1.8 billion children die each year from preventable waterborne diseases, it is reassuring to discover in the pages of this book that Jin is not alone in his quest to solve the word’s water crisis.

The book is a thing of beauty. The photography of authors Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt will open as many eyes to the water cirisis as the facts that accompany the images. Throw in brilliant essays by leading experts like Bill McKibben, Diane Ackerman, and Paul Hawken and charts, graphs, and statistics that are as shocking as they are motivating and you have a book that, as the Independent Publishers stated, just may “save the planet”.

Going forward, I will be contributing regularly to Planetsave (Wednesdays) to individually address water issues. I will be offering further insight into many of the topics brought up in the book, so while I prepare for next week’s article, go out and buy Blue Planet Run (author’s note: I do not work for Blue Planet Run–although I’d LOVE to!, I just don’t want to share my copy).

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