Eight Reasons Our Changing World Will Turn You Into an Environmentalist, Like It or Not

Many of the bigger challenges we will be forced to address in the 21st century have major environmental implications. On many of these issues, there are opportunities to choose more sustainable and ecologically friendly ways of life. For example, if, as experts warn, that oil demand will soon outstrip our available, dwindling supply, then our petro-dependent society will change along with it. It's a chance to pursue cleaner and more efficient methods of using energy -- switching from cars to public transport, and going from oil to solar and wind.

AlterNet picked eight topics -- water, global warming, food, health, energy, pollution, consumption and corporations -- that pose real dangers to the future of human life and selected a series of recent essays that illustrate these problems, along with links to organizations and further resources that address these issues. (Please use the comment section to share other articles and resources on these issues. )

1. Water

The world is quickly running out of freshwater. Thanks to global warming, pollution, population growth, and privatization, we are teetering on the edge of a global crisis, AlterNet editor Tara Lohan writes in "Our Drinkable Water Supply Is Vanishing." While many point to techno-fixes like desalination as a solution, Scott Thill debunks that myth in "Will the World's Oceans Be Our Next Drinking Tap?" Thill writes that although desalination plants are popping up all over the world, they may very well make the environmental crisis worse. It's not all bad news, though. A growing movement is helping take on part of the problem -- corporate control. In "The Bottled Water Backlash," Michael Blanding explains how the bottled water industry is on the defensive as restaurant owners and cities are canceling their bottled water contracts and advocating for tap.

To find out more about what you can do to turn this crisis around visit:

• Food and Water Watch
• Polaris Institute
• International Rivers

2. Global Warming

The effects of our planet's rising temperature is liable to wreak havoc on the environment, the economy and communities. How close are we to the precipice? Steve Connor lays it all out in his article "Global Warming: Nine Things that Will Put us Over the Edge," which identifies what scientists see as the most pressing "tipping points." As people have begun to wake up to the reality, we've some good and some not-so-good plans for tackling the problem. One of the most popular has been carbo offset. But are they really all they're cracked up to be? In "The Great Carbon Con: Can Offsetting Really Help Save the Planet?" Sophie Morris explains how celebrities and politicians are falling over each other to advocate plant-a-tree conservationism as a salve to global warming, but it falls far short of what we need. So what do we need? A movement for change. In his story "Is the World Making Progress on Fighting Global Warming?" Tom Athanasiou writes about the latest attempts at international negotiations and what we need to accomplish in the next two years.

Here are some organizations with solutions that are being put into practice.

• 350.org (formerly Bill McKibben's group Step It Up)
• Green for All
• 1 Sky

3. Food

The rising cost of food -- especially staples like rice, corn and wheat -- as a result of soaring energy prices, the rise of the biofuel industry and growing demand as a result of population growth is leading to food shortages across the planet. The agribusiness model of raising livestock is also a major contributor to greenhouse gases. In "Face It, We All Aren't Going to Become Vegetarians," George Monbiot argues it's better for the planet to avoid eating meat, but the reality is we have to make it more sustainable for people who don't want to be vegetarians. Amy Goodman's recent interview with author and activist Raj Patel explores the dangerous implications of letting corporations control the world's food supply.