We are facing the most challenging race of our time, an environmental race, with our place on this planet at stake. We are currently on a seesaw, balanced between changes in the Earth's natural system and changes in the world's political systems. Which will tip first? Will we sink with the melting of the Greenland ice sheet? Or will we hunker down, as people and governments conserve and take action quickly enough to avoid it?

The choice is ours, yours and mine. Our generation will make the decisions that will affect life on Earth for all the generations to come. We can stay with business-as-usual and not change our behavior or we can work together to craft a plan that will move the world onto a new path to sustainable progress.

What's the first step? I think it is people getting informed. A good example is Rachel Carson's book, "Silent Spring." It was published in 1962 and changed the way we looked at the natural world, informing a generation. It spoke of the connection between nature and the devastation mankind can wreak out of ignorance. She made a tremendous difference in the banning of DDT, a widely used chemical that threatened to permanently silence birds across the nation, the harbingers of spring (http://www.nrdc.org/health/pesticides/hcarson.asp).

With this in mind, The Ojai Valley Green Coalition, the Ojai Valley Library Friends and Foundation, the Ojai Library and Local Hero Books have come together to host a joint reading and learning project called "Ojai Reads."

The reading event will culminate this year in a panel and community discussion at the Ojai Library on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

The first book is Lester Brown's "Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization." In this updated edition, Brown, a MacArthur Fellow and president of the Earth Policy Institute, outlines his version of a positive environmental strategy.

The centerpiece of "Plan B 3.0" is cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by 2020. This plan involves harnessing new energy sources, including wind, solar and geothermal, a full-court press to raise energy efficiency worldwide, and shutting down coal-fired power plants. In the first 130 pages, he reviews various looming environmental challenges we must face globally and the remainder of the book is Brown's plan to respond to these challenges.

He offers hope by calling for a nationwide mobilization, like the World War II mobilization after the attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a great opportunity for economic growth in renewable energy development and energy conservation.

The book is available for a discounted price at Local Hero, 208 E. Ojai Ave., Ojai, or you can download it for free at the Web address: http://earthpolicy.org/Books/PB3/Contents.htm.

— Kale Starbird, a resident of Ojai, is a sign painter, pastel artist and grandmother who is concerned about the legacy she passes to her granddaughter.