“What Can I Do?” is the question most of us ask when we hear about the growing number of problems that the Earth faces, many of which are exacerbated by human activity. I know I did. I felt overwhelmed, so I shrugged my shoulders and carried on, business as usual.

Then one day, my husband Roger Payne, suggested that we work together on a performance piece to highlight the power of living sustainably. We first called it Lessons From Copernicus after Nicholas Copernicus, who in 1530 shocked all Europe by demonstrating that the sun didn’t revolve around the Earth, the earth revolved around the Sun—an early example of the unassailable power of truth to overcome even the most widely held belief.

Under its new name, SeaChange: Reversing the Tide, the performance uses science and poetry to examine the problems that face the earth, and the innovative and exciting solutions to those problems that are driving the new revolution in sustainability. In researching background material for the program I began to discover the wealth of information and ideas that were out there in the universe of the Internet. People are doing so many creative things to help restore the Earth, and yet, when I started to speak to friends about this wealth of ways to live in the world, no one seemed to know about them. So I decided to put together a book, compiling the many sites I had discovered which explore what humanity is doing to stress Earth’s systems, and the simple practical solutions available to all of us to relieve that stress. I decided that at each of our performances the book would be available for members of the audience, because I wanted them to walk away with something in their hands, a tool that could help assuage the natural feelings of helplessness which sometimes swell in our hearts when we hear about the complex issues that our program highlights. I wanted people to have something in their pocket, or by their computer—a guide to information that would help them find information on such things as healthy cleaning products, how to make their business practices and their home green, how to compost, what fish to eat, how to shop online in the world's biggest green mall, how their actions might affect global warming, as well as the low-down on compact fluorescent lighting, health issues, and why we should all be eating organic food.

Even as the book was published by Chelsea Green in September 2004, I was still finding new web sites that should have been in it, so I decided to create a website for all the new information I was discovering—a place to put all the of the sites with which my friends and colleagues were now filling my mailbox. And now, instead of collecting piles of notes, I have somewhere to put all the information they send, and hopefully that information will slowly start to change the way we all choose to live.