DESIGN FOR A LIVABLE PLANET How You Can Clean Up the Environment <i> by Jon Naar (Harper & Row: $25.95; 320 pp.) </i>

“Design for a Livable Planet” takes much more a reader’s approach than MacEachern’s family-friendly book. Jon Naar puts environmentalist efforts in a political and social context, sprinkling his chapters liberally with historical observations (“Drinking-water pollution is at least as old as the Roman Empire, when aqueducts were poisoned by lead leaching from the pipes”) and quotes (from Tom Lehrer’s song, “Pollution”: “You can use the latest toothpaste, then rinse your mouth with industrial waste”). The book is filled with ideas for practical change on the individual level, but Naar really wants to drive home the point that the protection of the planet is too important to be left to bureaucracies, corporations and government agencies. To this end, he divides his book into issues and explains how the reader can use their Green consumer power and join existing grass-roots groups intent on influencing public policy.