Author: Richard Heinberg
By Clairview Books

A warning., 2008-03-24
This book is rather depressing and alarming in it's outlook, but maybe this is just what we need. We have to face facts.

Richard Heinberg has gathered evidence from a variety of sources to paint a picture of the future if we continue to use and aim to use non-renewable energy sources. The theory is, and it is a theory that is backed up by most experts, that these sources of energy will become far rarer in the future. This will have economic consequences (ie a major downturn over time) as well as geopolitical (ie more resource-based wars). We are already seeing this played out now (oil price shooting up, Iraq etc).

The outlook is gloomy.

Thinking more positively for a second, the book has a great section on the pros and cons of various alternative sources of energy (eg wind/solar etc), and a guess of how the future would look if we took the sensible option. This future is much simpler, and it may not appeal to some, but although not as economically rich as now, perhaps it will be spiritually happier. I believe so.

The book also has a very interesting opening on how we have used energy in the past, all the way up to this oil age.

Although clearly not meaning to be a book about the link between fossil fuel use and global warming (there are other depressing books about that!), I think Richard Heinberg could have included a separate, small section, just to give added impetus to the movement towards renewable sources of energy.

I would also have liked to read even more about why current governments do not make the move to renewables (cost, links with oil/car industry, lobbying etc) - just to see the forces we're up against.

Overall, a great book.

Author: Rob Hopkins
By Green Books

Enabling, 2008-07-01
Hooray. Despite some people's misgivings about the psychology section, which seem largely dependent on a definition of 'success', this is an outstanding book. It's primary achievement is to show the reader how societal change can take place in the absence of the usual too little too late response of governments, whose priorities lie with business, rather than people or environmental sustainability. The future security of Britain, and elsewhere, lies in groups of people with the will and power to make communities sustainable. It might seem unbelievable, but we have the power to transform our society, and are not at the whim of government. They will follow. If you admire Kohr, Schumacher, Papworth and Sale, you will respond positively to this book.

Author: Christopher Starr
By The Crowood Press Ltd

A wood that pays is a wood that stays, 2007-08-30
An excellent book for students and landowners, it starts with a brief history of woodland in Britain, followed by a chapter on tree biology and sylvicultural systems which is comprehensive and written in refreshingly plain english. The native and commonly used non-native trees are then detailed followed by how to draw up a management plan, essential if you want grant aid. Then the nitty-gritty of planting, protecting, measurement and marketing.

This is a very practical book on managing woodlands as a whole, very sensitive to their wildlife and landscape value but stressing that woodlands that pay are more likely to last.

Author: George Monbiot
By Atlantic Books

One argument for reading this book, 2008-04-29
Thank heavens for George Monbiot. So much journalism is little more than cheap entertainment - celebrity twaddle, spoon-fed PR puffs and endlessly regurgitated versions of last weeks human interest or political scandal story.

Monbiot must irritate so many of his colleagues for showing what can be done, by finding out some interesting facts and putting them together for himself, in a logical and meaningful way.

If you want some insight into how the world really works, read this book, and his weekly columns.

Author: Alison Benjamin, Brian McCallum
By Guardian Newspapers Ltd

Unique, valuable, objective; a fantastically GOOD book, 2008-06-24
I read this wonderful book in one very long sitting; I really could not stop once I started. Having grown up surrounded, in my immediate family, by the 1950's acute nature-awareness of the early Soil Association days of Bob Waller and Harold Horne et al, it was like deja vu to me.
The authors have been very disciplined in producing a really worthwhile book; it is almost perfectly objective, and therefore above cheap criticism. They have worked immensely hard to source a huge amount of sound material, and they have taken the trouble to understand it thoroughly before using it in their book. And the mystery at issue is no less than how terrifyingly detached from truth we are becoming, and how little we now understand our own misery and poverty of life in the midst of all our illusion of ease; how deprived of reality we have already become.
Read it! In the morning, the evening, on the train, in the bath, but read it. It is more real than most other stuff you will find on printed paper or glowing on a monitor any day of the year.

Author: William McDonough, Michael Braungart
By Rodale Press

A manifesto for new consumer...., 2008-03-16
Cradle to Cradle is a manifesto for the new consumer - a mall-nirvana of non toxic products, endlessly `up-cycled' and replaceable; sustainability without the need to change our consuming habits.

Shrugging off alternative strategies as too dour and depressing, the authors put their faith in the belief that we can design our way out of the current predicament of toxic and crude products and create a virtuous circle of product creation, use and "up-cycling" to preserve precious resources and reduce our impact on the planet.

This is an appealing vision and one has to admire the work of co-authors Bill and Michael over many years in developing and testing their theory. But I was left more than a little disappointed as I realised not just the practical limits of their approach but also the philosophy that seemed to underlie their proposition.

This is a manifesto for accelerated consumerism, an evolutionary attempt to overcome the problems we have created through ignorance and myopia. At no point do the authors seem to question the wisdom of consumerism in a shrinking world or its instant appeal and ramifications for a global population of almost 7billion today and maybe 9 billion by 2050.

Maybe I was expecting too much, but even if every product complied with the cradle-to-cradle philosophy we would still be an awfully long way from a sustainable, let alone just world. I can't help but feel that even if the Cradle-to-Cradle philosophy was able to generate the abundance of endlessly re-cycled products it proposes, we will still require a more fundamental appraisal of why we want so much `stuff' we do not need in the first place, regardless of how it is designed and produced.

I am reminded of the Irish farmer's response to the request for directions from a lost tourist, "Well, if I was you, I wouldn't be starting out from here." Making existing product's more eco-friendly and efficient sounds a very worthy goal but maybe the first question we should be asking is, "Do we really need them in the first place?"

Author: David King, Gabrielle Walker
By Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

The ideal introduction, 2008-04-21
I've never read as much about global warming as I felt I should, put off by the obvious partisanship - pro or con - of almost everything in the press and recoiling from the green bandwagon that has become a fashion accessory. And then there was the problem of where to start... that same partisanship problem once again.
Now I have the answer: this book. As a clear, intelligent and, above all, measured introduction to global warning I doubt it can be bettered. It runs through the science, looks at the politics, discusses the technology and tries to be contructive about the way forward. My only criticism is that at times I was left wanting to know more - but that is to praise the authors's restraint knowing they were writing an introductory guide.
I picked up this book wanting something clear and unbiased that would help me organise my thoughts on global warming. That's exactly what I got.

Author: Carolyn Steel
By Chatto and Windus

It's not the despair - it's the hope..., 2008-06-15
Whatever its mercurial promise of bright lights, shared experiences and multicultural exoticism, the city can be an isolating place. However: everyone's got to eat - and therein lies the opportunity both for life-enhancing human engagement and for equally life-sapping process-led commercialism. Carolyn Steel's book, which interprets the city through food, highlights both the despair and the hope implicit in the idea of the city. By her clever tracing of food's journey from land to urban table and thence to sewer, Steel makes us reflect on past and present social satisfactions and injustices which our most basic human need can inspire.

Contrast the image of joyless contemporary supermarket shoppers - strip-lit lone prowlers debating forlornly with themselves about which highly packaged factory offering to microwave tonight - with the heady possibility of outdoor urban market-goers discussing food, tasting and learning. It's clear which one we'd all rather participate in, and yet Steel urges us not to be misty-eyed about the turn of the 21st century emerging market culture either. London's Borough Market is described as `food tourism' - laudable, but not affordable - a middle class aberration rather than a sustainable way of life for most of us. This typifies Steel's approach to her two-pronged subject: she is not afraid to slaughter sacred cows in her search for authenticity and meaning. This search takes her from London to the Middle East, from high flown ritual to domestic minutiae and from the mediaeval dining table to McDonalds without exhausting or overwhelming the reader.

As I read through Steel's journey, many similar food-inspired conflicts on the despair/hope axis spring to mind and make me feel at once revolutionary and impotent. Growing food locally could be such a positive collective activity, but the space to do it is scarce and prohibitively expensive. Selling and shopping for that food could rekindle the relationship between city dwellers and those who work the land, but the supermarket has become an unthinking way of life. Cooking and eating food are two of the few remaining ways in which urbanites can be hospitable, trusting and generous. But Steel's vivid descriptions of ancient cookshops and taverns offer a far richer vision of city-dwellers bawdily conversing over shared fare than Wagamama's ubiquitous but uneasy shared benches can ever do. Minimising waste is surely essential (and creative!) if we are to optimise increasingly meagre global resources. But as Steel points out, we currently throw away a shocking 30% of the food we buy. The massive reversals required in existing supply chains, educational priorities and even basic social interactions in the city are horribly daunting. One cannot but feel that a pan-national crisis will be the only possible trigger for a new, sustainable food market.

Steel's concluding chapter tenders myriad ideas, both utopian and pragmatic, about bottom up behavioural change and top down political leadership on food that might seek to avert such a crisis. Whilst her book is certainly a campaigning one, it is also realistic and discursive and not given to promulgating slick solutions to complex agricultural and societal problems. Potential readers will know that there are already a host of excellent polemics about contemporary food culture (Shopped, Fast Food Nation et al) and an equal canon about cities. What Carolyn Steel's book achieves is to bring these two axiomatic subjects together for the first time with a hugely enjoyable melee of academic care, passion and a jocular, accessible style. You feel like you would like to have her round for dinner to discuss further. And she would probably accept...

Author: Victoria Boutenko
By Raw Family Publishing,US

RAW this is good, 2008-02-22
Ive been a personal trainer for a while now and ive always questioned our so called correct nutrition, when i read this it made more sense then any textbook ive read and so now ive incorporated it into my diet, im not fully raw yet but i plan to be by end of year.
great read and insightful.
give this a read and it might just open your eyes or at least start the process.

Author: Mark Lynas
By HarperPerennial

Worrying.. .Very Convincingly Worrying, 2008-05-26
Yes, it's a book that forecasts apocalypse if we don't change our profligate ways, and we will all be consigned to an environmental hell for not taking our responsibilities as stewards of this planet seriously- and don't 'say that Mark Lynas did not warn you!!
Yeh, and if you would like to hide in the security blanket that this is just another 'green rant' then sorry folks - the issue itself will not go away, so give this book a read.
Why?
For start he bases his arguments by devoting a separate chapter to various scenarios, i.e. One Degree Warmer, Two Degrees and up to Six.
I would suggest to even the most casual of readers that by the time you get to 'Two Degrees' you will at least be thinking 'Oh dear' (and either become very worried or so annoyed that you start thinking up arguments as to why he is wrong- you hope).
That aside, it is a very gripping read as one travels from very worrying One Degree warmer to the Fearful Six Degrees.
And a very clear and concise account for the ordinary reader.
OK Mr Lynas is not 'qualified' but he has produced a very detailed work with a good amount of commentary based on the Earth's history. Yes, some might be hyperbole because the writer wants to get his point across. But that is not the issue...
This is....
Even if just one-quarter of what Mr Lynas asserts is true then we had better pay attention to how each of us is treating this planet and its resources. He has convinced me!!
One niggle I must agree with - the cover. A scorched desert bone strewn desert might have been more accurate.