writeaboutwarming

July 30, 2017 - Before I begin, let me mention that Jonnie Hyde is a member of the writing group I belong to, here in Vancouver, Wa. I took a stab at writing a novel about climate change awhile back; it wasn't very good, and subsequently went nowhere. Irrevocable Acts , on the other hand, is deserving of attention. The beginning of Hyde's book is, perhaps, its only weak point: it's a bit confusing. All becomes clear as the book unfolds, and the characters are interesting, so there's no question of remaining involved. The characters hold your focus because they live their lives differently from most, yet the Sanders are a family, with three generations living under one roof: Anna, Kate, and Gracie. That family begins to unravel when the matriarch, Anna, decides she must embark, finally, on the life she was meant to live. Anna, Danny Shepard, and Mac Caffrey have been friends most of their lives. Products of Berkeley at a time when the name Berkeley was believed to m...

January 15, 2014 – BOOK REVIEW: Enough is Enough, by Rob Dietz & Dan O’Neill. I won’t keep you in suspense: it’s a fascinating book.   Dietz & O’Neill make the subject of a steady-state economy both terribly interesting and accessible.   As it ought to be; there’s really nothing terribly complicated about it.   Take, for instance, their definition of a steady-state economy, which begins “… a steady-state economy is an economy that aims to maintain a stable level of resource consumption and a stable population. It’s an economy in which material and energy use are kept within ecological limits, and in which the goal of increasing GDP is replaced by the goal of improving quality of life.” Because the information contained in the book isn’t hard to understand does not mean that establishing a steady-state economy will be an easy thing to do.   Oddly enough, climate change could be helpful in this regard.   Maintaining a constant stock of bu...

The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change is Al Gore’s twelfth book, his fourth since having lost the presidential election of 2000.   I guess I always knew the former vice president was a pretty smart guy, but his burst of productivity since that epochal event has surprised both cynics and supporters, I suspect.    An academy award and the Nobel Peace Prize - in the same year, no less?   A fortune valued at $300 million, grown from $2 million in 2000?   Co-founder of Generation Investment Management and Chairman of the Climate Reality Project?     To re-iterate: four books? DIVORCED FROM TIPPER?? Talk about your late bloomer!   Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised by The Future , but I do think it stands apart from his previous work.   Where Gore seems   to have “toned down” his prior attempts at impressing his audience with the seriousness of climate change (I am purposely avoiding use of the term “dumbed down,” because I...

November 8, 2010 - I’ve been waiting for this one, and Jonathan Bloom has finally written it - a new book called American Wasteland: How America Throws Away Nearly Half of its Food. Don’t worry: no one’s going to lecture you about children in Haiti starving. This might be a very good time, though, to give thoughtful attention to the adage “Waste not, want not.” It all has to do with the human tendency to disregard that which is plentiful. Funny, isn’t it? We worry constantly about the lack of time, but steadfastly believe that food will always be there when we’re hungry – or even if we’re not. To all appearances, we have the food to waste, if that’s what we want to do with it. There’s a vague sensation that this might be wrong, but with each meal relentlessly pressing down on us, who has the time to worry about matters like portion sizes, buying unusable quantities in the name of variety, and forgetting what we still have back home in the fridge? If the head cook works ou...

August 30, 2010 - BOOK REVIEW. A Nation of Farmers , by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton. 2009. Gabriola Island : New Society Publishers. This is a terribly important book, packed with information. Its co-authors take turns writing chapters, and while their styles are – as you would expect – a bit different, the difference isn’t great enough to be jarring. Sad to say, the book is poorly edited. That’s nothing new anymore, but the missing words, wrong forms of the right words (i.e., considerable/considerate), and general lack of understanding with regard to the need for punctuation can all be distracting. That having been said, the authors have created a book which will serve as an important reference in times to come. Their observations are gleaned from lives spent gardening and/or farming. Among them, the observation that 2,000 acres farmed by 500 individuals yields a great deal more than 2,000 acres farmed by one individual – or corporation. My own observation: people who fa...

October 26, 2009 – I’d like to review a very important book today. Brown, Lester. Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 2009. Before I do, allow me to correct a misstatement in a previous article. I believe I erroneously referred to Brown as one of the “unsung” heroes of the environmental movement. That, as it turns out, is rather far left of the truth. I’ll quote directly from the dust jacket of this book: “Lester R. Brown is the president of Earth Policy Institute, an organization dedicated to building a sustainable future. Described by the Washington Post as ‘one of the world’s most influential thinkers,’ Brown started his career as a tomato farmer. Shortly after earning a degree in agricultural science, he spent six months living in rural India, where he became intimately familiar with the food/population issue. Brown later became head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s International Agricultural Development Service. In 1974, he fo...

BOOK   REVIEW Ecological Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman.   Broadway Books: New York.   2009. I’ve read Goleman’s two other “intelligence” books, Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, found them both to offer a new way of looking at an old subject, and thought I would give his latest issue in the series a read.   While emotional and social intelligence would be considered inherent gifts or traits that we all possess to some degree, ecological intelligence differs from the other two in that it is an ability the author says we all need to develop in ourselves.   Because it is our natural inclination to follow the path of least resistance – i.e., use the product most readily available instead of first determining which product has the smallest carbon footprint - developing ecological intelligence takes extra effort.   Goleman’s book explains why the extra effort is worth it. Because businesses and the products they make are major playe...