Jared Diamond "Collapse"

ISBN-13 978-0-140-27951-1. "Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive" by Jared Diamond was published by Penguin Books in 2006. This book is a hefty 575 pages long including Prologue, 16 Chapters, Acknowledgements, Further Reading list and Index. The paperback version doesn't seem that physically large until a brief flick through shows the tiny font and ultra-thin pages. This work is sprawling and you need that "War & Peace" moment before diving in. It is an epic. Heaven only knows how Diamond found the time to write it seeing as this is not his first book (his previous works include "The Third Chimpanzee", "Why is Sex Fun?" and "Guns, Germs and Steel"). However it is for "Collapse" that he has become best known. It is a reference that crops up again and again in recent books on sustainability. Everyone seems to name check this work. Such a reputation begs a read however hard, but was it worth it? Diamond is certainly the renaissance man, a Pulitzer Prize winner and (obviously) an extremely well travelled gentleman. Nominally he is a Professor of both Physiology, Geography AND Environmental Health Sciences at UCLA whilst apparently lecturing mostly on the topic this books covers - anthropology and ecosystem collapse. Beyond these multiple professional qualifications his work takes in linguistics, genetics, animal behaviour, ecology, evolution, molecular biology, etc, etc.

Diamond also has a command of no less than twelve languages and discovers rare birds in his spare time. Spare time? He appears to have lived more in one lifetime than most geniuses live in twenty. As indicated above, this is not always and easy book to read. One is immediately drawn to the conclusion that it would make an excellent mini-series on the National Geographic Channel. Which, bizarrely enough is practically what has happened. Diamond presented the National Geographic one-off documentary "Doomsday 2210" which aired in 2010. It was far easier to swallow however the book commands your attention. Doze off for a second or try and skim-read will leave you utterly lost. No doubt many copies simply don't get finished as readers lose the will to live. The societies dealt with are covered in such amazing detail that many of us mortals will be forgiven for thinking we have picked up the wrong book. Diamond does love to wander off topic a little here and there. The opening section on modern Montana is a case in point that the author even himself feels the need to defend its inclusion. It seems Diamond has spent a lot of time there and has many friends there. Oddly enough, he seems to have spent a lot of time everywhere and has lots of friends everywhere. Bizarrely he chooses to live in Los Angeles. So if you can stop your jaw from dropping to the floor and have a lot of patience then you will discover a treatise about the actual or threatened collapse of Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, Henderson Islands, the Anasazi people of Chaco Canyon, the Mayans, Iceland, the Norse in Greenland, Rwanda, Haiti, China, Australia and if that wasn't enough he mentions a further nine in the "Further Readings" section at the back. In comparison we get to see how human society has prospered in places like the Dominican Republic, New Guinea, Tikopia, Tokugawa and Japan whilst the last 110 pages covers "Practical Lessons". Phew!

So what lesson does this book choose to teach us? This is not the first book on why societies collapse and no doubt it will not be the last. We have already had the likes of John Michael Greer's "The Long Descent" and Joseph Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies". Of course Diamond does not contend that ecological collapse is behind all of the historical cases. Instead he lists his "five-point framework" which are: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbours, friendly trading partners and how a society reacts to environmental problems. Obviously Diamond is focussing on the first of these but he explains that man-made ecological depletion need not end in collapse. The reason why collapse follows can be explained by the other four factors. However, the key reason is that mankind simply overshoots the carrying-capacity of the land and degrades that capacity through unsustainable practices. He describe the best examples in glorious details so there can be little criticism in his thinking. Although some have tried. Check out Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee's "Questioning Collapse" whilst in the afore-mentioned work by Joseph Tainter the author was skeptical that environmental depletion could ever lead to societal collapse simply because complex societies are best able to tackle these sort of problems. However Diamond well illustrates multiple reason exactly why complex civilisations are just as vulnerable now as were the occupants of Easter Island. For example there is the chapter on "Why do some societies make disastrous decisions" which is worth the cover price by itself. Human beings are simply irrational and we have values systems that can be programmed to self-destruct. We ignore signals from the environment and from environmentalists through simple hubris. There is the phenomena of psychological denial so well illustrate by Diamond with the survey of the attitudes of dwellers next to a dam who profess no concern about it bursting even though people a few miles downstream are far more concerned (see page 436). Even in the face of inevitable danger we can ignore it until the very end. Then there is "landscape amnesia" (page 425) where slow changes in the environment go un-noticed or tolerated just as if we are the frog in the water coming to boil.

So where does this lead us today? The section on China and Australia are most instructive. Factory closures in one city Xian, due to water shortages, cost China $250million annually. Just one city and just one man-made environmental problem. And that is cheap. Forest loss per year from acid rain costs China $730million. But that is still cheap. Consider the $7billion per year in losses due to invasive species. Even that isn't the most expensive. The floods in 1996 cost $27billion, desertification cost $42billion a year whilst air and water pollution cost a staggering $54billion a year. That stacks up to 14% of China's GDP each and every year from avoidable and man-made environmental damage that the Chinese Communists used to believe was only a problem for Capitalists. In Australia 60% of its area and 80% of all its human water-use is dedicated to agriculture yet this sector can only produce less than 3% of that country's GNP! The sector is so unproductive that 99% of agricultural land makes no contribution to Australia's economy whatsoever. Indirect Government subsidies going back centuries have paid farmers to deplete the land of nutrients yet 80% of all agricultural profits come from 0.8% of the land. Australia is wasted and vulnerable. Scarce subsidised water and expensive telecommunications technology is being frittered away via taxpayer's dollars on what must be some enormous work-creation scheme of no enduring value to the country. Economists there are now seriously asking whether it is worth keeping 99% of the farms going? If it wasn't for the agricultural sector punching well above its weight politically (for historical reasons) it wouldn't even exist. All the time it does exist it is destroying the land. Diamond tirelessly points out again and again that the cost of environmental damage in the long run is always more than the cost of preventing it in the short term. Diamond is hopeful though and looks towards companies like Chevron who are leading the way in sustainable environmental practices. The author believes that consumer pressure will force corporations to become more accountable hence green-up their act.

It is this "Big Business and the Environment" (Chapter 15) section of the book where Diamond is at his most controversial. He admits it on page 484 where he says "Some readers may be disappointed or outraged that I place the ultimate responsibility for business practices harming the public, on the public itself." However he also hopes that this is an empowering message. But this is as far as Diamond goes. He is at his most disappointing when he deals with "what can people do to make a difference?" (beginning page 555 oddly enough right at the back in the "Further Readings" section!) Here he writes as a one-dimensional ecologist. He sees the problem of societal collapse as boiling down to the loss of bio-diversity. So he urges us all to vote for the right politicians or boycott the stores and products with poor environmental credentials. It is quite shocking for a man of such breadth of understanding of the problem to be so stunningly blind as to lack a vision of the solution. His message of "be good voters, good consumers and donate cash to the WWF" hardly seems to stack up. He seems blissfully unaware of what ordinary people need to do to make themselves resilient to collapse. Its the community stupid! Diamond is a University Professor in three areas and has the command of twelve languages but it looks as if he has about as much understanding of the problem as the average American. A rough Diamond indeed.

Bizarrely one-dimensional 'solutions' list only voting, boycotting and donating money to environmental charities!
Astonishing breadth and scope. A BIG book commanding your attention. Tells us WHY we choose our own demise. Almost brilliant.

Ha-Joon Chang "23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism"

Sharon Astyk "Depletion and Abundance"

Mike Berners-Lee "How Bad are Bananas?"

ISBN 978 1 84668 891 1. "How Bad are Bananas? - The Carbon Footprint of Everything" by Mike Berners-Lee was published by Profile Books in 2010. This 240 page paperback includes acknowledgements, introduction, 'quick guide', eleven main sections, more info, notes, references and index. We have piled through several books like this over the years starting with Chris Goodall's "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life" and ending recently with "Time To Eat The Dog" by Robert and Brenda Vale. So it is a crowded market. How exactly do you make books about carbon footprinting interesting these days? Berners-Lee's approach is to divide up our carbon footprints into ranges starting with "Under 10 grams" (starting with a text message) and going, in stages, all the way up to "1 million tonnes and beyond" (includes the footprint of the entire world). One of our key criticisms of the Vale's book is that it was vastly padded out with way too much detail about the calculations. Mike doesn't make this mistake as his text talks about footprints in a more qualitative & relative sense. Details are wisely left to the references section at the rear. Where all such books fall down is on their assumptions. It is a minefield and we nearly always find a bizarre assumption or inaccuracy. I am sure if I wrote this book then they would raise the same criticisms of my assumptions.

Thus, we are all human and this human failing shines through in each work like this. (In Goodall's case he showed his anti-car stance by delivering several questionable opinions about the cost of carbon saved in the area of buying low-carbon transport and converting it to liquid petroleum gas.) A natural bias leads to general ignorance leads to inaccuracy. Berners-Lee does waffle repeatedly about how difficult it is to calculate carbon footprints and describes the various methodologies. It all depends on where you draw the lines as to what is "in" and "out". Nobody would agree with how to do this but I would argue that we have to use "additionality", ie, does this activity lead to an additional carbon footprint or should we net off the footprint of the nearest equivalent, ie, the carbon footprint of staying in a hotel room should deduct the footprint of staying at home. If you don't you are assuming that the only alternative to staying in a hotel is non-existence, ie, death. Surely not? (As an illustration flick to page 153 for the pie-chart of the carbon footprint of a swimming pool. It includes 1.8% for "food and shampoo" plus another 0.1% for "office supplies".)

"How Bad are Bananas" is occasionally entertaining although some of the comparisons leave you scratching your head. It is full of odd wisdom like "eating cheese for a year is like flying to Madrid" (I made that up but you see my point). This is a minor point in comparison to some of the claims. Berners-Lee describes "green" electricity tariffs as a "swindle" (page 57) and puts a rather negative spin on the concept of a carbon neutral utility. Whereas his point about the Renewable Obligations Certificate is valid (see the section of this web site on the use of ROC to help pay for Solar Panels before the FiT came in here) the rest of his assumptions are dubious. It sends out a dangerous contrarian message to advise anyone NOT to invest their money in a renewables generator. The author delivers a slightly fairer assessment of the relative carbon costs of buying a new & more-efficient small car, to replace an old big car. However I would have put a rather more positive spin on it because your old car doesn't go to landfill - it is sold on and on getting re-used and re-used until finally it is scrapped and recycled into new cars. The negativity in car-replacement operates in a surreal world where buying a new car makes the old car sit on your driveway turning into rust. That ain't how the real world operates. Your purchasing decisions - be they for green utilities or for small efficient cars, shape the market and ensure more and more of these type of products are offered. This is how free-market economics work - so get out there and shape the world.

We did like the author's assessment on page 68 about whether it was worth slowing down in your car to save carbon and money. He did some back-of-the-envelope calculations comparing a motorway journey at 60mph and 70mph and figured out that they cost about the same if you factored in time versus petrol cost. You save carbon but you lose money. It is a difficult choice. If your time is free then go slowly. It makes for an interesting debate and that is what this book delivers. I should be less a carbon-ometer (marketed to super-greenies) and more pub-fact-book to spark debate amongst regular Joes and Jills. In this respect the work of the Robert and Brenda Vale shines through by poking their nose into every area of our lives and asking such controversial questions as "what is the carbon footprint of keeping a large Alsatian dog?". Berners-Lee doesn't go that far. Another criticism may be that he travels too narrow a path and comes across the same topic several times. For example he starts with a text message, then goes onto talk about an E:Mail, then a computer, then a Google Search then a Data Centre - however all of these topics are more-or-less facets of the same industry sector. Likewise the author has done a lot of work in the supermarket and food sector so this does crop up time and time again. Along the way you will learn that growing a potato has a lower carbon footprint than cooking it.

It was a surprise to learn just how bad milk is. In fact it is fair to say the author rants and raves against the evils of milk on the basis that the ruminating cows (that produce it) are farting out so much methane. This seems counter-intuitive in a world where we have grown up to accept milk as a universal good. But it makes sense if you think about it. Few of us will. I won't look at a bowl of cornflakes the same way again. Another delight was the author's somewhat pro-plastic (bag) point-of-view. Certainly we agreed with him in this area. Plastic bags can be demonised but only if disposed of inappropriately. Once in the general environment they are bad news. However, once in landfill they are so much buried carbon locked away. They are self sequestrating. Interesting thought. Paperbags seem like a good idea but once in landfill they rot producing methane. Again it is how we dispose of these products that become important. It really betrays how inadequate our response to climate change is if we focus solely on the energy sector. We loved eye-opening tit-bits like this. Even-more we liked the skirting of controversy when the author does a rough calculation as to the carbon cost of a human life. Just check out the pie-chart on page 142. Wow. Maybe all economists in Government should start to use this style of "true-cost" accounting. What a world we would live in.

If we could wish for one change to this book it would be to get Berners-Lee to reject the use of economic discounting when calculating the payback on micro-renewables (page 134). I was astonished. It is highly unorthodox given that the payback on microrenewables now is between 10 and 15 years. Economic discounting has really only crept up in terms of really expensive investments over the really longer term - like hundreds of years when we spend £billions. This is the preserve of macro-economics not micro-economics. Read the Stern Report and the work of Bjorn Lomborg to see how this works. Applying a 10% discount to a ten year investment in photovoltaics is simply wrong. I don't know where the author got this idea from. His other conclusions about the Feed in Tariff in relation to costs per ton of carbon saved are probably correct and in line with the criticisms of George Monbiot. However these purist economic arguments don't account for either the Realpolitik nor the resilience factors. We simply want our own power stations closer to hand rather than a tree in the Amazon - it doesn't matter what the price is. Likewise it is hypocrisy for environmentalists to tell us that carbon offsetting is wrong and that we should make carbon savings at home only to turn around and then say those savings are too expensive and we need to spend the money in the Amazon. Obviously we should do both.

Inappropriate use of discount rates when accounting for microrenewables. Occasionally questionable methods and assumptions.
Largely eye-opening, informative and entertaining.

Colin Challen MP "Too little, too late"

ISBN 9780956037008. "Too Little, Too Late - the politics of climate change" by Colin Challen MP was published by Picnic Publishing in 2009. This book has 256 pages including Prologue, Introduction seven chapters, Epilogue, Bibliography, Appendix and Index. Colin didn't stand for re-election to his Morley and Rothwell in the 2010 British Elections. I checked his voting record at "theyworkforyou.com" and found a certain ambiguity on his political stand across a variety of issues. He may well have been the most right-on Climate Change Campaigner in Parliament that you have never heard of. His name was new to me. Funny story - we bought the review copy off the second hand Amazon marketplace and the copy arrived in as-new state - it didn't look like it had even been thumbed through. However, upon opening the cover we found the following handwritten on the title page: " To Chris, I hope you don't find this too depressing! Colin" We'll never know if this has been genuinely signed by the author but the recipient of this gift may not have been impressed enough to read it. An initial glance through might show why. It starts with what must be the most boring anecdote about Climate Change negotiations ever. The next few chapters, up to around page 100, deal with the machinations of the Conference of the Parties and many a reader might put this book down early on.

This would be a mistake as it is worth bearing with it. It does get better - we promise. Challen's book covers a brief period of history around 2007 (the afore-mentioned COP at Bali) through to 2009. There is a refreshing perspective here for the modern historian. Challen points out the irony of the WTO conference in Hong Kong and the UNFCCC conference in Montreal which proceeded together and "blithely ignored each other". Challen is a frustrated man because he clearly sees the link between the hard reality of the modern economy and the fantasy non-action on Climate Change. One is taken very seriously as a panacea whilst the other is mired in pointless political gesturing. Everyone wants to be seen to do something but nothing ever happens. Challen draws a parallel with the appeasers of Hitler in the 1930's. He points to our denial phase, appeasement, phoney war and total war. Guess where we are. Challen moves on to champion contraction and convergence. He shows how the Realpolitik demand that the science be ignored in favour of, what he describes as, "wriggle room" where the lives of Africans are valued as being less than those of Americans. He barely hides his contempt.

Whilst the content of UNFCCC talks may not be exciting it is towards the middle of the book that the interest level rises. Challen starts to give us an insight into the workings of the Blair/Brown Government.  So Challen moves on to describe the creation of carbon markets. The author's writing in this area is most telling - indeed - eye-opening. Skip to page 127 if you want to know the realities as to why Carbon Markets were created and how they ended up so distorting the political system around themselves that they probably ended up doing more harm than good.

Peak Oil does get a look-in here and there too but this is not Challen's primary area of concern - although he recognises the reality and how it links to Climate Change. The analysis of the relationship between efficiency and economic growth is something that can be read in any one of a dozen good books these days but it was refreshing to see this come from a former Parliamentarian. Later on (around page 163) Challen launches himself into the Nuclear debate with a thorough run-down of the relative economics over the lifetimes of the plants. He also compares the carbon-footprints. All around a great read. Just glance through the section on "opportunity cost" on page 170. Challen digs out a great quote from Vincent de Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF who said "If you provide incentives for renewables ... that will displace the incentives built into the carbon market. In effect, carbon gets cheaper. And if carbon gets cheaper, you depress the returns for all the other low-carbon technologies". Challen goes onto write (page 172) "the only surprise is that as yet Whitehall has not yet learnt quite how to master this brand of chutzpah".

The author himself (if you believe this) is largely responsible for the Blair Government pumping an extra £6 million into the Low Carbon Building Program grant system for Microgeneration. What is most telling about this section of the book (around page 125 onwards) is Challen's analysis of the way that the DTI (now DBERR) reacted proceeded to ration this money out in such small chunks that it never actually got spent. In Challen's eyes this was typical of the Whitehall foot-dragging on micro-renewables. His belief was that the Civil Service was systematically and institutionally aligned to ONLY favour big box solutions: big coal and big nuclear. Micro-renewables actually became a "threat" to the EU ETS because microgeneration and efficiency would undercut the price of carbon and the City-traders would not find the market so profitable. Challen concluded that reducing emissions was never the purpose of the EU ETS. Its true function was to capture a piece of the action for the City of London and keep it there. Challen's exasperation is evident in his sarcasm: "The UK ETS was essentially an R&D scheme on behalf of the City, a business sector clearly in need of more state aid than the tiny, hard pressed UK renewable energy sector" (page 128). Quite. The Whitehall targets showed a "fear of taking on a burden rather than seeking an opportunity" (page 139) - Challen goes onto draw another historical comparison with the Victorian Railway building boom in 1844 which occurred in the absence of any public subsidy. The sector had, at one point attracted expansion plans that would have required capital equivalent to one-and-a-half time the country's GNP.

By page 141 we see how a future Labour Party Leader, one Ed Miliband, would ride to the rescue with the Feed In Tariff scheme. As recent history has shown us much of the teeth given the FiTs was subsequently stolen by the new Conservative/Democrat Coalition in 2011. The funding for this scheme has been a long source of controversy as it was intended to be cross-subsidised by fossil fuel levies raised by the utility companies. Even such an income-neutral scheme was jealously squashed by the Treasury regardless of the fact that the money was never intended to flow through their coffers in the first place. This latter information came to late for Challen's book but it is independent verification of his point of view.

Towards the end of the book Challen picks up the case for domestic tradable quotas (DTQ) and personal carbon allowances (PCA). Although taken seriously by Ed Miliband it was knocked on the head by the Treasury as being too expensive. One might suspect a political trade-off in DECC with Miliband getting his FiT but giving up on DTQs. On page 191 Challen observes the fundamental truth: "it also says much about the chances of getting anything past those who wish to control not only revenue and expenditure but the foundations of the tax base. PCAs would do very little for the Treasury's coffers, they would be separate from the Treasury's revenue streams. They are not a flexible fiscal instrument that can be used to help balance the budget. In a similar way, the Treasury opposes the principle of hypothecating taxation because it reduces their flexibility." And then on page 192 this "All these arguments have been rehearsed ad nausea in the light of the 2007/2008 economic downturn, and the result has an almost inevitable ring to it - we'll pay for this green stuff, but later please." Most readers will feel pretty angry by this stage of the book. It seems to be that we don't need to bring down capitalism to fight Climate Change - simply a change in Whitehall might be enough! On page 195 we learn that the setup costs for PCA may have been up to £2billion with up to £2 billion required annually to run it. Seems a lot until Challen points out that £215 million had been earmarked to pump prime the UK ETS. PCAs would reduce our Carbon Footprints whereas the ETS was questionable.

In the end Challen recognises the need to change our entire economic model if PCAs were to stand a chance. In what sounds like an endorsement of the Transition Town model we get this on page 196: "Surely we should look for a synergy between campaigns to save post offices and improve public transport with the campaign for PCAs, rather than positing PCAs on the present car-dependent model?" Towards the end of this book Challen launches into the pre-election challenge that seems to have occupied him the most before he left Parliament - that is the goal of a long-standing and cross-party Parliamentary support mechanism for Climate Change action. By page 225 this had turned into a battle between two Conservatives: John Gummer MP who chaired the Conservative Party's Quality of Life Commission (directly responsible for getting Zach Goldsmith into Government) and John Redwood MP: "How they reconcile their differences will be indicative of whether 'science' will ever be a politically acceptable master". Challen's book sets the scene for the return of the Conservatives to power in 2010 and illustrates the battle between the left and right inside the party. In the end it falls down to Party "tribalism". One thinks that no matter who wins elections the Government is always in charge. This Government is an entrenched Whitehall apparatus. Recommended.

A dull start. Better proof-reading should have picked up on dozens of missing words and typos in the text.
A fascinating insight into the Whitehall machinery and how it undermines the battle against Climate Change.

Greg Craven "What's the worst that could happen?"

ISBN 978-0-399053501-7. "What's the worst that could happen? - A rational response to the climate change debate" by Greg Craven was published by Perigree (Penguin Books) in 2009. The paperback has 264 pages boasting ten chapters, appendix, resources, notes, references, acknowledgements and an index. Craven is a high school physics and chemistry teacher whose YouTube video "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" has probably passed 1.5million downloads by now. The first I heard of this was during a BBC4 documentary in February 2011 called "Meet the Skeptics" by which time I already had the book in my shelf to read. Without wishing to gush like an excited schoolboy this is, without doubt, the best book ever written about climate change. But it was a book that should never have needed to be written. Let me explain why. This is not a book about climate change. This is not a book about why we argue about climate change. It isn't even a book about the politics of climate change. No, it is one thing: it teaches ordinary lay people how to perform a personal risk assessment. That's it really. It was written after the video went viral on the web. The book is needlessly overly long, not sure why, but it hits all the right buttons precisely because it doesn't pretend to give you THE ANSWER. No, this is a book that tells you how to analyse the debate and reach your own conclusions.

Craven asks you to identify and leave your biases at the door then draw up a grid. The grid has two rows and two columns. Across the top on the left is a column headed "Significant action now" whilst on the right it reads "Little or now action now". The two rows, that intersects these two columns, reads (simply) "True" and "False" to the question "Global Warming?". The rest of the book takes the reader through the risk analysis. It asks us this: "What's the wisest thing to do, given the risks and the consequences?" This was the basis of the viral internet video. In it Craven concluded simply that the wisest thing to do was to act significantly now. This was based upon the economic costs of acting significantly, but finding the global warming wasn't caused by man, only resulted in a global economic recession. If it were true, and we acted swiftly, we would all be very relieved but we wouldn't be much better off economically - but it could have been much worse. If we took no action and global warming wasn't man-made then we could all feel smug and party. However if we took no action and global warming wreaked havoc then there would be a global catastrophe. Now, ask yourself, which was the least risky avenue to take? Cravens natural conclusion was to take lots of action now. Like us, he is risk averse.

Although we would be sympathetic with this result, this initial analysis was wrong (as Craven later found out). Hence he wrote this entire book to improve the analysis - only to return to the same answer. It is TOO risky to do nothing based upon the evidence we have, from the sources we have the evidence from. In his initial analysis he failed to properly understand and convey the probability of risk from climate change. It was pointed out to him that he could use the same grid to analyse the risk of being struck by lighting or the earth being invaded by giant mutant space hamsters. Either way you would always get the same conclusion, ie, you would never get out of bed. Hence you have to assign a probability of the risk and that assessment requires the reader to study WHO is supplying us with the evidence. Are these guys credible? One of the most valuable sections of this book are chapters 6 and 7 where Craven examines the evidence from warmers and skeptics and rates their credibility. This section alone is worth the asking price of the book. I am surprised nobody thought of doing something that simple before? Also valuable is chapter 3 where Craven runs through the psychological issues of bias that effects our abilities to judge the evidence rationally. Craven refers to an article by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert in the Los Angeles Times titled "If only gay sex caused global warming". The problem with climate change is that we have nobody to blame who we can fix out sights on it. If it was caused by space aliens or Islamic fundamentalist terrorists or gays or some brutal dictator then we could demonise and focus are attacks on them. As the threat is not so visible and immediate, our brains turn off. It isn't intentional, is isn't personal, it doesn't violate our moral sensibilities, it is not a clear and present danger, and it happens too slowly to notice. If we could only panic then something might get done. But we can't, so we do nothing.

At this point we have to whole-heartedly agree with what Craven has done. He sees this exactly the way WE see the problem. The risks from doing nothing to mitigate climate change are enormous. The people who are telling us that these risks are serious consist of the finest brains on the planet. They are credible witnesses. If you ignore these guys then you may as well stay in bed all day because you are unlikely to believe anybody about anything. Meanwhile the people who tell us that we can relax and do nothing just don't have the same credibility at all. Craven gives the reader the tools to assess the credibility of the witnesses. For example an organisation has a higher weighting than an individual. An organisation that contradicts its normal bias is also more credible than one that confirms its natural bias (ie, when oil companies tell us we need to act). This way you don't need to decide WHO IS RIGHT - only if they are credible. We felt pretty smug because this was largely the reason we reached the same conclusion as Craven. This approach is wonderfully neutral and disarming. You don't need to understand the science nor engage in a slanging match with every skeptic. You just have to quietly ask "are you credible?"

At the back of this book Craven turns his attention to what we can do about climate change. His conclusion is that individually we are powerless and shouldn't just turn to worn out old platitudes about changing lightbulbs. Instead he proposes an electronic declaration of war. The ship needs to be turned rapidly and a war-time response is required. He suggests going viral with all kinds of new electronic media such as Twitter and Facebook to create a tidal-wave of pressure for action. It is not a question of being a pessimist or an optimist. It is now a question of actually doing something. The idea needs to be viral. A meme. A social epidemic.

Throughout this work I turned down the corners of many pages. It is just a wonderful source book for inspiration. It doesn't tell you how to win the argument. It teaches you how to be rational. It is this rationale that is so often missing in the argument between warmers and skeptics. I just loved some of the nuggets Craven dug up. One favourite was a quote by a Nobel Prize Winner in Economics, Thomas Schelling, who said: "This idea that costly actions are unwarranted if the dangers are uncertain is almost unique to climate. In other areas of policy, such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation, inflation or vaccination, some 'insurance' principle seems to prevail: if there is sufficient likelihood of sufficient damage we take some measured anticipatory action." Exactly. Craven himself says this in his conclusion "I vote for slamming on the brakes. Hard. I can recover from any hot coffee that I spill on my lap. But I can't put myself and my car back together again if I drive confidently off a cliff, kinds in the back." We felt very touched by the closing words from Craven's Acknowledgements where he thanked his children and apologised for not spending more time with him when he was wroting this book "I hope that you will understand that I took that time away from you in an attempt to give you something even more fundamental - your security. It may not be enough, but I did all that I could." That is all any of us can do.

Puerile sense-of-humour misses the mark almost always.
Probably the most perfect book concerning how us mere-mortals should analyse the climate change debate and reach our own conclusions.

David Boyle "Money Matters"

ISBN-13: 978-1-906136-20-8. "Money Matters: putting the eco into economics - global crisis and local solutions" was written by David Boyle and published by Alastair Sawday Publishing in 2009. The title of this book does slightly smack of cashing in upon the global economic crisis that no doubt hadn't started when this book was being conceived. Indeed Boyle admits that the global markets were coming unravelled as he was writing so he didn't know the conclusions. Writing this review in 2011 I don't think we are any the wiser but, if we thought there would be a see-change in global monetary affairs you would be wrong. In the UK the Government Banking Commission couldn't even bring itself to break the banks up. However there are subtle undercurrents of change whistling through economics. Namely the concepts of happiness and wellbeing are being heard as the latest fashionable economic-bling. Time will only tell how long this lasts. Certainly the credit crunch has somewhat cooled the Governments' relationships with their Banking overlords and the foot is finally in the door to offer radical new directions. Even if only five per cent of the new ideas stick then that is progress of a sort. We now live in an era when President Sarkozy of France and the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron can seriously suggest changing our economic measurements to include intangible wellbeing indicators.

Five years ago they would have been laughed off the stage. Now we have the likes of Joseph Stiglitz, Bill Gates and Sarkozy asking the G20 countries to seriously consider the introduction of a 0.05% Tobin Tax on Financial Speculation. At a time when the Governments' coffers are empty this is an idea that could be tempting. The book strongly resembles James Bruges 2007 work "The Big Earth Book" reviewed below. It may be no coincidence as both are published by Sawday as part of their "Fragile Earth" series. Pay close attention to both and you will notice that Yeo Valley Organic sponsored the "Big Earth Book" whilst Tridos Bank sponsored "Money Matters". This remains a sign of the times as well. You only need browse the web sites of the left-wing think tanks such as the New Economics Foundation to see that they are always asking for money to support their work. However, glance at the right-wing economic think tanks like the Adam Smith Institute & Cobden Centre and you will see that they are extremely well-funded. If there is any reason to read this book it should be a passion for the under-dog. Certainly organisations with plenty of money will support the think-tanks that support their right to maintain that economic advantage. There is no morality to this at all. In fact it is shameful - but it is the way of the world. The gods of Olympus will pay to make the truth tht they want to hear. The rest of us will have to dig in our pockets to hear countervailing arguments - no matter how strong and vital they are. For they are strong and they are vital but they don't make money for powerful people hence they cannot become mainstream.

We like Boyle's book because it was nice and small weighing in at only 223 pages consisting of a Preface, Introduction, eight sections, Conclusion, Bibliography and Internet Resources. It is a quick and addictively easy read. If there was ever an economics book that was un-put-downable it is this! Each section is broken down into chapters that literally only last between one and three pages. This is bite-sized new economics that you can dip into. It is scattered with great references to books, web sites and papers (many from the NEF) as well as opening each chapter with a classic quote (although some of dubious relevance)! I guess that if we have a word of criticism it is that the book often comes over like the "Big Earth Book" as a wish list to Santa. We mightily admire the work of Boyle's New Economic Foundation and their close association with the Transition Network (who get quite a lot of plugs in "Money Matters"). However you can't help but think "so what - where does this take us?" There is a semblance of a roadmap but it remains pie-in-the-sky. Sometimes I think the NEF just make-up some of the statistics. It all seems very cherry-picked and convenient. It is a helpful antidote to the neo-liberal business-as-usual-there-is-no-alternative mainstream. We agree and empathise strongly. But wishing for a pony won't make it happen. Mainstream Government will have to adopt these ideas sooner or later. As will local communities. Recommended. Achingly brilliant.

Sometimes a surreal wish-list to Santa. It sounds good but rarely impacts the real world economics ruled by power, banks and hedge funds. Shame. Take with pinch of salt.
Bite-sized nuggets of pure gold. Everyone should read this. A useful resource and easy to read. Covers everything from money as debt through to local currencies.

Chris Bird "Local Sustainable Homes"

ISBN 978 1 900322 76 8. "Local Sustainable Homes - How to make them happen in your community" by Chris Bird was published in 2010 by Green Books/Transition Books. This is a paperback in the usual Transition-style consisting of 240 pages including an Introduction by Rob Hopkins, fifteen chapters, references, resources and index. This is the first book we've seen that lists www.post-carbon-living.com as a resource. That was very sweet of them. We are not sure we deserve it but thanks anyway. We were listed under "Information, advice, education and research" as a "down-to-earth website that includes updates on the refurbishment of a 1980s home". Well, now you know. Chris is a Totnes resident so pretty much he comes from Transition-central. His career as a freelance journalist has included writings on sustainable buildings for the likes of The Observer and Selfbuild & Design. It is difficult to know what to expect from a book like this. We naturally thought it would be dominated by eco-retrofit projects and self-builds. Although there is that element you will find far more inside the covers. It may not be all to everyone's taste though.

We felt that a lot of it seemed a little like padding. Almost as if there wasn't much to write about so Bird went on a Transition-tour of Totnes, Brighton and Sheffield. Bird's work had a lot to live up to seeing as we had just previously read Alexis Rowell's excellent "Communities, Councils & a Low-Carbon Future - What we can do if government won't". The Rowell work is beyond compare as a useful "how-to". Somehow you are setup to expect the same level of practical detail from Bird. Now we weren't expecting Bird to go into detail about how to build a home or do a retrofit. He provides plenty of links to websites and resources that will get you started. However we did expect a bit more coverage of what communities can do to retrofit existing housing stock to sustainable standards. As the author often reminds the reader - 80% of all the homes standing in 2050 have already been built. Only around 12% of UK homes can be classed as "self-build" in any respect. That would leave the casual reader with the impression that the book's contents would reflect this. However, it does not. Instead it takes the reader around the houses (if you pardon the pun) and to places you would never expect. The ideas then seem to become a little jumbled. After a good start in chapters 1, 2, 3 & 4 we drift off into the realms of "building together", "social housing" "planning permission & finance" and so on. Bird even finds room to briefly discuss the land revolution in Portugal in 1975 and the art of squatting.

You would think that making homes sustainable is largely a technical exercise. Bird sets out to prove that that is only half the story. He injects a heavy social-ethical-content, seemingly more interested in HOW people live together rather than the fabric of the buildings they occupy. This is refreshing but it doesn't always hold the reader's interest if you are from retrofit heaven as we are here at PCL. To each his own. If we have to take specific issue with some of Bird's philosophy then it is with his obsession with embodied energy. He rarely ever mentions full lifecycle or the lifetime of a home. In only one section does he mention that some homes are better off being torn down and new ones built - but then he argues for retrofit on the basis that the short-term carbon footprint is smaller. We hate to disagree but surely the move to a sustainable way of living is a generational transition. Houses should be built to last. They are capital projects not consumables. You don't (or shouldn't) build disposable homes. When Bird waxes romantically about vernacular build and its low carbon content you get no sense as to how long these old technologies might last. Common-sense would dictate that if you build a home with half the embodied carbon but it then falls down in one-third of the time then you have a false economy. These full lifecycle elements don't raise their heads in Bird's book. Having said that he did dig up three separate references to prove that Photovoltaics repay the energy put into them in under four years. Which is nice - but we would like to have seen more of this sort of content so that amateurs (like us) could make informed choices. This is not the Green Building Bible and it doesn't set out to supply the sort of information that many householders wish for. There is no mention of Transition retrofit microgeneration projects anywhere in the book.

The other issue you may have with this work is the implicit assumption that "small" and "local" are somewhat better than big and corporate. Now it seems strange to say this. This is a Transition book! However, on the topic of house-building, we are in an area where everyone needs one, but few of us have the expertise to make a house happen. Most of the general population are quite happy to have Barratts build their box for them. Surely we can expect major national house-building firms to be around for years to come? They are the experts. Their business model might change. The building technology will change too. However to assume they will all disappear to be replaced by small local outfits is as likely as Tescos being replaced by farmers' markets. We might wish for it but we have to be practical. Small and local works well for food, energy, culture and governance. Building homes may not necessarily fit this logic. By extension several of the community-run projects Bird lists did not build very sustainable homes. He admits it. So bedazzled is he by the role of the community and embedded carbon that he heralds any community that saves an old building even if the subsequent building work is by no means sustainable. To his credit though Bird is big enough to admit than none of us are going to be living in Earthships. On page 88 he concludes that "as a mass zero-carbon housing solution (earthships) are practically a non-starter" because of their low-density and high labour input. This doesn't stop Bird from returning to praise rammed earth building on page 192!

Bird is often more wrapped up in correcting social injustices as he was into curing fuel-poverty. As we would come to expect there are some romantic outings to vernacular building projects which, although nice, are not of much practical use for most Transition initiatives. Straw-bale is interesting but it has a long way to go before this is significant. Unless you believe in a post-peak-oil world in which people will have to build their own homes out of local mud and straw then this isn't really a flier.

If you DO believe in this sort of Mad Max scenario then can only give credence to those in our society who would say "look at those environmentalists, they want to condemn us all to live in mud huts in the woods". We cannot revert to primitivism or learn too many lessons from communities that select a sustainable lifestyle. Most people are not going to be making this choice. They are stuck in the towns and cities we have, in the homes we have already built. So, please, less of the flights of fancy. Let us learn about the sort of Transition where your mates turn up at your house with a barrow-load of insulation and we all get busy. We need practical down-to-earth guidance on how our communities can make there existing housing stock sustain them through the years of unaffordable fossil fuel energy. Afterall, the Romans built an empire from brick 2000 years before the discovery of fossil fuels. We need a Passivhaus revolution in home building and in everyone's DIY skills. One would think you should start down at the local B&Q or Homebase rather than this book. However, if you are a true Transition-devotee then this is the book for you. We just fear that you will turn the last page and get up to have a cup of tea rather than take a trip to the DIY store. A missed opportunity?

Not a bad effort but overly concerned with ethical building rather than the long-lasting sustainable, warm, homes we already have or should be retrofitting.
I criticised this book a lot but I would still recommend it as it is the best book we have on the topic. It covers every bases regardless of relevance.

David Archer "The Long Thaw"

ISBN 978-0-691-13654-7. "The Long Thaw - How Humans are changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate" by David Archer was published by Princeton University Press in 2009. Although billed as a short book Archer's "Long Thaw" is a longish 180 pages including a further reading list and index. Unlike other books on the topic this is not about Man-Made Climate Change within a human-timescale. Archer takes us into the universe of Man-Made Climate Change from the Earth's point of view, ie, into geological time spans. Hence he puts our narrow focus of the next 100 years into the context of the last few million years and the next 100,000 years which - as the subtitle suggests - is how long it will take for the planet to recover fully from the damage that we are doing. What the author does is quite interesting in fact. He is not much of an alarmist but he knows how to answer the sceptics' doubts. He does spend much of the time dealing with some denial arguments and does not completely dismiss them. He does recognise them and agrees that there is much we don't know, whilst (at the same time) showing these counter-arguments do nothing to undermine the overwhelming evidence for mankind's fingerprint on the climate.

This is the subtle point that Archer makes - quibbling over the temperature record in 1998 seems slightly dumb when we can see that mankind's burning of fossil fuels will leave a lasting impression upon this planet's climate. A hundred-thousand years is a very long time. He makes this deduction by examining the earth-chemistry of the Carbon-Cycle and how it can be uncovered in the fossil record. Being an oceanographer Archer goes into great depths (pun not intended) on the topic of how oceans absorb carbon. He shows how the oceans would happily absorb most of our excess emissions and the resulting acidity would finally settle out into the sediments. However it does this in a geological timescale - never fast enough to deal with our carbon spike. We'll have to wait. We get to see how the cycles of our orbits around the sun, and the activity of the sun itself, pushes us into and out of Glacial periods. We learn that we are in an inter-glacial period of a major ice-age, ie, a long ice-age period punctuated with warm spells with less ice - which is where we are now. If you go back millions of years we come out of the ice age and into a period when there were lush hot jungles at the poles - this time period is just too far back for us to learn too much about our current condition. The last 650,000 years of history is more than enough to tell us what will happen in the next 100,000 years. The author goes on to look at feedback mechanisms and is quite conservative in his assessment showing that, in his area of expertise, he see no reason to be too alarmist about deep-sea methane as, even in the period of history that most resembles today, there is no evidence of any sudden releases leading to an accelerated runaway climate change. There is no scare stories or climate change porn here. It is all very unemotional. Archer chooses to make sea level rise his poster child for the victims of Climate Change. No polar bears drowning in his book. Since sea level rises lag temperature by hundreds if not thousands of years we are unlikely to see anything dramatic in this century. The 50 meters or more will happen - in geologic time. There are many unknowns in the dynamics of glacier and ice-sheet melt so we may see some more ice-melt than the IPCC suggest.

In his Epilogue Archer does throw in the question of ethics. He generally agrees with the mainstream in saying that we need to decarbonise our economies as early as possible as it is simply a good investment. The earlier we do it the cheaper it is. He briefly goes through economic discounting to show how modern economics is in danger of doing nothing as it has no long term nor moral aspect. The author (rightly) does not deem it fair to leave the clean-up bill to our great-great-grandchildren hence we must internalise the real cost of carbon into the price of fossil fuels. One interesting point he makes is that if we just stopped burning coal this would go a long way to tackling the problem. Since we have vast quantities of coal, whilst Gas and Oil are half-gone, then we should let peak oil & gas tackle the problem through market dynamics. Of course we would have all agree to leave the coal in the ground and that won't happen quickly - but it is a useful reminder that the days of cheap oil and gas are over. There is so much that can be done at only a few percentage points of GDP so why do we wait? Well, because everyone has to do it together so that we do not repeat the tragedy of the commons. Archer leaves us with this final thought (I paraphrase): If we add up all the energy trapped by the CO2 from a gallon of petrol over its atmospheric lifetime we find that our gallon will trap one hundred billion kilocalories (100,000,000,000) of useless unwanted green-house heat. This is 40 million times more energy that we got out of driving in our cars with that gallon of petrol.

Archer finds similar quirky statistics and scatters them through the book so it is worth paying attention if you wish for something to add to your party anecdotes. For example the basic physics of the greenhouse effect were figured out by Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier in 1827. In 1869 Svante Arrhenius spent two years working out the planetary temperature gain if atmospheric CO2 level were to double. He reckoned 4 to 6 degrees Celsius. After 130 years of climate science (now driven by computers) we have worked out that this is closer to 2.5 to 4 degrees Celsius. Not much has really changed in that 130 years. Globally about 2 billion dollars per year are being spent on climate change research. That is just 5% of the profits of the Exxon Mobil oil company. Much of the author's chemistry and in-depth science will blind most people. This is not popular science. It is hard science and sometimes comes across as a text book of Climate Change Chemistry for dummies. Not that interesting but of use for the hardcore student in such matters. This often isn't easy reading but it does exactly what it says on the cover. A novel view of the problem.

A bit of a text book making for a dull read in places.
A very conservative assessment of where we are free from emotion, scare stories or climate porn.

Lester R. Brown "Plan B 3.0"

ISBN 978 0 393 330878 8. "Plan B 3.0 - Mobilizing to Save Civilization" by Lester R Brown. Lester is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and, if memory serves correctly, was often quoted in Lomborg's "Skeptical Environmentalist" book as the source of statistical half-truths about the state of the Environment. Hence we approached this book with some caution even if Lomborg's position on Peak Oil and Climate Change is indefensible. However, the reader has no need to worry as this book is spot-on. Ten out of ten. Perfect. Well, nearly. The only criticism is Lester's drive to solve nearly all of the World's problems. Hence he does devote enormous amount of space to solving poverty without always making a good link between human poverty and ecological decay. Of course the link is there but the problems of resource depletion and climate change are ones of industrialisation and affluence. The point of poverty is that it is linked with excessive population growth which puts pressure on natural resources. Tackling population and its root causes - often poor education and civil strife, will eventually help tackle other global issues that are more pressing. Tackling poverty can never be a primary objective. Neither can the matter of what Lester calls "failed states" which he returns to again and again. He sees the concept of the failed state as something cause by a decaying environment. Others may see things differently. States may collapse if they are undermined by the foreign policies of super-powers or by the policies of the World Trade Organisation, IMF and World Bank. None of these issues are addressed by Lester who sticks firmly to the Washington consensus on these matters - ie, it is somebody else's fault and that lots of charity will help. Not all would agree. These faults to one side you do get a very upbeat view of our abilities to tackle climate change and peak oil through a wide range of measure from redesigning our cities through to building far more wind farms. Lester is well know for his drive to get the world planting to trees and this is to his credit. He has a clear vision of what the problems are and his plan is a good one - well researched and reasonable. He has many supporters - us included. When it comes to matters of energy and transport his advice is sound. Plant trees, build countless wind-turbine farms, get people out of their cars, raise energy efficiency. Some of this work is a little like the Rocky Mountain Institute studies but Lester's work is far more International in nature and far less dependent on the techno-fix. He links Climate Change to food production directly which is a refreshing change as most writers waffle on about rising sea levels - as if that ever killed anyone. He also writes at length about the problems we are facing with water supplies. Water really shouldn't be a problem but according to Lester we are pumping the wells dry as fast as the oil wells. Who would have thought? He makes no mention of the hydrogen economy and laughs off Nuclear as a non-starter. This is also very refreshing. His point is the same as ours - we don't need a techno-fix - we have all the technology we need. The problem is deforestation and too many people. He compares the way we balance the books to the way Enron balanced theirs - ie, buy leaving the liabilities off the books. Essentially we are bankrupt. Plan B is a rescue plan. He makes no bones about it - we need a wartime mobilisation. He is right. Take this as a blue-print, but mostly for national action. It is less of a guide for individuals or communities but this is not a fault. There are other good books for that kind of work. Brilliant. Recommended. Buy copies for everyone you know and anyone with influence.

I just wish there was the political gotcha to make it happen.
Five thumbs-up as this is a great book. Recommended.

Shaun Chamberlin "The Transition Timeline"

ISBN 978-1-900322-56-0. "The Transition Timeline for a local, resilient future" was published by Green Books in 2009. Shaun Chamberlin's opus weighs in at 190 pages of the same layout and format as Rob Hopkins' "Transition Handbook" (who also supplies the foreword to this work). This work was originally aimed at those who were working on their Community's Energy Descent Action Plan. We loved the cover artwork - as memorable and iconic as that drawn for Rob's original handbook. We get five book sections: "Cultural stories and Visions of the Future", "A Deeper Look at the Transition Vision", "Making Best use of this Timeline", "Global Context - Climate Change/Fuel Depletion" and "UK Context". Shaun's work is as next to perfect as you could wish to get at this stage. Seeing as this is only the second "Transition" book published to date (these words written in September 2009 in the brink of the "Local Food" book launch). This goes beyond Rob Hopkins original work which leant heavily on theory and bizarre management games. In fact it manages to be far superior because the Transition narrative only gets better as theory turns into practice. By now we are starting to see how the pioneering Transition Visions are starting to flesh out. We get a good clear guide as to how it is our very culture that has to change.

You can argue that the term "cultural stories" is largely meaningless to the layman and smacks of a work of fiction - but the contents of the visions certainly withstand scrutiny - even if is tempting to see it all as wishful thinking. We know that these changes in our thinking have to happen. However in the acid-test of the real-world we don't see it happening beyond that minority of cultural-creatives inside the Transition Movement.

It remains unclear as to how we enthuse an apathetic community to get out of bed and start to work on the EDAP. How do we reach out? That book has not yet been written. Instead we do get something quite surprising in Shaun's work. Half-way through the book he runs out of "vision" material and starts musing on the combined effects of Climate Change and Peak oil. This is like a whole new book by itself and is probably the quite convincing and cohesive study of how the two forces inter-twine. Oil will certainly run out in time to terminate some of the very worse-case-scenarios modelled by the IPCC but there is still enough carbon left in the ground to push us through the tipping points that could trigger unstoppable climate change. Indeed, we have done so much damage already, with the first half of our fossil fuels, that a minimum of 2 degreesC rise this century is guaranteed. We'll be lucky to escape by the skin of our teeth. Shaun argues that drastic changes are now required to shut off the carbon pipeline. Transition is the only answer. There is no technology yet that can save us. We have to change. What a vision. Thoroughly recommended. Grim with a glimmer of hope.

A minor inclusion of daft play-acting games spoils the show..
Damn near perfect. Read it now.

David Boyle & Andrew Simms "The New Economics - A Bigger Picture"

ISBN 978-1-84407-675-8. "The New Economics - A Bigger Picture" was written by David Boyle and Andrew Simms and published by Earthscan in 2009. (You get 192 pages including acknowledgments, eleven chapters, appendices and index.) The "New Economics" describes itself as being about "changing the rules by which economics works [...] about making things happen locally...". It all sounds reasonable until the authors too easily shift into describing it vaguely as something to do with "people and planet". We have become so used to the near-scientific certitudes of conventional economics that when somebody takes such nebulous concepts as 'ethics' and 'ecology' and describe them in economic terms it all sounds... Well, woolly. The new economics has found mainstream success. For example the European Union has a task force looking at redefining GDP whilst the growth of the Transition Towns movement is testimony to how everyone from politicians to ordinary people can embrace these exciting new concepts. Oddly enough neither example appears anywhere in this book.

Written as it was during the crash of 2008 it has an air of "I told you so" even if there is no triumph in any of this. Indeed, the more you read the more you understand that tackling Climate Change, monetary reform and Peak Oil conventionally all seems easier than trying to implement the theories of the new economics. It all seems like so much hardwork. And complicated to-boot. There are no certainties, only new theories. Those of us who lived happily through the new certainties of the neo-liberal economics of the Thatcher years will know how easy it is to get caught up in new economic panaceas only to see them crumble to dust in our hands. Why should the theories of the nef be any different? Of course there is a difference. Thatcherism was possible to implement because it was in people's selfish self-interest to make it happen. That juggernaut has been rolling for years under the careful guidance of Reagan, Bush and Blair one wonders if it can ever be turned around. Afterall it has been 6000 years in the making according to this book.

One of our favourite stats from this book (pages 39 & 40) concerns the demonstrable ineffectiveness of trickle down theory. "The trouble is that economic growth is an extremely inefficient way of achieving poverty reduction, and is becoming even less effective. Between 1990 and 2001, for every $100 worth of growth in the world's income per person, just 60 cents found its target and contributed to reducing poverty below the $1-a-day line.... Using this model [...] getting everyone in the world onto a modest income of $3 per day would require the natural resources of around 15 planets like Earth." That is certainly one in the eye for the likes of Lomborg and Stern. Vandana Shiva would no doubt agree. Here we have solid evidence (albeit referring to a paper also co-written by Andrew Simms in 2006) that shatters the paradigm that has been held sacred in every discussion about Climate Change and conventional economics. Economic growth cannot be sustained and the kind we have is a machine that makes poverty. It can't solve Climate Change. It sucks money from the poor into the hands of the rich and impoverishes the planet. What is more, due to the faulty way we measure wealth, it looks like we are richer whilst we are less and less happy. If this book was chock full of such paradigm-busting killer facts then this work would be a monstrous broadside through the armoured hull that is conventional economics. However, it is only a highlight. It is more or less downhill from there-on in. The rest of the book is what the old Bush Jnr Presidency might describe as a "wish list to Santa" or what Bjorn "skeptical environmentalist" Lomborg might call "the litany". It lists every worry in the world and pretends it can solve them. However, they cannot solve greed.

Reading it you tend to get bedazzled that all of life's problems are caused by conventional economics and that the New Economics can ride to the rescue. It isn't always overly-convincing. It is almost as if the authors themselves seem nervous about discussing this in public. This may be a criticism of the style of writing. Contrast it to Michael Rowbotham's "The Grip of Death" (ISBN 978 1 897766 40 8 Jon Carpenter Publishing 1998) where the author's utter enthusiasm for his concept (that the money system creates ALL of life's ills) sweeps the reader of his/her feet in its breathlessness. The problem maybe the fact that two author's worked on this and it appears to go around in dizzying circles. The amusing chapter headings appear to give the impression that it has been nicely segregated up into neat areas. However each tends to return to the same view of the problem with the same ideas being repeated over and over again until the reader gets a touch of deja vu. That probably is the extent of the criticism of this book - its ideas are extremely broad and it is difficult to pick out a clear framework nor even a roadmap to the future. It is lots of ideas thrown at the page. The new economics is a work-in-progress waiting in the wings. It needs a political party to invest it into policy. When written large into our communities we may well know if any of this theory works.

Sure there are plenty of good examples of it working. However, recall again the point I made earlier about the early euphoric years of Thatcherism and the neo-liberal economics that had its examples of its voodoo apparently working. Everything works somewhere and sometime. But, beyond the cherry-picking... Can we write this across the face of civilisation and make it stick? Beyond this lack of 'concreteness' there is nothing wrong with this book. You find yourself turning page after page and agreeing with everything these authors have written. Of course it will appeal to those people who work on Transition Town projects. Towards the rear of the book the authors turn to the new localism to explain why some towns are killed by Walmart whilst others thrive with numerous locally-owned shops. But how do you get from Walmart-hell to local-retail-paradise? What is the roadmap? Is there any place that has been turned around? Where are the turn-key policies that politicians crave? The New Economics Foundation needs to take on the Chicago School of Economics at their own game. They need some metrics for such ideas as "moral coherence", "human contact", "authenticity" and "spirituality". However they spurn traditional monetary measures and this is their weakness. The authors make numerous lists of their central tenets but these often get watered down into unrealistic wish lists. Take page 46 for example where they talk about "Create a holistic educational system that promotes creativity" and "Discourage materialism and clamp down on damaging advertising". Lovely, if cringe worthy. (If you want more of this wishy-washy tosh just see pages 74 and 75.) OK, OK - I agree that the authors are right but this kind of talk is going to consign the new economics to oblivion. You wish they would get real.

However, if you can manage not to get too distracted by the woolly-thinking then there is a great book here screaming to be let loose. The discussion about multiple concurrent currencies is powerful. It is interesting to note here that they do not strongly advocate local currency. This Transition Town paradigm is twisting what Boyle and Simms are really saying. They are all for local currencies but it doesn't mean that each town should have one. The purpose of such a currency is to boost the multiplier effect inside a community. A local currency is a simplistic implementation of a solution. There are other ways of creating money that sticks. It is conceivable that we could develop "community money" that is the same across the UK but can only be spent, like vouchers, only in local shops. As long as there is reciprocity this will work the same way. Likewise there is nothing wrong with a "single currency" for international trade. Each currency should have its purpose. There is also much talk about the debt money system although the concept of monetary reform is soft-peddled by the authors. Rather than advocating a widescale change to debt-free money via a citizen's income they only suggest that the government creates money for specific capital projects.

Monetary reform should be at the heart of any 'new economics' alongside the reprioritising of human happiness into the centre of wealth measurement. The latter the authors cover very well with their Happy Planet Index (a case of nef genius at work). If you can measure it then it matters. There is so much to this book - so many great ideas - that this review can barely scratch the surface. You need to read it to understand exactly how we ended up in the mess we are in. The mess is a natural outcome of a flawed economic paradigm and it can be reversed IF people understand the problem and are given options. For example, the pursuit of pure monetary efficiency often achieves the opposite of what was intended. Just look at that shiny new Walmart that is undermining local social capital. The intention was to bring local jobs and prosperity. Instead they brought social decay. It didn't work. The policy makers just can't see the dots between the two. This book should be compulsory reading for every undergrad economist, every politician, every civil servant, every banker, everyone. We have to join the dots. This book joins those dots. So should we.

Seems a little shy and buries its genius in aimless wish-lists as if the New Economics was built by a committee of Guardian readers.
If you dig hard enough this book is genius. It's all there - the reasons why our economics fails and how we can turn our local economies around. A must read.

Kingsley Dennis and John Urry "After the Car"

ISBN-13 978-0-7456-4422-6. "After the Car" written by Kingsley Dennis and John Urry was published by Polity Press in 2009. The paperback has 212 pages including preface, notes, index and 7 chapters. The authors are social scientists from Lancaster University rather than technologists. This could be a really good thing or a really bad thing. It would be good if it gave us a fresh perspective on the future of personal transport - in this they are reasonably successful. It would be bad if they were to underestimate the difficulties of developing hi-tech solutions in a low-energy world. This they also do. However it would probably be a mistake to think of this book being just about cars. Taken in its totality this book is far better than the failings within its individual components. Never before has the consequences of Peak Oil and Climate Change been applied and analysed for just one technology. The car would be an obvious starting point, we guess, but only as a by-word for almost all the technology that we take for granted in wealthy, industrialised, over-fed, northern/western countries. This book largely comes into its own when it isn't talking about cars. When it considers the wider aspects of technology in general and their inter-relationships with society, this book is on solid ground. However the authors' failure to understand the profound problems of a post-oil world is their greatest failing.

The authors accept the traditional orthodoxy of man-made climate change without question - but, heah, they are social scientists not climatologists. Their approach is less about understanding risk and more about examining systems. They describe climate change as the result of "enormously powerful systems" accelerating towards a precipice. It needs an equally powerful system to avert the abyss. What is needed "after the car" is a system that can provide the flexibility, comfort and secure personal mobility of a car, yet is entrenched in a low-energy, low-carbon world. In simple terms, it has to be sustainable - although these are our words not theirs. The authors do not underestimate the scale of what they are suggesting. On page 59 they write "Unlike the bus or train system, the car system is a way of life, an entire culture." They go on to point out how it has changed the "landscape for all other mobility systems that have to find their place within the landscape predominantly sculpted by the car system." Putting it simply; we live in an autotopia. We made the world in the image of the car. As the system is entrenched then it will take an unpredictable change (a "chaos point") to sweep it away. They also point out how dated the technology now is: "Well over a century old, and increasingly archaic because of its dependence on oil-based combustion, the car system is able to 'drive' out competitors... many homes in the rich north filled with the latest electrical and digital gadgets, and yet they sat alongside the oddly outdated petroleum-powered car." You could think of the car as an appropriate metaphor for our culture's entire addiction to fossil fuels. We should have moved on years ago if we hadn't moulded our society around an artificially created system of dependency. It isn't the car that needs to change - it is our relationship to it.

The chapter on "Technologies" covers just 30 pages. Of this space most of the technology is considered for its social impact. For example the geopolitical whelm is often invoked when describing the limitations of biofuels. There is not much in this section that most readers will not be already familiar with. It is all here from plug-in hybrids to hydrogen. What is also here is the "systems thinking" of the authors. Whereas we think of the car's technology being the nuts and bolts of the vehicle, these authors take a more holistic approach and consider the way cars relate to other cars within the road system. Future cars will know where they are and will know where all the other cars are around them. Hence a suitably intelligent car will know how to get you from A to B and may well know your priority in the pecking-order of the roads. If you can pay more you might get there a bit quicker - but only at the expense of other, poorer, road users. It is of concern to the authors that such systems might not come about because of the ethical dilemma of people sharing their private information in public spaces. On the face of it such a "social" consideration is the least of a future car-using society's problems. The car-system cannot become more complicated in a low-energy world. This is working against the rules of thermodynamics. Cultures that tend to increasing complexity in order to address resource constraints also tend towards instability and eventual collapse. This we know from the work of Jared Diamond. The authors of "After the Car" pay lip service to peak-oil only to act as if the problem is one of CCTV coverage. Where you are in the pecking order seems irrelevant if no one is on the roads because no one can afford to drive. The "systems thinking" here need to concern the transition to a world with a lot fewer cars. Indeed the authors don't actually explain how a digitised smart car system would solve any resource depletion issue. How does it save energy? Such systems are designed to shoe-horn MORE cars on the road and enhance safety. They are perfect for a packed planet with loads of energy. Only one of these two facets will remain true.

Thankfully, by the next chapter on "Organisations" the authors land on their feet and normality is restored. Here they actually consider our urban and country landscapes. We won't need cars if you can walk and cycle to work and the shops. Why go THERE when THERE can be HERE through the redesign of our cities? On page 102 we learn about the Stockholm Environment Institute Report that recommends "urbanscapes that encourage closer proximity between places of home, work, shops and leisure activities. This would reduce car dependence while strengthening community." The authors note a page later that "the EasyJet generation in the rich north of the world is not easily going to accept the notion that friends should be chosen from among those near at hand". Therein lies the difficulty for the Transition Towns movement. To move forward we need to take note of the 2007 report "The Disrupters. Lesson for Low-carbon Innovation from the New Wave of Environmental Pioneers" (London: Nesta. Authors: R. Willis, M. Webb & J. Wilsdon): "In short we need disruptive forms of innovation - cheaper, easier-to-use alternatives to existing products and services often produced by non-traditional players..." This is a question of "wider forms of innovation, such as innovation in organisational forms and business models". Thus we need a movement towards the "new urbanism" or "transit-orientated development" (TOD); "The TOD movement promotes itself as a 'major solution to the serious and growing problems of peak oil and global warming by creating dense, walkable communities connected to a train line that greatly reduce the need for driving and the burning of fossil fuels'."

The Transition Movement itself gets a slot on pages 121 through 123 although the authors are largely dismissive: "this innovative movement is largely restricted to smaller towns, where civic engagement and localised sustainable practices from the ground up have some chance of success." There is a lot of merit in this sort of conclusion and the authors return to this critique later in the book. By Chapter 7 the authors move on to "Scenarios" where they describe the global issues that face humanity. This really is the "Oil Wars" section of the book where Urry & Dennis cannot contain their dislike for the neo-liberal foreign policies of the recent US administration. For the authors the war on Global Warming replaces the War on Terror and the USA is lagging behind the rest of the world in trying to fight the latter rather than the former. If anything, US attempts to keep their SUV's running on foreign Oil is increasing their insecurity, not enhancing it. This hubris must end. The War on Terror is, as the authors conclude, "outdated". On page 132 this "such high carbon forms of life cannot continue; there will be an ending to the carbon hubris that has been the overwhelming legacy of the last century." By page 149 they have returned to their critique of "Local Sustainability" which they conclude is "possible and not probable" simply because it requires "huge reversals of almost all the systems of the twentieth century". Of course it hasn't occurred to the authors that this transition is far easier in a low-energy world than attempting to create the more complicated high-energy system that they suggest in their "more probable" hi-tech scenario. The next scenario they consider is "regional warlordism" which is the "Mad Max" scenario by anyone else's language. It leaves little to the imagination. Then there is their favoured hi-tech "digital networks of control" that fails to convince the reader of how it solves any problem and how it can be implemented. In fact the three scenarios are not mutually exclusive. In the real world they will be laid over top of each other.

The inevitable destination on our journey will be a low-energy world sustained by a renewed localism. Sadly the political system may resort to the warlordism model whilst a few lucky places might attempt the hi-tech model only for it to not sustain and collapse. Does the work of these two social scientists boil down to Heinberg's "waiting for the elixir"? Their assumptions about what is 'probable' and 'possible' seems to be reduce to what people will accept as requiring this least amount of change or personal discomfort. This confuses what is nice to have and what is essential. The future of the car cannot be business-as-usual. This book gets so much of the analysis correct but then seems to reach the wrong conclusion. It is sublime of them to state that (on page 162) "the global war on terror may be 'won', but only by losing the war on climate change." There may also be a fundamental truth behind their assumption that the hi-tech solution is the least likely to lead to the Mad Max scenario. The post-oil localism is compatible with warlordism and this is the inconvenient truth of the Realpolitik. The car system needs taming through multiple measures such as personal carbon allowances. Their final analysis is spot on "if climate change became a matter of democratic politics and not just the opportunity for new corporate investment, then it is possible to avoid both regional warlordism and digital networks." It is up to us.

Unfortunate preference for the hi-tech solution versus the simple low-energy option.
Very definitive analysis of where we stand as a high energy society in transition to a low energy, post-oil, future.

Brower "Consumer's Guide"

ISBN 0 609 80281 X. Full Title "The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices - Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists". Written by Michael Brower and Warren Leon (both PhD). Published by Random House in 1999. Well, if you, like us, had never heard of the 'Union of Concerned Scientists' then there is a little section at the back to explain - an independent NGO the UCS (in the U.S.) conducts studies and public education in order to influence government policy for a 'healthier environment'. Whatever that is. The book kicks off with an amazingly dumb anecdote about how a group of keen recyclers drove a car stuffed with newspapers all over someplace in hicksville USA looking for a recycling center. The anecdote has no point to make about wasting finite fossil fuels or your carbon footprint - no. The book is so steeped in North American mega-consumption culture that this simple matter never arose. Much to our astonishment. The book continues in a similar fashion even if the intro was a lamentable low point that they do (thankfully) recover from. For readers in Central Asia, the far East, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, well... Anywhere outside the USA, this book is mostly irrelevant. Its research (for what it is) is scientific but parochial. America is an exception to the rule. American's consume in a fashion that leave the average European as bewildered as European habits would bewilder a Sub-Saharan African. Hence many of the basic rules we learn as European low-carbon lifestyle devotees simply don't seem to apply to Americans. Some advice seems completely irrelevant and some is just plain wrong. At a time when tanker loads of precious Fossil Fuels can be saved by using bio-mass energy to heat our homes one of the primary recommendations of this report is that Americans must stop burning wood! Simple wood-burning stoves exist in Europe that meet strict no-smoke regulations. Apparently no such thing exists over the pond. On the other hand some of the reasoning is applicable. They correctly identify the American love of the automobile as a primary cause of Global Warming but seldom talk of cars. Americans now drive things called "light trucks". They have so far to go. In Europe our fridges have a low carbon footprint but in the USA they seem to guzzle energy like crazy for some reason. Likewise American spending patterns include categories for "firearms" and "swimming pool heaters". The book is out of date, lightweight on matters of resource depletion, and based on a couple of questionable studies. It is a vaguely useful read and the topic deserves far more research. It needs something like this for all major regions of the world. So, if you believe (as we do) that pollution and biodiversity threats are almost irrelevant in the face of Climate Change and Peak Oil then you will find this book next to useless. It does show how far America has to go to come even close to catching up with the rest of the Planet....

Heavily parochial to North America. Has a big wood-burning blindspot.
Actually gives you a useful overview and a good sense of scale on problems.

James Bruges "Big Earth Book"

ISBN 13 978 1 901970 87 6. Published by Alastair Sawday Publishing in 2007 with sponsorship from Yeo Valley Organic. When they say "BIG" they mean BIG. This is a coffee table heavyweight measuring 27cm x 20cm x 2.5cm (hardback) with 288 thick pages. The book is lavishly illustrated with large full-colour pictures and it looks like it is aimed at children ages 8 to 16 although I am sure adults will get a kick out of this. Despite the child-friendly layout the topic and language of the book is a far cry from the play ground. I was at first astonished then delighted as James explores the Economic fragility of this Globalised world. Indeed, the middle word of the title is misleading. This has nothing to do with the "Earth" in the typical 'ecology' sense. We all know that this planet will continue to circle the Sun for a good few billion years. Any loss of biodiversity today will finally be made up for my nature within a few million years. The only thing fragile about this "Earth" is the life of mankind. From the point of view of the Earth the existence of humans is a brief aberration in the scheme of things. Come and gone in the blinking of the geological eye. We are as Mayflies. No more. Why do we identify US as the "Earth"? We are not. The author states clearly he wishes to provoke the readership. If you give this to your kids thinking it will be about volunteering to save a few fluffy Panda's then you are in for a shock. Environmental destruction and loss of biodiversity - the typical litany of the Eco-type, is only a minor sub-topic. James is clearly well read on what damage mankind is doing to itself. You need only read the References section at the rear to know where he is coming from. He has used "The Economist", "New Scientist", Mark Lynas, Mayer Hillman, Aubrey Meyer, George Monbiot, Julian Darley, ASPO, Kenneth Deffeyes, Richard Heinberg, Roy Arundhati, George Soros, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers, Joseph Stiglitz, John Gray, James Lovelock, Gore Vidal, Greg Palast, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger and Michael T Klare to name but a few. James splits the book into four sections: "The Elements", "Money", "Power" and "Life". Ironically the last section is the weakest. The opening section details the well known litany of Climate Change & Ozone Depletion, but moves rapidly on to Peak Oil. Then, in "Money" he moves onto detail the problems of our Economies. He lists many alternative ideas for how a modern economic system could, and should, work. In "Power" he is largely writing on the Global Economy again but studies Third World Debt and the spread of American Hegemony. The "Life" section does not reach the heights of the middle two. It only raises the relevant point of Food Security. Here he struggles with his other chosen topics to illustrate the point he is making. The books just tales off into navel gazing. Maybe the Publishing house wanted the book a bit bigger so the author had to throw a few loose ideas into the back as padding? Apart from this minor criticism, this book does well to bang the drum about Money and Power and how it is destroying all of our collective futures. The author goes beyond books that say they offer solutions. James really does deliver. His pages sparkle with numerous bright ideas for alternative forms of human existence. Stunning. Buy this book now and scare your children into action. Don't be surprised if they don't rush out and save a hedgehog though... They are more likely to throw Molotov Cocktails at a G8 Summit after reading this!

The last section on "Life" is dispensable.
Fantastic quasi-political book in a format the kids and adults will love. Gives the whole picture. Brilliant.

Stephen Bushway "The New Woodburner's Handbook"

ISBN 978-0-88266-788-1. Stephen Bushway's "The New Woodburner's Handbook - A Guide to Safe, Healthy & Efficient Woodburning" was published by Storey Publishing in 1992. This book is eye-opening for all the wrong reasons. Firstly it is so very dated in being 17 years old and, secondly, it is a world removed because it covers the US market. All measurements are in Imperial and quantities of wood is discussed in "cords". As such it is a little like reading a Victorian Handbook on how to use a washboard. It has some quaint charm and is occasionally relevant. The early section (and several times through the book) reminds us how the modern wood-burning era in the U.S. began - the 1973 Oil Embargo. This seems appropriate but this is the only mention of Oil economics in the books as it doesn't look as if Peak Oil was on his mind when Bushway wrote this. The Author includes a section on U.S. Energy Policy in the early 1990's and this is quite illuminating as it paints a picture of an aspiration for a green energy revolution that does not seem to have happened. Talk about a wasted generation. Eight years of Clinton, eight years of Bush and it seems as if nothing happened in North America - still the same dreams, the same aspirations. American dreams unrealised. What is interesting for 1992 is just how much Global Warming features in the author's arguments for Wood Burning. It is almost as if time has stood still and we fell asleep in 1992 only to wake up in 2008 into a world where nothing had changed. It gives you a little hope that some Americans did "get it" back in the 1990's but it will leave you in despair that, despite those who "got it" it made no difference whatsoever. The economics of burning wood in the U.S. in the 1990's seemed very favourable with the author showing how much cheaper it was than Oil - hence its rising popularity among householders in North America. So much about this book stands out as seeming a little odd to the Northern European. There is a lengthy section of fire-safety that you would not get in similar books this side of the Atlantic. The reason is simple. Americans build their homes of wood so they need to be on the guard against the fire getting confused between fuel and walls. Stephen is a Chimney Sweep so you may well tire of the endless coverage of flue design and creosote prevention. This is one man's battle against chimney fires which, if you believed this, are so rife as to be on the brink of swallowing all our homes at any minute. You just don't get this sort of emphasis in the UK. All books on this topic published in recent times will focus on the modern clean-burn stoves that are required by the Clean Air Act. In 1992 the US EPA was only just introducing their own clean burn regulations for clean air in North America so we see a slice of time in which the old fashioned stoves were becoming obseleted. At this point our local books would finish but in North America Stephen spends a lot of the book discussing masonry stoves that are built into the fabric of the house. The author makes the burn cycles sound so complicated it would really put of many people considering getting a modern wood burning stove. Not for the beginner as this is misleading. Leave it off your Amazon Wish List. One for the curious only.... And those who wish to be a chimney sweep in the U.S. of A!

Three thumbs-down for being outdated and irrelevant
One thumbs-up for the unusual insight.