Salomon "The Energy Saving House"

ISBN 1-89804-935-1. "The Energy Saving House" by Thierry Salomon & Stéphane Bedel. This Book was published by the French "Eco-Centre" known as "Terre Vivante" and was adapted for the UK by CAT after purchasing the rights at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2001. A lot of the technology in the book is rather more suited to a Northern Mediterranean climate than our colder Northern European one. Hence the CAT edition went through some heavy rewriting. There is a lot of mention of Nuclear Power Stations throughout this slim book (142 pages) which also betrays its French origins. At points it makes you wonder if CAT regretted this decision as it may have been easier to start from scratch. Another oddity of this work is that it was backed by Friends of the Earth who we guess supplied some funding for the project. Both the original authors are engineers specialising in renewables. The first half of the books is little more than a primer for anyone wishing to build their own home as these sections largely deal with house design. For the vast majority of us who can do little about the aspect or design of our house this offers little useful advice. Few of us are about to rip up our floors to install underfloor heating. The section of Air Conditioning struggles to have any relevance in the UK. From the middle of the book we get on to simpler changes that can be retrofitted. There are a few interesting details about items most of us are already familiar with, such as light bulbs and plumbing fittings. However, there is almost nothing new here that you can't read about in a dozen other books. A very strange omission from the book is the near complete non-mention of Ground Source Heat Pumps. There is a brief mention of a "geothermal underfloor heating" which looks like a translation error. The layout of the book is pleasant and it is easy to read. However the scatter-gun effect of having lots of panels all over the page when the pages are so small is a little distracting. The foot notes should also have been at the back as they get in the way. There is a reasonably good resource section at the back and it is jammed with interesting facts and figures. However I would probably not recommend this to the UK audience or beginners. Getting hold of the Chris Goodall book is the best starting place in this more northerly position. Considering the cover price of £12 GBP this is also grossly over-priced for its tiny size. A small book can be good for someone who would be put off by a more mighty tome, but unless you are really interested in the maths, statistics, science & engineering, then this won't enlighten you. It would gather dust in a drawer. A wasted opportunity for FOE.

Not all suitable for Northern Europe. Mostly well-worn and overly-familiar solutions. Over-priced.
Full of facts and figures.

Dirk Thomas "The Woodburner's Companion"

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

Vandana Shiva "Soil Not Oil"

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger "Breakthrough"

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

Nicholas Stern - "A Blueprint for a Safer Planet"

ISBN 978-1-847-92037-9 (hbk). "A blueprint for a safer planet - how to manage climate change and create a new era of progress and prosperity" by Nicholas Stern was published by The Bodley Head in 2009. Stern is of course the famous author of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change and former Chief Economist at the World Bank. One may think that Stern would be slightly away with the fairies in this 246 page book (including acknowledgements, introduction, ten chapters, notes, bibliography and index). However a stint in the World Bank doesn't seem to have cured him of his fanciful sense of morality that may so alienate him from what might be considered the mainstream of Economic study. Indeed we might believe Stern as somewhat of a maverick if viewed through the eyes of neo-liberal-market-takes-care-of-all-economics of the Chicago School. Stern's experience with development in Asia and Africa over a thirty year period obviously leaves a deep impression and he puts third world development at the core of much of his message. There is not a great deal here that you probably won't get from Oliver Tickell's "Kyoto 2" but you do get to see the world through the eyes of an economist. His view is undoubtedly distorted, imperfect, but refreshing.

If you believe in infinite growth on a finite planet then you are either mad... or an economist - as the old saying goes. Stern shares the gentle madness of his profession. He cannot abandon growth. This may be fair if viewed through the lens of third world development but he pretty much assumes global economic growth through the duration of the next forty years. This is not to say that he is unaware of peak oil. Indeed it is mentioned buried in the text in a few places. We do get treated to his view that mitigating climate change will decarbonise the economy so that it is more resilient to future fossil fuel shortages. However this point only arises in a few brief passages. Stern is still at the foothills of his understandings of the limits to growth. Maybe they just don't teach this concept in economics? Clearly he is slightly blind-sided by his unswerving faith in "low-carbon growth". For him technology and markets will sort everything out. Climate change is the result of a market imperfection hence governments must intervene to smooth out the imperfections This is all pretty much standard fair for all those who have flown too close to the bright burning heart of government and felt themselves slightly tinged. It is very new Labour. Very "third way".

Stern has no time for climate change sceptics. He is actually quite dismissive which doesn't show him in a good light. So the second weak point of the book is Stern's lack of concern for the science. Don't get me wrong, he is very concerned about the IPCC version of the "science" but he doesn't question it. For him it is all about mitigating risk. For this we heartily cheer him on but there is an air of dogmatism about it that suggest he will never meet his "debunkers" half way. If he cannot see the other side of the argument it may trip him up. For example, this book was written in 2008 whilst Stern was looking forward to Copenhagen COP15 in December 2009. He writes as if it will be the greatest and last chance to save the planet. Writing in March 2010 I guess it is easy to be somewhat sneering about Stern's enthusiasm for what turned into an utter fiasco. Maybe he should have been more familiar with the Realpolitik? Stern shows us that a deal is possible and gives us yet another framework. Yet the deal didn't happen. Why? There is more to this than meets the eye.

Stern takes time in this book to answer some of his critics. This has been his chance to absorb what he has learnt since he published "...the Economics of Climate Change" and update it in a user-friendly form. He comes out fighting on the matter of discounting. I doubt if this will sway the critics because the entire topic of discounting is an area of economics shrouded in value judgements. However, having read a great deal about what his critics had to say it is worth a read of his self-defence. The defence is actually very robust. He really HAS thought hard about why he projected discounting in the Stern Report in the way he did. Towards the end of the book Stern comes up with an idea for the restructuring of the IMF, World Bank and WTO. He suggests merging the World Bank with the IMF (as if anyone really understood the difference) and then creating a new third body to over-see the international economic work to combat climate change, decarbonise the economy and help poor people adapt. This is a typical Stern-type solution. However, it is novel. It just might work. Maybe we really have a crisis of governance at an international level? Maybe such a body could actually punish countries for not getting on board? And maybe such a body could finally extinguish third world odious debt? Stern doesn't much mention the forgiving of debt as a method of allowing poor countries to adapt to climate change and grow low-carbon economies. However it is a vital element. What is the purpose of using CDM (Clean Development Mechanisms) to siphon Western money into the Majority South if it is only sucked right back out again as debt repayment? Shameful. Drop the debt Stern. Make it policy.

Finally Stern ridicules his critics for completely failing to understand the very nature of the risk that climate change brings. He also (finally) points out that high discount rates assume endless economic growth based upon the endless availability of cheap fossil fuels. You simply cannot stick the money in the bank and hope that we will become so rich in fifty years so as to conjure away the damage that climate change may have caused - and will cause. Here he uses the projection of the IEA (International Energy Agency) to pour cold water on the idea that our economic growth is secure. Since oil prices will rise then the only growth sectors will be those that are ready and resilient. For Stern the economy can only grow in a post-peak oil world if it using post-carbon technology. In this he is spot on even if he underestimates just how difficult a task that conversion will be. Chapter 7 does mention the roles of communities and individual actions but Stern offers nothing new. There is no mention of Transition Initiatives. One suspects that, for Stern, it is a matter for the big boys in Government and the World Bank to manage this transition. But we wouldn't expect him to belief anything else would we? This book is a work slightly flawed but with it heart in all the right places. Recommended but a dry read.

The result of the field of economics. It makes no new leaps in imagination. Rather misses the point on economic growth and debt relief.
A useful deconstruction of the discounting argument. It is nice to know that some economists are good guys and some even want to fight poverty AND climate change.

Stuart Sutherland "Irrationality"

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

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

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

Oliver Tickell "Kyoto 2"

ISBN 978-1-84813-025-8. "Kyoto2 - How to Manage the Global Greenhouse" by Oliver Tickell was published by Zed Books in 2008. It seems odd reading this 293 paperback book in the period after COP15 at Copenhagen (early/mid-December 2009). The book we reviewed BEFORE reading this, was Chris Goodall's "Ten Technologies..." which dealt with the leading technology that offers hope of a decarbonised world. Chris's work was completely devoid of any global political dimension but he gave us hope that we had the tools at our disposal (now or in the near future) to tackle the decarbonisation of advanced, industrialised, western, northern, nations. Tickell rather picks up where Goodall leaves off and takes us into the global economic policy zone with the market mechanisms whereby change will be encouraged. Whereas Chris's work was very easy reading Tickell has chosen a rather more tortuous route. This is not easy reading and should come with a 'layman-buyer-beware' sticker. This book will seriously confuse you! The front cover boasts a quote from George Monbiot who acclaims Tickell's "intelligent treatment of the politics and economics of climate change". Certainly it is "intelligent" if he mean "largely non-intelligible" but I would not go as far as to claim that it deals with the politics of climate change.

In fact this book does not go into the politics at all so if you wish to understand WHY COP15 was such a miserable failure then don't buy this book. However, in its favour it certainly shows two things: firstly that there is no insurmountable obstacle to forging a global deal of climate change and, secondly, there is no problem with getting the free-market heavily involved, even if its past history has been nothing short of a disaster. This book represents a harsh criticism of the failure of the market mechanisms so far adopted. The author attacks failings in both the European Emissions Trading Scheme (EUETS) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) but, after demolishing past efforts, he goes on to suggest market mechanisms for carbon trading. Praise for Caesar indeed. The explanations of the economics of these market mechanisms (ie, Taxes versus subsidies and so on) goes into a level of detail that few will see outside of a Degree-level economics text book. I know - I studied economics until the age of 18 but have not seen some of the theories described here. This is why we believe this book is certainly not for the casual reader, which is a shame because the author is demonstrating (in the most difficult way possible) that we know everything we need to know about how to deploy economic policy to rid the world of its carbon-fuelled legacy. It is highly plausible. He also makes room for non-market mechanisms and shows how different approaches yield different cost-benefits. For example it can be cheaper to legislate against certain types of emissions whilst in other cases the Montreal Protocol to deal with ozone-depleting gasses has been far more successful and far cheaper in eradicating emissions of potent Greenhouse Gasses than Kyoto1 ever was.

So we know what can be done. We know what has to be done. It isn't rocket science even if it looks like it. However, none of this explains why the December 2009 opportunity to use all of this know-how failed to do so. Somehow economics meets politics and everyone loses. Which is a massive shame as the author tries very hard to demonstrate that there should be NO losers in his scheme. He suggests choosing the cheapest methods to guarantee emission reductions mostly through auctioning emission rights. This will raise $1trillion per year which will be spent on an entire shopping list of measure which include research into renewables, adaptation in the third world and disaster relief. Some measures will surprise the more 'green' of our readers. Investing in fusion power and geo-engineering research might annoy a few.... Whilst Tickell's praises for the voluntary offset industry might just set George Monbiot's head spinning.... But this is the strength of Tickell's work. He know what will work and it is free of any specific dogma or ideology. Maybe it is for this reason that the politicians will not use the Kyoto2 solution. It seems we have leaders who demand that somebody has to lose. With this one false belief we are all losers. Recommended.

A very complicated read. It demands your attention.
Demonstrates what can be done with an intelligent treatment of economic policy. Beautiful.

Kingsley Dennis and John Urry "After the Car"

Coming soon.
Coming soon.

Peter Taylor "Chill - A reassessment of global warming theory"

ISBN 978 1 905570 19 5. Peter Taylor's "Chill - A reassessment of global warming theory - Does climate change mean the world is cooling, and if so what should we do about it?" was published by Clairview Books in 2009. The publisher is based out of Forest Row in Sussex and have brought us all the works of Richard Heinberg and Gore Vidal. This should give us a bit of a clue that this is no ordinary Climate Change sceptic book. Indeed, far from it. If there is one book about the current state of Climate Change science that we recommend everyone reads it would probably be this one. We have reviewed other books here that have been sceptical about human-induced climate change. Those such as Lawrence Solomon's "The Deniers" (Richard Vigilante Books 2008) and Patrick Michael's "Meltdown" (Cato Institute 2004) have been well written and enjoyable. They have given us a side to the story that was useful even if didn't change anything. Others, such as Ian Plimer's "Heaven and Earth" (Quartet Books 2009) and Ian Wishart's "Air Con" (Moon Publications 2009), were nothing but rants by representatives of the fossil fuel industry or those with crazy extreme right-wing conspiracy theories. "Chill" is certainly not the latter and probably has most in common with Solomon's book.

Whereas fellow-environmentalist Lawrence Solomon started his work questioning the authenticity of human-induced climate change, because he believed it was being used as a vehicle to promote the Nuclear Industry, Peter Taylor started to question the findings of the IPCC because he was an insider. He became concerned that some bad science applied to bad politics and bad policy could lead to bad decisions that would effect communities, rural life and biodiversity. It sounds a little like he is worried that all those wind farms, wave machines and tidal barrages might effect a few bunny rabbits - but his concerns a far deeper. If he was only concerned about "biodiversity, rural life and communities" we could quickly dismiss him. We see no evidence that the work of the IPCC either threatens nature or people in any significant way or is being hijacked by any specific industry lobby group. If anything the agenda of the last 30 years has been dominated by the Fossil Fuel lobby. Hence we should be suspicious of anyone who maintains otherwise (Plimer, Wishart, et al). Taylor may be concerned about the destruction of habitat to support bio-fuel farming but his fears are no different from those of other environmentalists. It is just that other environmentalists don't thus turn around and question the authenticity of the work of the IPCC - they just blame politicians and private corporations for distorting the message to their own advantage. In this Taylor approaches the problem with almost nothing to gain. He has no over-riding ideology and this is quite unusual. It makes him worth listening to. He could have just shut up and do the same as all the other environmentalists - follow the existing orthodoxy without question whilst tackling the politicians & corporations as a separate systemic problem. But he chose not to. He has decided to pull the mat out from under the entire circus. In this he has chosen curious bed-fellows. Much of his book reads like a better-written version of Plimer's "Heaven and Earth" but the two authors are ideologically poles apart. The content of the book may not be novel but, because of who wrote it, this is game-changing. Taylor sometimes refers to the work of other climate change sceptics but then immediately lambastes them for their laissez faire politics. This isn't some conspiracy for him. It's just a mistake or, as he puts it, "a collusion of interests". Taylor does not accept that doubts about the science lead us to conclude that we need do nothing. He believes the opposite.

Taylor is a genuine environmentalist  who is experienced in helping Governments (including the UK, European Parliament and the UN) turn science into policy. His experiences have shown him two things; firstly the system of UN quangoes can lead to distortions of the science, and secondly; computer models are dressed up as science whereas they can be the creations of their makers and subject to human influence. Taylor has a scientific background (he is a genuine scientist) but his career has taken him into the Policy-making backrooms. He has worked in diverse fields from 'alternative energy' to the modelling of the effects of pesticide run-off. He has seen policy formulation from the inside. His stint at Greenpeace no doubt will earn him the reputation as an "environmentalist" - the type that no doubt Ian Plimer would therefore condemn as not being a 'real' scientist (maybe an "environmental romantic"). He stands for sustainable development and appropriate technology. Unlike other climate change sceptics Taylor is certainly NOT arguing for 'business-as-usual'. In fact he strongly believes that we are all threatened by climate change but that it might not be all man-made or even going in the direction we think. We could be threatened by global cooling. If so then we have engineered our ecology and culture so as to be highly vulnerable to ANY changes in climate.  If it is one thing we learnt from the lamentable work of Ian Plimer and it was that Global Cooling is far worse than Global Warming. Natural cycles are poorly understood and modelled. Natural swings in climate could drown out any human-warming signature. Our eye is simply on the wrong ball. It would be nice to be right for the right reasons rather than the wrong ones. We should decarbonise, depopulate and relocalise to toughen ourselves up for whatever nature can throw at us. We should be open minded to other possibilities and not reject scepticism for fear that it is motivated by money. In this case it certainly is not!

The book has its low points that somewhat distract from a well-thought-through study. Chapter 14 "Urgency and Error" descends into farce with Taylor coming out with such rhetoric as "the low-carbon economy is a myth". Some of the statements made in this chapter simply do not square with what he says in most of the rest of the book. You might think he had Plimer do a guest-spot. Taylor does not hide his disdain for the very environmental groups he used to work with and for. He accuses them of all becoming global corporations and losing touch with communities and grass-roots involvement. Hence they are pushing a corporate-style agenda without thought to what humanity needs nor any regard for what the science says. He particularly picks on onshore wind turbines and biofuel plantations again and again to justify this. Sadly this suggest that the author should simply get out more. There is nothing here you cannot read on regular occasions in the public domain in such magazines as The Ecologist or New Internationalist. Environmental groups are well aware of the limits to growth and the corruption of the development model. For a man who once worked closely with Tim Jackson, on the development of the precautionary principle, Taylor seems to have spent the last ten years loose in a sea of cynicism. We suggest he spends less time reading New Scientist (which he quotes at length) and a bit more time studying the actual campaigns of Environmental Groups. He may also care to write a few words about the Transition Town movement that he appears to have never heard of. It seems the world has moved on since the mid-1990's and Taylor remains ill-informed. Although he often refers to Peak Oil he also appears to know little of the urgency in which fossil fuel depletion needs mitigation. It only lags behind Climate Change scenarios by a few years. We may choose to slow down the pace at which we reduce our carbon footprints but the case for securing our energy security has never been more urgent.

The very final Chapter 16 "Reflections from Anthropology" adds nothing to this book and should have been ditched. In fact the further Taylor gets from the basic science the further he wanders off into his own fanciful universe. This is a shame because there remains a fundamental "rightness" to his work. However it is so deeply flawed in many of the details that most readers will be infuriated. This book, with a bit of editing, could easily be one of the most important books on climate change and local resilience you could ever read. It just falls short. The big problems are in the second half of the book when Taylor tackles "The Politics". Even then the first half on "The Science" is very hard to read and you need a PhD to understand any of it. All that most people will learn is that climate is complicated! The science is rapidly evolving and several strands are evolving away from the predominant orthodoxy about human CO2 and temperature rise. Our contribution may be smaller than we first thought and we may be riding a set of natural cycles that could give us a bumpy ride. The IPCC largely disregard this new evidence as it doesn't fit with their previous Policy Statements. Once they made a commitment to one over-riding theory it has been difficult for new knowledge to get a look-in. This is the danger of politics meeting science. Politics wants certainty. Science can only deliver probability. As Taylor says "Once a science is 'settled' it is liable to stagnate". At times Taylor compares the "war on Climate Change" to the "war on terror" or the equally ill-fated "war on drugs". Ouch.

Taylor writes (page 11) "Past cycles of cooling have brought severe famine at times when the global population was very much smaller and less vulnerable to climate fluctuations. Sixty-seven countries are now dependent upon external food aid... coming from surpluses in the northern grain belt... the world population is set to double... at the same time as oil production, upon which agricultural surpluses depend, begins to decline." Here-in lies an important point. It matters not whether you believe in the dogma of human-induced global warming. That is semantics in comparison to the challenge we face in our oil-addicted culture. If anything changes, for whatever reason, then we are not resilient to these changes any more. We are at risk. When we are at risk we need to know what is going on and how to prepare for it. Hence IF the consensus on the human causes of climate change is wrong, OR if we have got warming confused with natural cooling, then we are planning to offset the WRONG disaster with the wrong tools. Transition Towns might want to be careful about the claimed causes of Climate Change for fear of being seen to cry wolf once too often. We have to pitch the right message. Taylor's reassessment suggests that we cause only 20% of climate change. He goes on to suggest that, realistically, an 80% cut in CO2 emissions will only reduce the driving force by 9%. We hope he is right. Recommended.

Statements about renewable energy are largely unjustified and criticisms of the environmental movement bear to relationship to reality.
A really, really good book that we should all be reading. We should be open minded to the idea that resilience to climate change is more important than carbon footprints.

Ruppert "Crossing the Rubicon"

ISBN 0 86571 540 8. Michael C. Ruppert's "Crossing the Rubicon - The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil". Published by New Society Publishers in 2004. This book weighs in at 674 pages (paperback) and it will put you back some time to wade through it all.  The Title suggests scholarly insight on the scale of Noam Chomsky. This is misleading. There is nothing in this book about the "decline" of the American Empire. Indeed - entirely the opposite. The author sets about proving that the US is at the zenith of is power and, as he believes, is orchestrating a careful plan to seize control of the World's Oil supplies as they start to run out. They will use the cover of security operations against Terrorism to do this. The events of September 11th 2001 will be their Battle flag. As such there is nothing original here as this is generally believed by the majority of the World's population. Where Ruppert goes further is in his detailed evidence search to back up his beliefs in a multitude of layered conspiracy theories. He starts with largely groundless beliefs that the US money Markets run on drug money. Then he waxes lyrical about some completely irrelevant database-linking software called "PROMIS" in which the US Government built 'back doors' in order to spy on everyone. Then he goes on to his set piece that dominates most of the Book - his 9/11 Conspiracy theories. He believes that the US Government conducted events that day with Radio-Controlled Airliners and phantom radar blips. This is undermined by his lack of hard evidence. It is all vague. He uses innuendo & rumour. He connects unconnected events & peoples to build his case. He has no case. He claims that the Pentagon attack was never witnessed although this is not true. The BBC interviewed a witness on a documentary in 2006. Ruppert was a former LA Cop who personally witnessed CIA involvement in Drug running. In this he is undoubtedly sincere and he was probably a good cop. However he will never serve in the legal profession if he thinks this passes as evidence. Sadly all the noise he generates can only distract the reader from the REAL scientific facts on Peak Oil. Peak Oil is an internationally recognised scientific and geological fact that is undisputed. 9/11 conspiracy theories are just that - theories. The book is a very personal work and totally based on the authors work at the "From The Wilderness" Publication. He see no irony in labelling his critics as CIA cronies simply because they do exactly what he does - overload the reader with nonsense so as to bury the genuine facts that we should all be concerned about. Believe it, the USA will destroy anything that gets in its way for the last Oil on the Planet. Probably any other Nation in their position would do the same. A lot of blood is going to be spilt for Oil which is why we must turn our back on it and soon. A Book not recommended unless 9/11 conspiracies are your thing. Disappointing.

Paranoid conspiracy theories linking Peak oil to 9/11.
Thick slice through the American power system. He might be right.

Solomon "The Deniers"

ISBN 978-0-9800763-1-8. "The Deniers - The World-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so)" was written by Lawrence Solomon and published by Richard Vigilante Books in 2008. Any stalwart believer in man-made climate change is going to have to over-come a couple of hurdles before they pick up this book. Firstly, the ludicrous title! Although the book suggests anecdotally that several scientists may have been isolated, for their beliefs, there is not much here that would have you believe in either "hysteria", "persecution" or "fraud". Solomon blows it right there on the front cover. Although the scientific mainstream may have cold-shouldered some individuals it is well documented that within politics (and specifically under the George W Bush regime) the men with power (mainly oil-men as it turned out) cold shouldered the entire scientific establishment on the matter. Anyone who has been pressing for action on climate change would have given their right arm for just a little "hysteria" on the matter. Clearly there has not been enough. Yes, some newspapers have indulged in their fair-share of 'climate-porn' but even this has done little to stir the political elite into anything resembling action. As for fraud? Well, this book presents no evidence of fraud whatsoever. So you have to wonder why Solomon (a Canadian anti-Nuclear Environmentalist) would deliberately come up with such in inaccurate, provocative and absurd title? This never really gets answered but if you were brave enough to get past the front cover then you would get the quick impression the Solomon has a big axe to grind with Al Gore (who he contemptuously cores "Mr Gore" through the book), the media and the UN. As we have seen from "An Inconvenient Truth" the Media can't win as they get cruelly denounced by both sides of the argument. The effect is to cancel each other out only leaving us with criticism of the IPCC and the scientific establishment. So if you were brave enough to get past the front cover, the dust cover blurb and Chapter One (plus, I might add, a scornful George Marshall blog) you will have penetrated the meat and bones of Solomon's writing on the matter - and you will be richly rewarded. This is actually a very interesting book. It is probably best if you review each chapter in the light of a little internet research but this is well worth a read. Of course for anyone who holds onto climate change with a dogmatic, faith-based, vigour then even acknowledging such a book exists counts you as the spawn of the devil. However if you really want to acknowledge that a little debate is a good thing then get yourself a copy of this and read it with an open mind. Solomon is an old-school environmentalist who campaigned against Canada's Nuclear expansion. Back then (the 1970's) he remembers clearly his own lobby group being smeared as the stooges of the Oil industry - hence his interest was piqued when the, so-called, climate change deniers were tarred with the same brush. His research (he is a journalist) suggested to him that the IPCC may be stampeding political opinion towards unwise action to brake climate change. This includes expanding nuclear power. To be fair to him he does not attempt to settle any arguments. He only gives room for the dissenting voices and looks at their academic credentials. Most of these skeptics actually genuinely do believe that man-made Carbon emissions are warming our atmosphere. However they admit that their own research either shows no proof of this or indicates that it will be nothing like as bad as we may have been bought to believe. Most admit that the decarbonisation of the economy is inevitable and a good thing, so they don't care if the science is imperfect. This seems reasonable. Other analysis suggests that the IPCC processes are flawed and set out on its mission to proof that mankind was effecting the climate and tended to ignore any evidence to the contrary. Some of the IPCC gaffs were completely laughable but were later corrected. All of which leave us wondering exactly what to conclude? This is the flip side of the coin and it healthy to see this side once-in-a-while. However it all largely proves nothing other than that the Climate is really, really, complicated and that we barely understand it at all. The fact that the scientific establishment have established a mechanism for how mankind can geo-engineer the climate leaves us to conclude that we should not, henceforth, set about it with gusto. We are better off without fossil fuels - period. Many dissenting voices fear that the cost of coming off this addiction is so high that we should be more conservative and do less cutting back - or try and adapt more. This is utter rubbish. There is no future in the carbon-economy. We do it now or later. The longer we leave it the harder it will be. So we may as well roll up our sleeves and get on with it. A recommended read.

Author motivated by extreme hatred of Nuclear Power as a solution to anything.
An eye-opening and refreshing book. Worth a read.

Speth "Red Sky at Morning"

ISBN 0 300 10232 1. Yale University Press published in 2004. "Red Sky at Morning - America and the Crisis of the Global Environment - A Citizen's Agenda for Action". James Speth was an environmental adviser to both Carter and Clinton Presidencies. He has also been CEO of the UN Development Programme. However, beware any book with two subtitles - it smacks of 'looking for an audience'. Speth writes about the initial success in the USA on government action to protect nature during the 1970's and then looks at how such success did not materialise on a global scale. As an "insider" he provides interesting insight into various successes and failures from the 70's until the present day. On the way he takes in various initiatives from the protection of endangered species through to Global Warming and Kyoto. He cites numerous facts and figures making this a useful source book. However, a guide to 'action' it is not. He hastily shoved a few pages on the back with list of web sites to visit. It is very much an after-thought and reminds you of the end of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" where he completely forgot to talk about solutions. Speth probably has much in common with Gore in that he has spent time in the Whitehouse at Presidential level and rose to that level of seniority through his ability to use the appropriate Economic and Political language to define what is wrong with the world. Greenpeace activist he is not. This is actually a positive feature of this work and we recommend this for its novel point-of-view. Beware - it is based at a US audience. It is a perfect briefing as to the workings of the UN and inter-governmental climate-change initiatives as well as a critique of these global bodies.

Not really a guide for action at all.
An Al Gore-type eye view of the world.

Rowbotham "Grip of Death"

ISBN 978 1 897766 40 8. "The Grip of Death - A study of modern money, debt slavery and destructive economics" was published by Jon Carpenter Publishing in 1998. This is Michael Rowbotham's predecessor to his 2000 work "Goodbye America" with which it has so much in common. Much of "Goodbye America" was lifted straight from the work he wrote only two years before. Whereas the latter book focussed on Debt in the international arena "The Grip of Death" looks largely at domestic British economics. The author develops a framework for the adoption of an alternative money supply system to be phased into UK macro-economic policy in stages. However to get to this section of the book the reader has to wade through large sections of the author's flights of fancy in which he imagines that nearly all of life's problems are caused by debt finance. The reason we work so hard? Debt. Inflation? Debt. International Trade? Debt. Any poverty? Debt... And on it goes. On and on for 326 pages of what most readers will find to be utterly dull writing. No wonder most people have no idea how the finance system works. This could be genius but it is so impenetrable and difficult to understand that few will take the time to study its meaning in depth. Of note is the section on modern farming. Rowbotham maintains that "shortage of purchasing.... can be shown to be responsible for the reliance of the modern economy on constant growth, distorting that growth towards a low-price market, fostering excessive commercial transport and conferring and undue advantage upon corporate business in the international arena." However his theory that debt finance forces manufacturers to make low quality goods is quite beyond belief and experience. Mass production has made products available to most people in quantities unimaginable to our forebears. This is not a bad thing. People would rather have a disposable product than none at all. The author falsely believes that the quality of goods is falling and that there were some high quality goods, made in yesteryear, that lasted forever. This is a gross generalisation substantiated by nothing more than Rowbotham's opinions. Indeed each chapter is backed up by barely a handful of references. It is not a well researched work in the manner of a Noam Chomsky book (where the references section often takes up a third of the entire book!). Rowbotham concludes that "What currently dominates world politics and economics is not true conspiracy; it is a mistake. It is a conspiracy of error. We are witnessing the collective pursuit of an inoperable political ideal and an erroneous economic paradigm, built on a totally inadequate, misunderstood and almost unchallenged financial system.... the entire edifice of their economic and political practice is wildly misguided. And for them to realise it is false, they need to be aware of the practical alternatives." The author sees this as a political and macro-economic problem solved by Governments creating money and partially removing this power from the banks. Although there is tremendous wisdom in this idea it is not clear if Rowbotham fully understands its importance. For him it appears to be a mechanism to support the people's ability to consume. However, it is the current system's need for perpetual growth and its inability to contract that is its weakness. We consume to the detriment of our own future. We consumed the oil and spoilt the climate so the growth must stop and be replaced by a sustainable contraction. Hence the money system must change. This is the importance of credit finance to our future. Sadly this author seems to miss this most obvious of points. He makes a very poor ambassador for monetary reform. Which is a shame. Read this book if you can.

Sometimes miles off topic and self-indulgent. Will lose most readers. Lacks objectivity.
Monetary Reform for the UK reader.