Book Review: The Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins

Rob Hopkins founded the Transition Movement whose aim is to build resilience to the twin threats of peak oil and climate change in communities through a return to localisation of services. The model has been applied most prominently in Kinsale in Ireland, Totnes in Devon and Lewes in Sussex and is now springing up all over the UK and indeed the world. This book is essentially both a manifesto for the concept and a 'how to guide' for its implementation.

He starts by making a persuasive argument that peak oil and climate change cannot be addressed in isolation - otherwise a solution to one could worsen the other. The second section of the book is about presenting a positive vision of a resilient future and the third is on how to get there. Hopkins' background is in permaculture and it is no surprise that many of the examples in the book are of the local food, 'rustic' skills and vernacular building. The transition movement has also experimented with using local currencies to strengthen local economies.

The first thing to say is that, as a book, The Transition Handbook is superb. Hopkins practises everything he preaches - a positive vision and a no blame culture - and his prose is clear, personal and anecdotal without ever being cheesy. The participation techniques he outlines are clear and effective - I pinched one (storytelling the positive vision) for a corporate workshop I was running last month and it worked a treat. The only things I felt were a bit underdeveloped were some more examples outside permaculture and local currencies - for example, I'm sure the Transition Movement could help persuade people to walk and cycle rather than driving, or roll out an extra layer of insulation in their loft. While teaching self-build skills is admirable, it will have little effect on carbon emissions in the short-medium term where action is required. This is a minor niggle - as I said the book is superb and I will be using it and its engagement and practical techniques more and more as time goes on.

On the Transition Movement itself, the argument for moving in this direction is compelling. The big challenge is whether they can extend their appeal beyond the people (including me!) who naturally flock to this kind of thing. It is no surprise that the Transition concept started in the UK in Totnes and Lewes - places with a long history of alternative living and thinking. Transition Brixton will be a key test of whether the man in the Pringle sweater, the woman in the M&S dress and the teenagers in the Kappa tracksuit will join the people in 'ethnic trousers' who have flocked to the movement. Again this is no criticism of the Transition Movement itself, more a reflection on the challenges ahead.

Book Review: Do Humans Dream of Electric Cars?

This booklet, full title "Do Humans Dream of Electric Cars?: Your Journey to Sustainable Travel" has been published by Sustrans - the UK's leading sustainable transport charity who are most famous for the National Cycle Network which criss-crosses the country. I should confess now that I'm a member of Sustrans and was until recently a Volunteer Ranger for a couple of miles of that network.

The booklet is laid out in what I call a Purple Ronnie style - informal cartoons, handwritten comments and a deliberate mish-mash of text fonts. I'm not a big fan of this sort of thing personally, but on a climate change communication programme I worked on, it came out as the favoured style with the general public, so what do I know?!

The whole book is obviously designed to be accessible, lightweight, thought provoking - something to dip into in the dentist's waiting room - and it works. There are no real surprises in terms of content - walking, cycling, lift sharing, public transport, car clubs - but the polemic against offsetting seemed slightly out of place (I think a charity should be more even handed). While the booklet does encourage the reader to campaign for low-transport planning like local shops and services, I saw nothing about more distributed work practices. Working from home will not only cut commuting, but support those local services - the evaporation of local shops has as much to do with consumer preference as it does your local planning department.

So, in summary, fresh and light, something to stimulate the uninitiated rather than inform the hardened eco-liver.

Book Review: Carbon Detox by George Marshall

I was going to write a book on eco-living because most of them are so goddamn awful they make me want to scream. Well, that idea has now been dropped after reading George Marshall's Carbon Detox because it does everything I wanted to do and a whole lot more...

In extremely short, witty chapters, Marshall demolishes the standard message on climate change - "we're all doomed unless you switch off your 'phone charger and reuse your plastic bags" - showing just how preposterous this is. Big problems require big solutions and we should see that as exciting, fun and ultimately fulfilling.

The first few parts of the book take you on an elegant skip through the science and, importantly, the psychology, of climate change and its solutions. Marshall's skill as a communicator is extraordinary - he gets all the important points across with a light touch. The psychology part is particularly welcome - urging us to confront our internal deniers and make action work for us.

The practical part of the book is a simple carbon calculator and a serious of chapters on how to "drop a tonne" in different elements of your own lifestyle. He nails the issues that most commentators get wrong, eg the more you spend, the bigger your impact, and makes suggestions counter to the tree-hugger ideal: spend your money on employing people to improve your life, an expensive suit is more eco-friendly than a cheap suit and there's nothing wrong with the occasional carbon splurge if you've tackled the big habitual impacts. As he keeps repeating, "the only thing that matters is the carbon bottom line."

The final section is for those who want to "thrive" in this arena - make a career out of being low carbon and he uses a number of case studies.

There are a couple of points I would debate (eg he rates green electricity tariffs as zero carbon) and there are a number of typos, but I have no major criticisms. It should also be noted that, while this book is aimed at the individual, his approach to 'messaging' ("not another bloody polar bear") and engagement will be of great interest to professionals and activists who are spreading the word through public/staff awareness.

Verdict: Buy it, read it, read it again, buy it for your friends.

Book Review: The Big Earth Book by James Bruges

James Bruges' book is a fast paced race through a huge range of environmental issues - structured into four sections - the elements (earth, fire, air and water), money, power and life. Each section is further subdivided into short 2-4 page chapters on a particular subject. The breadth of these subjects is highly impressive - Bruges has taken the time to understand everything from the use of biochar to sequester carbon to the international monetary system to the social structures of elephants - and they are all expressed in a clear easy to understand manner. The book is beautifully laid out too, with some fantastic illustrations and pictures.

However, there is a fundamental flaw in The Big Earth Book - it is trying to be both an compendium and a polemic and it just doesn't work.

To be a polemic it needs a coherent thread of argument, backed up by carefully referenced research and evidence, but any threads are disrupted by the compendium structure. For example Bruges makes it clear in some chapters that he feels that the pursuit of economic growth is harmful, that GDP is unrelated to happiness and that some 'undeveloped' cultures are much happier than ours due to the way they organise their society and its meagre finances. On the other hand in other chapters he attacks the unequal distribution of wealth in the world and criticises the WTO on the basis that Mexico only managed 1% growth by following their policies, whereas Vietnam managed 5% by breaking the rules. This is having one's cake and eating it - GDP can't be evil and a measure of progress/equality at the same time.

To be an effective compendium, an objective view is required required, but this book is one-eyed in its pursuit of perceived sinners and their sins. The unrelenting cynicism for the establishment, political structures and the sustainable development movement ignores the fact that those structures are what we have to work with if we want to reform the system. An occasional unjustified sweeping statement undermines many of the arguments - for example to imply that Abraham Lincoln may have assassinated for his proposed reform of the banking system, rather than for his emancipation of black Americans, requires a better justification than "his assassination has never fully been explained."

Both aims are let down by the sporadic use of citations. While there's a biography for each chapter, there's a dearth of specific references for facts quoted in the text (although it has to be said that the 'life' section is better referenced than the others). This makes it impossible to verify the source and determine whether any statement is a measured fact, an opinion of someone else (and who that is) or Bruges' own views. This is a real shame as I learnt loads from this book and would like to be able to check back and quote the source of data and facts in my own publications and presentations.

This book will be great fuel for the indignant armchair activist - and a jolly good read if you want to broaden your view of the issues. However it is a flawed gem, undermined by its own ambition and subjectivity - which is a shame given the hard work, belief and passion that has clearly gone into it.

If you are a hardcore sustainability thinker...

...then check out my review of Sustainability by Design here.

Book Review: Ready, Set, Green - Graham Hill & Meaghan O'Neill

I'm getting my book, the Green Business Bible, edited and it is a painful experience. All the bits you think are clever get kicked out as they usually mean nothing to the reader, or worse, would distract or confuse them. You get asked to justify your sweeping statements and changes in tone are hunted down and mercilessly shot. It hurts you to protect your readers.

Ready, Set, Green by Treehugger.com's Hill and O'Neill is another eco book which needs a really tough editor (they're in good company - the mighty Jonathan Porritt has far too many exclamation marks in Capitalism as if the World Matters - ie more than zero). While there's plenty of good stuff in there, too many things really bugged me:

- The subtitle is 'Eight Weeks to Modern Eco-living' - why eight weeks, apart from you've got eight chapters? Most of the small stuff ("save the planet in 30 minutes or less" ) could be implemented immediately (8 days?), and the "so you want to do more" things would take you at least 8 months.

- The sudden appearance of unexplained jargon like "anthropogenic emissions" and "secondary raw materials" jars with the matey tone.

- There are some real humdingers like this definition of an ecological footprint: "Put simply, it is a calculation that works to ascertain planetary limits, like a spreadsheet of environmental checks and balances". Not simple and doesn't really make sense. It is also inaccurate - a footprint it is actually a measure of how the impact of our lifestyle compares with planetary limits, not the limits themselves.

- the references to the books Cradle to Cradle and Biomimicry appear to be there to show off the knowledge of the authors, not add to the effectiveness of the message.

- the things in "save the planet in 30 minutes or less" won't save the planet by a long stretch.

All this is a shame as the book is packed with good ideas and interesting facts. Get an editor, a really tough one, and this could be a good book.

Book Review: How To Get Married In Green by Suzan St Maur

When I turned 28 half my friends decided to get married, leading to a global wedding tour from here to Sydney. This year the other half have decided to get hitched and it looks as if I'm in for another expensive year.

At first glance, you might think that a book on Green Weddings is a bit faddish or a tenuous attempt to cash in on the issue du jour. Now I've always been the bridesmaid, never the bride, but I've been through enough nuptials to know just how much organisation these jamborees take. Trying to ensure that the perfect day doesn't cost the planet would take an awful lot of Googling and this book has all the bases covered.

From ethically sourcing the wedding and engagement rings through Stag & Hen nights, to the big day itself and on to the Honeymoon, Suzan St Maur's book is thorough while remaining thoroughly readable. For example, I never knew you could get hemp bras with bamboo underwiring! It doesn't preach, just suggests, and doesn't get caught up in minutiae either.

So, if you're going to get hitched, why not do it in green?

Book Review: "How Many Lightbulbs...

...Does It Take To Change a Planet? 95 Ways To Save Planet Earth" is a manifesto for environmental change by Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth fame. Possibly influenced by George Monbiot's extensive use of an analogy to the Faust legend in 'Heat', Juniper apes the 95 theses nailed to a church door by Martin Luther in 1517 to come up with 95 'solutions' to the world's problems grouped into 9 sections ranging from climate change to food to transport to globalisation to environmental justice.

Despite what it says on the blurb, this book is not radical (unlike say, The Age of Consent by Monbiot). Rather it is a comprehensive summary of well understood steps on the way to true sustainability. I would argue against the term 'solutions' that Juniper uses as the steps are often the required endpoints rather than the means to achieve them.

What sets this book apart from the multitudes of others is Juniper's ability to relate global environmental issues to a scale we can all understand. He calls on his love of ornithology to illustrate particular points and draws on his personal experience of international negotiations and protests to give insights into why things are how they are. Al Gore does not come out well - his blocking tactics at Kyoto are an Inconvenient Truth of his own. By contrast, the description of a meeting with Ken Saro-Wiwa in a London tea shop to discuss Shell's activities in the Niger Delta 3 years before he ended up hanging on the end of a dictatorship's rope made his sacrifice all the more poignant without the mawkishness that Monbiot can stray into.

This is not an eco-living book, with the 'solutions' aimed at national and international governments, but it should be of great interest to those who are interested in how changing their lightbulbs to efficient models relates to the wider world.

Book Review: Heat by George Monbiot

I like George Monbiot*, even though I don't always agree with him. He's one of life's essential awkward squad, constantly challenging the status quo, vested interests and what I like to call 'institutional inertia' - the tendency for large organisations to keep doing the same thing because changing would be too difficult.

In his latest book, Heat, tackles climate change and what could be done about it. He likens society's relationship with fossil fuels as a Faustian Pact and manages to extract an appropriate quote from Marlowe's version of the Faust tale to start each paragraph**.

Much of the book will be familiar to readers of his Guardian column: the exposure of the professional climate change deniers, the trashing of the offsetting industry and the criticism of biofuels and their impact on Indonesian rainforest. But there's plenty more in here. He starts by setting a tough challenge - a 90% reduction of carbon emissions by 2030 and then sets about how to achieve that. One of his early conclusions is one which I think will be the main stumbling block: to stop the rebound effect, some form of carbon rationing is needed. He admits at the end that he hasn't been able to take political feasibility of his solutions into account because "it is up to you".

Heat is a joy to read with Monbiot's pithy way with words - "the British government wants to see a massive number of new homes built... to accommodate the people desperate to escape from their families." - and his nagging worry that he will suffer "the dreadful fate of all disillusioned activists" and "become an aromatherapist".

There were one or two places that I wasn't sure if Monbiot was double counting - for example, he comments on the electricity used by supermarkets and how it might be reduced, but he had already identified a way of decarbonising the whole electricity supply for the country. I might e-mail him to challenge him on this, but he can be a bit withering towards correspondents - many are hung out to dry in the book, so on the other hand I might not.

OK, so Heat is not really about eco-living per se, but if you are interested in the bigger picture and the challenges ahead, this is a good place to start.



* I didn't use to like him - in fact I found one of his early books, "Amazon Watershed" so sanctimonious that it nearly turned me into a Daily Mail reader.

** For those more musical than literary (like me), Faust was a bit like an early Robert Johnson, selling his soul to the devil for fame and fortune, then panicking when old nick came to get his part of the bargain.

Book Review: How To Live A Low Carbon Life, Chris Goodall

This is a brilliant book. 300 odd pages bristling with facts, statistics and meticulous analysis of the make up of our average UK carbon footprint and how we can reduce it to a sustainable level.

Goodall - Green Party candidate, MBA and ex-director of Which? Ltd - covers Home Heating, Water Heating & Cooking, Lighting, Appliances, Car Travel, Public Transport, Air Travel, Food, Microrenewables and Offsetting - trying valiantly to put sensible numbers to each aspect and evaluating solutions. The facts are fired out thick and fast: a sky box left on all year has the same carbon emissions as the average Afghani, the top 10% of travellers are responsible for 42% of transport related emissions, a pressure cooker will reduce carbon emissions by 50% - it goes on and on. I will be using this book as a reference on a weekly if not daily basis for blogging, work and checking my own random thoughts.

While inevitably I have a number of minor quibbles (the lack of detail on Heat Pumps, the idea that Government can't address climate change, the zero tolerance on flying*), the only real problem I have is with the full title - "How To Live A Low Carbon Life: the individual's guide to stopping climate change" as this is what it is not. The layman is not going to wade through such exhaustive arguments, backed up by tables of statistics (but virtually no diagrams or pictures), in order to find out what actions they should take. So, I'll rephrase my first statement:

This is a brilliant book - for me and other eco-obsessives.



* I will explain myself in a later post...

Book Review: ReadyMade by Berger & Hawthorne

I came across this book in the Baltic Art Gallery shop when looking for a birthday present for my art-loving partner and it is brilliant. The title is a reference to the Ready Made/Found Art movement triggered by Marcel Duchamp's infamous signed urinal.
The book combines art and ecology to make some beautiful products (mainly furniture) from stuff we everyday folks throw away. While the text is in a strongly left-field-american-self-empowerment style, the project ideas are brilliant, the sections on materials are excellent and the bonkers "This is Not a Project" bits are intriguing - a history of Heavy Metal? Fear of Flying Courses? How to make an Art House Film? It's all here - and all very nicely laid out.
My favourite project idea is the 'Eames Style Drawer Unit' - a bookcase made out of three drawers and four aluminium angles. But the CD case wall mural comes a close second.
If you want to do some of your own recycling, want a house full of stylish eco-friendly furnishings, and can handle a cordless drill, then this book is for you. If you want something to leave in the downstairs loo to impress your friends, then it will do that job too. Highly recommended.

Book Review: A Good Life, Leo Hickman

The best book I have found on Eco-Living is "A Good Life" by Leo Hickman. Before I read it I was worried it might just be a rehash of his UK Guardian columns, which can be a little wishy-washy. Fortunately it is a book in its own right, weighing in at a hefty 300 pages, brimming with facts, dilemmas and opinions.

The biggest chapter is on food, not surprising as this is the single biggest environmental issue we face - and one of the most complex. Hickman argues his way through the various issues: organic verses local, meat, what makes fair trade fair etc. Further chapters cover home & garden, waste, energy, toxic materials, transport, family issues - everything from contraception to funerals.

If you want to learn ways to reduce your ecological footprint, or want a reference on personal environmental and ethical issues, I cannot recommend this book more.