|
|
 Image by Pere Ubu I’m the kind of writer that likes to write about things after they’ve happened. That way I get to process the information in the privacy of my own mind and change my mind a good deal in the process. Almost any significant experience I have has to take its time and percolate through my thoughts before I can articulate what I think.
I’ve always been like this, upon my return from a whirlwind week in London, it took me about six months before I could really talk about it. That’s at the extreme end of the scale of course, but it was also before I recognized how my mind deals with stimulation. A less severe example is the three weeks it took me to explain what I got out of the Body Worlds Exhibit I visited earlier this summer. And the latest is the grim yet important book I finished that put me in a funk for about two weeks – the beautifully written, yet profoundly disturbing look at the sickness of our culture – The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen.
I’ve never read anything else by the author, so didn’t know what to expect, and what I got was a very clear dissection of the culture of hatred that we live in. We see the results of this hatred everywhere, from the smog in the streets, to the disappearing wildlife, to the landfill of the third world where we ship our trash, and those are the mildest examples. A large section of the book deals with the cognitive dissonance that is created when we actively participate in this culture and the coping mechanisms we develop n order to continue to participate in it. It takes a hard look at the fairy tale of our daily life and exposes it for the fraud that it is.
It’s not an easy book to read. Many of the horror stories of humanity are so disturbing and insane, really, that it’s easy to begin distancing yourself from the book as you read it – well, that would never happen here, not in Canada, not in our current culture, oh we don’t do things like that anymore. That is until the book comes to very modern current examples of the way we externalize the costs to keep things the way they are. Until we realize that nothing costs what we truly pay for it. And until we realize that we, you and me, have also developed some deep coping mechanisms to avoid looking at reality for what it is.
After I processed the book I went on Amazon to see what other people thought of it, and was gratified to see that any review that I write will not hold a candle to the great reviews others have written. The book seems to beg a long intelligent review, and many have obliged. I’d have to recommend it to anyone who has ever felt out of step with the values of current society, especially our insistence on productivity, time management and progress. To anyone who thinks our society is slightly insane in many ways, and to anyone who is typically too busy to reflect much on it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
In other news – my bush peas were doing great – they were bushy. Until a momentous hail storm last Monday came and flattened the lot, just like last year. Now I have a great foot-thick rug of peas growing sideways, with the peas underneath yellowing from lack of sun. Sigh. I’m already jury-rigging a solution for next year – perhaps that will be my ticket to an early retirement? But otherwise the peas are doing wonderful – they are producing a large bowl per day which we gleefully shell and eat each night. All my friends’ peas are puny in comparison, so all hail the pea whisperer!
The tomatoes are also doing well, with the exception of one wee plant that simply refuses to grow. Otherwise they are all producing – before AUGUST which is very momentous in my neck of the woods. And the raspberries have settled in just fine and are already rewarding me with a few berries, something that they’re not supposed to do until next year.
I did plant a few cucumbers, but some enterprising bunny came and ate the lot. Oh well – if he needed them that much, who am I to argue?
I also have a new job, which I start next Monday. That came about in an oblique way, but has also occupied my time, and is a welcome change. The thing with jobs is that you cannot talk about the job, until the offer is signed, kind of like the first rule of fight club. Otherwise for some mysterious reason they are apt not to materialize. Now I’m off to catch up with all of you!
I was thrilled to come across this book written by a fellow Calgarian that received some high praise from critics. The premise of the book is simple - spurred by the birth of his daughter Chris Turner looked around and saw a world careening out of control. Global warming, pollution, destruction of natural resources, excessive consumption and faulty economics drive our consumerist engine, and there is no shortage of problems to look at and wonder when this train ride will come to a wreck. But dozens of books have been written about the staggering problems facing our world and future as a species, but quite few offer real suggestions as to what we can do about it. Chris Turner went on a whirlwind tour around the globe looking for existing, often very local solutions to a truly sustainable future that work splendidly and point the way to a more hopeful future.
Off the bat I’ve got to say that I am not a proponent of anthropogenic climate change. i.e. I do not feel that man-made global warming is our biggest problem, nor do I condemn CO2 as the largest pollutant in our atmosphere. This book is largely structured around this very premise, and the undertone wonders how is it that any rational human can continue to deny the movement largely started by Al Gore et al. Now that several years have passed, and Al Gore’s faulty research and blatantly incorrect hockey-stick graph has been soundly denounced even by the most ardent global warming proponents, not to mention his energy hogging lifestyle, it is clear that he himself, is probably not a good advocate for the cause.
I personally tend to think that plants breathe CO2, that any volcano eruption as well as our oceans dwarf our CO2 output, that the largest drivers of climate are the sun and the oceans and our orbit, things so vast that we cannot even understand their effects, never mind control them, that the planet is typically a much more tropical place and in fact we are geologically speaking in the middle of a short warm pocket that happens to be in the middle of an ice age, and most important of all – that carbon sequestering is a huge money making scam that will make some people very rich, while doing very little to impact our climate. I also fear that the debate whether pro or con is stealing all the spotlight while ignoring the ridiculous pollution issues plaguing our planet. But what I do understand is that whether we agree on global warming specifically or not, we can both be appalled at the damage to our planet wrought by our species, and overwhelmed with the negative press and dialogue that seems to lead us no closer to real solutions.
The book itself is a manic romp around the world skipping from Denmark to Thailand and even yes, Okotoks. His writing style is a unique mix reminiscent of Gladwell and Pollan, both of whom are referenced, except for on speed. Interspersed with commentary on popular culture, pop psychology and history lessons the book is best digested in small increments lest it simply overwhelm your brain. Since he is local, some of his stories revolve not too far from home, a wind farm nearby, a green community in a small town only a twenty minute drive from my house, even our very own downtown Calgary. To me this was obviously exceptionally interesting since I can add my own observations to the mix.
I found it rather worrying that all the examples of a new way of living that he profiles – a fully self sustaining home in Thailand built using local renewable resources, that costs about as much as a ‘conventional’ style dwelling, a small Danish island where the villagers fully bought into wind farms and barely have any need for oil, a community of Earthship dwellers proudly living in a rather hostile climate with all the creature comforts of the average urban home but with almost none of the energy requirements, E+Co which pioneer a genius partnership to turn waste ponds into energy, and amazing real estate developments which allow people to live and thrive in their communities, not simply exist, – are so few and far between taken in the larger context. They are small pockets of wonderful enterprise, human ingenuity and revolutionary principles on display, but they are quite rare when looked at globally. And frankly we’ve always had great people doing amazing things. All the pioneers above use existing technology in innovative ways, they are not inventing anything as such, but until they reach a ‘tipping point’ a la Gladwell, they will always remain an oasis of sanity with hardly an impact on the global scene.
Calgary is a prime example. The book ends with the author looking over the city and noting how things could be different. How the large empty concrete tracts can be re-imagined as green spaces and truly livable mixed use neighborhoods, how flat sloping roofs seem made for solar panels (in a city with over 300 days of sunshine per year), how urban sprawl can be curbed once and for all and many other wonderful ideas. But since this book was written I can’t say any of those changes have materialized. I’ve yet to see a solar panel on any roof whatsoever, our neighborhood that was once on the edge of the city has been surpassed by further development, mixed use neighborhoods are still things that are developed by far more progressive planners than ours, urban agriculture has not exploded, we do have recycling but strictly as downcycling, and sadly, Seaside Florida, one of the communities lauded in the book is currently drowning in oil from a terrible man made disaster.
I also haven’t seen any of those flexible solar panels that were going to drastically decrease prices in the markets, and in fact I haven’t heard any follow up on that story since it was hyped a few years ago. A shamefully quick google search turns up flexible panels that cost several times more per watt that a generic one does. Okotoks’ award winning Drake Landing community has not been followed by any more, despite its cachet.
Chris travels the world looking for examples of a new sustainable economy. Places where the change is people driven, whether it’s machete wielding villagers peeling bamboo for their micro-hydroelectric dam, or a community investing in wind farms without government mandates, oversight or involvement really. In contrast there seem to be pitifully few solutions to be found around our very own urban yards. Since we don’t have to choose whether to spend money on kerosene or purchase a small solar panel, we don’t have the immediacy of looking for a solution as we continue to live in our urban houses constructed with toxic materials and heat them with coal and gas.
Speaking with a local solar installer generates an estimate that to convert a typical house to be entirely off-grid would cost in the realm of $25,000 – a figure hardly affordable and yes, it would take a very long time to pay for itself. Unless you built a passive solar heated home which costs about the same as a conventional house, but you would likely never get the permits to build one. Sure we recycle, but we all know that at best it’s postponing the trip to the landfill by a reuse or two, and at worst – well, how much does it cost (literally and carbon-wise) to ship our recyclables to Asia where they can be processed/landfilled as prices dictate?
Perhaps it’s my propensity for cynicism and gloom that leads me to read this book, and ask what’s changed since it was published? Or the recent environmental catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf is too vivid and underscores the plight of the planet too much. But where many reviewers see hope in this book, I still see a planet heading for disaster simply because I, the reader, still feel powerless to help stop the train. Unless the residents of this fine city start getting together and implementing our own solutions we will continue to have small pockets of hope around a very sick planet.
Not only that, but as he cleverly points out change has to be FUN and beneficial – no one wants to do things out of desperation out of coming doom and gloom. A great example is cell phone technology and internet – the technology is so convenient and so seemingly necessary that hundreds of homemade solutions sprung up to bypass entirely the slow governmental machine that would have taken decades to deliver the service. What we need is someone to bring a sense of fun, cachet, unbelievable convenience and necessity at an affordable price point to renewable technologies. When that happens, consumers will drive the engine of change faster than you can blink. So to me it’s a brilliantly written book that offers the possibility of hope, but note hope as such.
If you’ve made it this far, through the very long book review, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this interesting and vital topic: what do you think of climate change, our path as a species, what we can do to actually change rather than greenwash our lives? Do we have hope?
I’ve finally kicked the crud that threatened my life and limb and sleep for over two weeks. It is seriously the longest cold I’ve ever had. It threatened to morph into a sinus infection, and teetered on the edge of bronchitis for a few days as it crawled down my throat, but I think my immune system is finally getting the hang of it. At least the weather had the decency to suck while I suffered, and I didn’t have to watch glorious sunshine and blue whit-ish skies overhead. (Seriously, I don’t recall the last time the sky had the deep blue of my childhood. It’s permanently whitish now – maybe there’s something to all the chemtrails theories out there?)
Moving on. While being sick I took good care of myself, mainly by not exerting myself in any fashion. It’s not lazy when you have an excuse. I didn’t exercise, I didn’t cook much, I certainly did not strain myself with an overabundance of yardwork and even housework for that matter. What I did do a fair bit of, between sleeping in a medicated haze and dragging my poor self to work is read. Reading is easy, fun and can put you to sleep or wake you up, depending on the genre.
Not wanting to tax myself with serious works of non-fiction and fiction requiring a dictionary, I stuck mainly to the fantasy genre, seeing as it’s light, readable and candy for the brain in general. Which leads me to ask, isn’t it funny when life proves you wrong by leading you to enjoy stuff you’ve professed to hate? Happens to me all the time, and my carefully thought out stances against say, Twitter and fantasy literature have done a predictable 180 in the last few months. I am very reluctant to ever say NEVER now, seeing as it’s a gauntlet throwing challenge to the universe to prove me wrong.
I can’t remember when it started, but I know the book that made me fall – Moon Called by Patricia Briggs. I have a vague idea of how it must have happened – a person who reads an average of four books per week must spend a certain amount of time researching what to read next, so I do a fair bit of surfing, reading Amazon reviews and blogs and hope to find the rare gem of a reviewer whose opinions match my own. If I’m lucky, a review of a book I already love will contain a recommendation of a similarly loved book which will likely make its way into my Amazon basket within a few weeks.
I started Moon Called not having a clue what to expect, and found myself reasonably entertained by the story, and NOT PISSED OFF at the writing. I know this sounds like faint praise, but very often the ‘speaking voice’ of the author will turn me off the story faster than cheap plot lines and cheesy dialogue. It was not a great book, something like a 3.5/5 in my mind, but seeing as I read like it’s going out of style, I went ahead and ordered the next two books. Each one was just as good if not a bit better than the first, and suddenly I found myself waiting for the latest book to come out, and browsing similar genres, and then it just spiraled out of control, and now I have something like FORTY fantasy/urban fantasy/whatever genre books added to my collection.
I’ve checked out the classics a la Laurell K. Hamilton (not my fave), and new arrivals like (somebody suggest someone, I’m drawing a blank), and there’s still a whole universe out there to explore. One series that quickly rose to the top of the LIKE pile is Ilona Andrews’ Magic Bites series. Yep, the covers are one small step above romance novels’ art work, and they’re kind of small, and soft cover only, but they are wonderful stories with great characters, fantastic dialogue, and solid if not great plot lines. And they are addictive in that way that all the famed series are. (And yes, I blew through Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse series also.)
If um, any of my readers are into the genres, please feel free to chime in with your favorite series. Actually any series of books – because it’s super satisfying to have a long story to read, and revisit favorite characters. And I’ll just vigorously start saying NEVER to a healthy diet, and exercise, and a full eight hours of sleep, and traveling around the world, and…
|
|
