Book Reviews | Book Reviews |
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A Thousand Country Roads - Robert James Waller
On one of m
Wild East: Stories from the Last Frontier
just
slightly better, the rest of the contributions were good reads,
including:
The collection features a mix of authors from CEE-CIS in translation,
expat writers and travel writers.
Manufacturing for Life
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way
We Make Things Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics - P.J. O'Rourke Part "economics for dummies" and part travel guide, Eat the Rich not only tries to (and to a great extent succeeds) explain economics to folks like me, while at the same time trying to explain the bigger question - why are some countries richer or have a better standard of living than others? O'Rourke, a conservative Republican who is also able to write for more liberal magazines as Rolling Stone and Harper's deftly examines and compares culture, infant mortality rates, life expectancy, mineral wealth and other factors in a number of countries from Cuba to Sweden. Why are culture-rich countries like Tibet or mineral rich countries like Tanzania so poor? He takes jabs equally at both the left and right, for example comparing China's official One Child Policy, to America's unofficial One Parent Policy." Readers looking for a bit of good travel writing such as O'Rourke's Holidays in Hell will not be disappointed either. Here is a zinger from Eat the Rich, "Albania has the distinction of being the only country ever destroyed by a chain letter." A reference to the civil war that broke out in Albania in 1996-1997 when the largest pyramid scheme collapsed. I laughed so hard at "Third World Driving Tips and Hints" in Holidays in Hell, I photocopied the entire chapter. One of the most useful tips in the book may be this, "A fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people." Letters from America - Alistair Cooke I first heard Alistair Cooke's radio broadcasts very late in life, on the BBC over short-wave radio while working on an organic goat farm in the Netherlands. Late at night there was not much to do except watch football, smoke and drink whiskey - none of which were really of much interest. But Alistair Cooke's Letter from America was something different. Cooke, originally from Manchester, England broadcast his insightful, biting and human, funny and solemn cultural feature from America on the BBC for 58 years until his death in 2004. His style is reminiscent of Garrison Keillor and other great radio story-tellers in that he starts of at some seemingly harmless and unimportant news headline and takes you through a journey of association to bring you back around again to your starting point very much the richer for the journey through culture, history, politics, sociology and anything else that might have caught his fancy along the way. More importantly, even if you were unaware of the point, you always got there in the end with eyes more wide open and your heart just a little more in your throat than 15 minutes before. His voice was such that one could turn off the lights and pretend they were listening to old time radio with our parents in front of the big radio console as the Lone Ranger or the Green Hornet or Nero Wolfe saved the day. Following his death, Penguin published a rich selection of his broadcasts in written form. Some of the highlights include his insights on Joe Louis, friendship with Charlie Chaplin, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and Fall in New England. Paper Mage I am a big fantasy sci-fi buff, but after a time I just had to stop reading the books because they were so similar, or I would realise 20 pages into it that I had already read it. No such problems there with Leah R. Cutter's Paper Mage (ROC, 2003). What could possibily be new in the world of fantasy? "In a small Chinese village during the Tang Dynasty, an unsure young woman has managed to elude the conventions of her society to become a gifted paper mage-one who creates magic with the ancient art of paper folding." Not only is the idea coo-el, but it is also very well written. Leah has also written The Caves of Buda (which of course takes place in Budapest), and The Jaguar and the Wolf. I do not know how these later books are, but her short story "Red Boots" in the anthology Black Heart, Ivory Bones is also a great read. Bad Chemistry
My introduction to Our Stolen Future
came about ten years ago at a sustainable packing conference when a young
German woman sat down at our table for lunch and asked: "Did you know that male
sperm counts have gone down 50 percent in the last 50 years?" I lost my
appetite, but at least my interest in this topic was successfully piqued. Booker Prize
At Treehugger Dan's we have
several customers that are systematically reading through the Booker Prize
winners and the Nebula Award winners and other book prizes. Before I started a
bookstore, I had never heard of half of these, but it seems every 10th book has
won something, be it a Whitbread, Orange, Edgar or Pulitzer. Here is what some
of the major prizes mean:
The O. Henry
Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional
merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry. The
O. Henry Prize Stories is an annual collection of the year's twenty best
stories published in U.S. and Canadian magazines, written in English. The O.
Henry Prize Stories 2007 was dedicated to Sherwood Anderson, a U.S. short-story
writer.
Crime Writers Association (CWA) Dagger
Awards. There is a whole range of different dagger awards from CWA. The
CWA Gold and Silver Daggers were initially titled the Crossed Red Herrings
Award, and this was first presented in 1955 to Winston Graham for The Little
Walls. The award was renamed the Gold Dagger in 1960. The Silver Dagger
goes to the runner up and came into being in 1969. Between 1995 and 2002, the
awards were sponsored by The Macallan Whisky Company and named The Macallan
Gold and Silver Daggers. This award was replaced in 2006 by the Duncan Lawrie
Dagger and the Duncan Lawrie International Dagger. Only British publishers can
submit entries for the awards, and the submissions must have been published in
the English language in the UK within a limited period of time. In 2007, The
Duncan Lawrie Dagger went to The Broken Shore by Peter Temple, and
Duncan Lawrie International Dagger went to Wash this Blood Clean from my
Hand by Fred Vargas. Are we there yet? A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright
English-born Canadian author Ronald
Wright's weeklong series of Massey Lectures in 2004 comprise the basis for A
Short History of Progress, a well-written work of 130 pages, an additional 50
pages of endnotes, and ten pages of bibliography. Historical Fiction
I have become a real fan of
historical fiction. I guess it started in gradeschool when I had to read Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. Based on the bully
in Tom Brown's Schooldays, George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman
series is a great romp through historical fiction during the 19th century British
Empire. Unlike the heroes in the same genre such as Johnnie Tremain, C.S.
Forester's midshipman Horatio Hornblower, Bernard Cornwell's rifleman Sharpe, and Patrick O'Brian's captain Jack Aubrey, Flashman is
an accidental hero. A womanizer and
bully, it is Flashman's cowardice (if not his flatulance) that constantly
propels him though each tale, and into the history books. Did you know that the
Charge of the Light Brigade, with the heroic Flashman at the front, was
actually started by Flashman's cowardly loose bowels and an enormous fart that
scared his horse? There are over a dozen books in the series, taking Flashman
through most of the British Empire and its campaigns, including India, Crimea,
the West Indies, China and the US. Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis
322pp., 2005, Portobello Books
This book review was written for the
REC Bulletin, to be
published sometime in March. Stephen King Scared the Shit Out of Me He did for years and I had never even read anything by him. I saw how his books scared my friends. They got obsessed with the books and could not put them down even though they were terrified. A girlfriend's mother grabbed Salem's Lot out of her hands and threw it on the fire (of course she went out and got another copy). Horror and romance are about the only genres I do not read, and Stephen King being the pinacle of horror, I would not touch him. Hey, at 41 I still get scared of the flying bloody monkeys in Wizard of Oz and hide my face behind a pillow until the scene is over. That said, I read King's non-horror Hearts in Atlantis last year and consider it the best book I read all year, with his Dolores Clairborne a close second. He may be primarily a horror writer, but the man can write! I also enjoyed his From a Buick 8, and Bachman Books. I discovered his Dark Tower dark fantasy series and finished the seventh and final book last night, and it is one of the finest sci-fi fantasy adventures, hell, of any work of fiction, I have ever read. Do you have just American authors?
god I hate this question...listen
folks, Treehugger Dan's is an English Language bookstore. It does not matter
where the author is from, just so long as the book is in English. We do not
divide the books up by the author's country of birth. People also expect me,
because of my name (Swartz), to be conversant about Jewish authors. I honestly
do not know who they mean. I do not divide the books up by the author's
religion or the religion of their mother either. There are the more obvious
ones like Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Primo Levi, Isaac B. Singer, Gertrude
Stein..., but what about Anita Brookner, Miguel de Cervantes, E.L. Doctorow,
Belva Plain, Dorothy Parker...? Here is an interesting and
sometimes surprsing list. With the exception of E.L. Doctorow and Cervantes I
have not read any of these authors and do not intend
to. However, I do enjoy the occassional Kinky Friedman book. Kinky
Friedman is a Jewish cowboy musician, former gubenatorial candidate for
Texas and occassional crime writer. Anyone who pens such classic songs as
"They Ain't Making Jews Like Jesus Anymore" deserves our full
support. I am currently reading Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore. Moore is the
author of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal,
perhaps the funniest book I have ever read. It explains those age old mysteries
such as why Jewish people, myself included, go for Chinese food at Christmas. I
do not accept being Jewish though, since I see Judaism as a religion, a matter
of faith, not blood. Nor have I ever had any desire to see Israel, though I do
make a fantastic matzo ball soup, and pretty good bagels. That said, Edward Whittemore's excellent Jerusalem
Quartet, beginning with Sinai Tapestry, did for a time make me very
curious about the city of Jerusalem. By the way, the series does feature as a
supporting character a mustached garlic eating Hungarian count/baron. A Hedonist in the Cellar On the purchase of my flat last year, after renting 20 places in 18 years (including 6.5 years in one place), an ex-girlfriend gave me Jay McInerney's book, A Hedonist in the Cellar. She was overjoyed to find a book this bookman had not read, and one so appropriate to my newest passion in life, wine. McInerney is perhaps best known for his book Bright Lights, Big City, something everybody my age was reading in college, and then watching the movie version of starring Michael J. Fox. However, McInerney is also the wine columnist for American magazine House & Garden, and Hedonist in the Cellar is a collection of some of those columns. I find his novel much more accessible than his wine writing, however, I did learn a lot if I skimmed past the details of vintages and domaines. I believe that wine writing at its worst uses floral and excess verbiage, whereas at its best it simply says, "an excellent dry red, good with pasta, serve at ??? degrees C." Honestly, do I need to know anything more? Wines tend to suggest aromas from 4 main sources, the spice rack, cigar box, orchard and tack room, not to mention the minerals in the soil. In fact, wine aromas are "a catalog of minor vices." I know I should care, but I am not one to recall "wildly floral, modest, affable, honeyed, peach-like and delicate" while it is gracefully sliding down my gullet after some Croatian black olives salted in barrels of Adriatic seawater. This is why McInerney's wine writing, as is most wine writing, completely lost on me. I am a heathen, a peasant, a philistine, and just pass the bottle. As with poetry and art, Michel Chapoutier of Tain l'Hermitage (northern Rhone) said, "If you think about it too much you can kill it. The brain is a pleasure killer. You don't need to be a gynecologist to make love." There are some wines I love and some wines I hate, but don't ask me to tell you why. Maybe it is a lack of taste, in both senses of the word, but I just don't have the adjectives in me. Apparently, "anyone with taste buds can easily detect, in various combinations, such fruit flavors as lemon, lime, green apple, grapefruit, apricot, and even pineapple in the glass." Hmmm, not me, though I can easily identify various spices in my food. What I can tune into is anecdotes, such as the following paragraph: "My teeth are still stained from the experience of tasting the '99 Barbera d'Alba Gallina and the '99 Barbera d'Asti that spring...reminded me of a blackberry fight I had with two fifth grade classmates in Vancouver, Canada. We were picking blackberries, and after we'd willed two buckets and eaten several handfuls, we started throwing the surplus at one another. Thirty years later, Giuseppe Rivett's Barbera made me almost that exuberant." Or, "Bandol Mourvedre tastes like ripe blackberries squashed up with old teabags." Or, "If you are the kind of person who would never consider sharing a room with a wet Labrador or a lit cigar, then I advise you to skip the rest of this column." This makes me want to try a bottle. I learned some other things as well. Whereas most dry whites can turn nasty and bitter with Asian cuisine, I learned that German Riesling is "the most food-friendly wine on the planet." Meaning, you can drink it with almost anything. McInerney says that the 2004 is like "inhaling a small electric eel." Even so, white wine goes so well with fish because it acts like lemon juice and highlights the flavor. Whereas I tend to leave spiders alone because they are my best defense against mosquitoes and flies, wine cellars are full of cobwebs not to heighten the ambiance just for you, but because spiders are a great natural way to keep cork flies under control. Ever wondered why wine makers add sulfur? According to Willy Frank, "Sulfur gives wild yeast a headache so they don't go into an orgy." The owner of the Domaine de la Citodelle, M. Yves Riusset-Rouard, producer of the famous Emmanuel films, is also proprietor of the world's largest corkscrew museum. The next wine books on my list, as suggested by McInerney, include: Auberon Waugh's Waugh on Wine (son of Evelyn) Kermit Lynch's Adventures on the Wine Route
Perhaps my favorite description in
the book is this: "as smooth as baby Jesus in velvet pants." I suspect only god
knows what this is like. A Few Book Reviews for the New Year
The Return of Little Big Man -
Thomas Berger. Little Big Man is one of my
father's favorite books, and somehow I have never read it. When I grabbed this
book, I did not make the connection, but this is the sequel. It is a fictional
account of the life of the only white survivor of the Battle of Little Bighorn.
Jack meets one famous person after another, from Buffalo Bill to young Winston
Churchill, and everyone in between. Kind of like Forrest Gump meets the wild
west. Strangely, with all these famous events happening around him, I got
caught up in the on-going worry if he would EVER pay Wild Bill's widow back. I
cannot decide if I liked it or not. Some Good Crime Although I am not a big crime novel fan, I read a lot of Patricia Cornwell and P.D. James during my early years in Hungary when I read what I could get my hands on. A lot of this came from my friend Martin who picked up his books at airports. In short, it is not really my genre. However, when American artist (living in Hungary) Stephen Zeigfinger saw a few John D. Macdonald books I had recently acquired at the shop, he highly recommended them. I had never heard of MacDonald, but I am very happy I took his recommendation. Perhaps today's readers would recognize as the author of Cape Fear, but it was a huge surprise for me to see he also wrote two of my favorite childhood movies, "The Girl, the Goldwatch and Everything," and "The Girl, the Goldwatch and Dynamite." Ok, so I thought Pam Dawber (Mork & Mindy) was hot. Almost as much a surprise as when I discovered that The Planet of the Apes was penned by French author Pierre Boulle, the same man who wrote The Bridge Over the River Kwai.The Macdonald books I like, are the ones starring "salvage consultant" (read: fixer) Travis McGee (originally going to be called Dallas McGee, until the Kennedy assasination). McGee lives aboard the Busted Flush, a houseboat he won in a poker game, docked at Slip F-18 in Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. McGee is "retired" until a friend, or a friend of a friend needs help, and he needs money. He takes on a salvage job if by other means the lost item or person is otherwise deemed unrecoverable. If he is successful, he gets 50%. The 21 books in the Travis McGee series begin with The Deep Blue Goodbye (1964) and end with The Lonely Silver Rain (1981). I have read about half of them now, and just enjoyed reading The Scarlet Ruse. In fact, I have enjoyed all of them so far, with the exception of Free Fall in Crimson, which I thought was very weak. The Green Ripper won the National Book Award in 1980.
Another favorite author, Carl Hiaasen, acknowledges the
influence of MacDonald on his own work. Both men set their action in Florida,
but whereas MacDonald's characters are from the hard-bitten crime genre,
Hiaasen's are more quirky. What both authors share is being witness to the
environmental destruction of Florida by big business, factories, real estate
developers and the government, and condemning it in their books. You may
recognize Striptease as the basis of the Demi Moore film - skip the film, read
the book. It is the book that got me hooked on Hiaasen. Some of his books
include: Crazy in Alabama
I
just finished Crazy in Alabama by Mark Childress, while eating a massive slice
of Kiev cake. A very good book, and good cake. I had never heard of this author
before, but several customers recommended him. This book is for everyone who
should have grown up in the Sixties, but whose parents did not oblige. Funeral
homes, race relations, childhood, crazy Aunt Lucille and the Beverly
Hillbillies. I will never look at Tupperware again in the same way. Good thing
it was not Rubbermaid. Bitter Sweet: The Secret History of the Chocolate Industry One of my favorite movies as a kid was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971). What child did not want to win the golden ticket? Who didn't want to see the mysteries hidden behind the tall walls of the factory? Who didn't feverishly ride their bikes to the Penny Candy Store at every chance and buy sweets with grubby hands and hungry eyes? Isn't this why we worked for our allowance money? It was not until 15 years later in college that upon watching the film again after many years that I realized the film was actually about imperialism and colonialism. That while I was taking out the trash and mowing the lawn for 5 dollars a week, other children in the Cote d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Cameroon, Mexico, Ghana and elsewhere were literally slaves and worked to death by the thousands for those same chocolates. In fact, most do not know what they are harvesting or what it is used for.
Cocoa was first used by the Olmec in Mezo-America as a drink, so highly prized,
that the Mayans and Aztecs later used cocoa beans as currency, not gold or
silver. Cocoa pods are the size of butternut squash, containing grey-purple
seeds the size of almonds in tan-colored pulp. The pods are split and the seeds
left to ferment and dry before being roasted. The Spanish first developed a
triangular trade bringing weapons and salted cod to Africa, African slaves to
the Americas (12-15 million) to work the cocoa plantations, and chocolate to
Europe. It was Spanish
priests and monks after Cortez conquered the area that began adding sugar and
later spices to the brew. Chocolate's pharmaceutical properties are thought to
include theobromine and caffeine that stimulate and dilate blood vessels;
Phenylethylamine which stimulates sexual drive; Serotonin , a mind-altering
chemical that can relieve depression; and perhaps antioxidants. Up until the
1800s, Europeans still bought cocoa in pharmacies. English investigative reporter Henry Woodd Nevinson began investigating the cocoa trade about this time. The Portuguese-controlled islands of Sao Tome and Principe (Cameroon) were both the leading producers of cocoa, as well as the location of some of the worst abuses. The Portuguese brought salve labor from Angola, none of whom ever returned home. The British Government turned a blind eye to the Portuguese practices because they did not want dirt dredged up about their own use of slave labor in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa. Twenty years after the first reports, neither the British Government nor the supposedly socially-concerned Quaker chocolate magnates had done a thing to stop the slavery. Cocoa production was not the only commodity based on slave labor, nor was the worst abuses in this sector, but Cadbury, Rowntree, Fry, and others had made chocolate special, a symbol of joy, an innocent pleasure; but in reality it was made with blood, death and slave labor. Because of chocolate's symbolism, people expected a higher corporate and moral standard from chocolate companies than the diamond and gold pillagers.
In 1887, Swiss Henri Nestle blended milk with cocoa solids to create milk
chocolate. Hersey later used condensed and powdered milk to the same effect in
the US. Meanwhile, UK companies moved their operations to Trinidad and Jamaica,
partly because their plantations in Africa were being decimated by disease, but
also to avoid scrutiny. Corporations imported slave labor from China and
elsewhere to work the new plantations. In 1910, the US passed a law
prohibiting the import of cocoa produced with slave labor. However, US
companies controlled sugar production in Cuba, a major component in chocolate,
with slaves from China and Africa. While cocoa plantations in the Americas were in turn destroyed by disease, and companies relocated to Africa again, Mars and Herseys joined forces to produce Smarties and M&Ms. The Gold Coast (Ghana) in turn became the world leader cocoa production, but were then surpassed by the Ivory Coast in the 1980s. Benevolent dictator Felix Houphouet-Boigny converted the country's economy and bet the country's future on cocoa in the 1960s. But by the 1990s, the country had descended into poverty, chaos, war and child slavery. Child trafficking from Mali and Burkina Faso to the cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast assisted the country in continuing to supply over 50% of the world's cocoa. "Child slavery had become the secret ingredient in chocolate." UNICEF and the US State Department estimated that more than 15000 child slaves worked the plantations in 1998. Children in the thousands were being enslaved and abused - for CHOCOLATE. The Mali Government did very little to stem the practice, since the country depended on trade with its neighbor. US Congressman Eliot Engel introduced a law in 2001 that would have created a "slave free" label for chocolate like the "dolphin safe" label for tuna fish. Senator Tom Harkin joined him in the fight. However, the Senator had already learned that there was a fine line between human rights and economic necessity. Harkin had introduced the Child Labor Defense Act in 1992 that boycotted goods manufactured with child labor. Bangladeshi garment manufacturers panicked and 50000 children were fired, who then took on even more dangerous jobs like rock crushing to help support their families. The balance is to "find a way to take the hazards out of the work, not the child out of work." Big Chocolate hired Bob Dole and George Mitchell to lobby against the bill. The resulting wrangle produced an industry voluntary agreement called the Harkin-Engel Protocol that delineated six points to eliminate child labor in the cocoa chain by July, 2005. However, the protocol was voluntary, and did not include provisions for a fair wage, or a fair price for the beans. In 2002, the protocol was adopted by Big Chocolate worldwide, becoming the International Cocoa Initiative. Simultaneously, an industry-funded investigation found that while there was no slavery, 284000 children worked in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in West Africa, two-thirds of these in the Ivory Coast. The International Labor Rights Fund rejected the protocol and filed suit using a 1930 US law that prohibits the import of goods made by slaves. Big Chocolate did not make the 2005 deadline - not even close. They are now setting up a small pilot project in Ghana, now the biggest producer of cocoa along with Indonesia. The International Labor Rights Fund filed a class action suit against Nestle, Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland for trafficking, torture and forced labor on behalf of former child slaves. Smaller chocolate producers took the lead in "slave free" or socially-conscious chocolate, later integrated into the Fair Trade system. Green & Blacks became the first Fair Trade chocolate in 1994, its signature product being the Maya Gold chocolate bar. High school enrollment for farming families supplying Green & Black have gone from 10% to 70%. If farmers are paid, they normally get around 25 cents/lb., whereas in the Fair Trade system they are guaranteed a minimum of 89 cents/lb. plus premiums.
Fair Trade started in The Netherlands in 1988 with the Max Havelaar brand. Fair
Trade is a system in which: Reading Matthew Reilly is Like Drinking Cheap Beer with a Bad Movie - So Bad Its Good In college, we used to go out and get the cheapest beer possible. This was often Rolling Rock or Tuborg in reusable bottles (a novelty in the US), the more scratched up the better. These beers, and the movie we usually rented with them, were so bad, they were good. Reading a Matthew Reilly thriller is about the same, with the same sense of satisfaction and escape as a case of cheap cold beer and a bad movie. So bad, its good. I started with Ice Station, then moved on to Contest, Temple and the Seven Ancient Wonders before I just finished The Six Sacred Stones this week. The books run around 600 pages each and are non-stop thrillers with one last second escape following another. I can attest to their value as a great escape, having read the last one in a single day. Then the son of a bitch left it as a cliffhanger. Many of his ideas seem to originate in the realm of what I will call "new archaeology," represented by the likes of Graham Hancock, and Baigent/Leigh/Lincoln's Holy Blood, Holy Grail. I have not read Hancock's The Sign and the Seal about the Ark of the Covenant, but I saw his fascinating show about it on the Discovery Channel a few years ago. His research claims that the Ark worked as a giant capacitor, and can be found in Ethiopia. Climate Change: Picture This. A Guardian correspondent uses effective imagery to warn of climate change. Paul Brown's 'Global Warning: The Last Chance for Change'Paul Brown, The Guardian's environment correspondent until 2005, has compiled a book full of stunning photographs, alarming data and passionate quotes to illustrate the global warming crisis. The book's publication is timely: according to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, EU countries are committed to reducing their carbon emissions by 5-8 percent by next year! With Europe experiencing record temperatures, violent storms, floods and wildfires, it's getting easier to win over climate change sceptics; but, it should be noted, increased petrol taxes and graphic warnings on cigarette packages haven't persuaded that many individuals to give up driving or smoking. Brown's book presents beautiful and dramatic photos illustrating the problems of climate change, and images of the rapid retreat of glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro and the immediate danger confronting small island nations from rising sea levels are particularly poignant. But it's also significant that the publication also introduces and describes possible solutions. Current solution attempts, such as carbon credit trading, are really just license to pollute elsewhere. Nor is nuclear energy a carbon-friendly solution if one takes into account its entire life cycle; moreover, this option simply trades long-term environmental disaster for short-term global catastrophe. For the cost of an atomic plant, thousands of safe micro-hydro, solar, wind and insulation projects could be completed for a fraction of the cost. Consider also that standby lights on televisions in the United States - just TVs, just in the US - use up as much energy as one nuclear power plant produces in one year! Add to this video and DVD players, stereos and the rest of the world, and it's clear that simply turning off standby lights can make an immediate, significant short-term difference. Instead of new sports stadiums or monuments to the past, governments should be investing in renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency and insulation. What use will a monument be if it's underwater? Or a sports stadium that's too hot to enjoy? Denmark, for example, now gets 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources. Germany has committed to bringing all its housing up to modern energy efficiency standards within 20 years. Mandatory procurement and new building standards can also make new technologies 'normal' and less expensive; Spain passed legislation in 2005 requiring all new buildings to incorporate solar water heating systems. Ultimately, we cannot depend on governments or corporations to do the right thing. They're too busy spinning and 'green washing' themselves, and there's no dry cycle. We can, however, make easy and inexpensive contributions to slowing climate change. Unplug appliances not in use, or use an extension cord with a master switch; buy appliances with an A/A+ energy rating; use energy-efficient light bulbs, which last up to 10-times longer than other bulbs and save 80 percent of your energy; use public transport, cycle or walk and avoid cars and planes; insulate your home; get a free energy audit from a local NGO or project like Energy Brigades; buy organic and local; and vote! Organisations like the US-based League of Conservation Voters <www.lcv.org> track politicians on their environmental records and issue report cards. Brown's 'Global Warning' is nothing revolutionary from an information point view, but the effective use of comparative photographs should inspire some individuals to take action. Most of the world has known about the grave nature of climate change for nearly two decades. We have no excuse to ignore it further. republished from my article in the REC Bulletin, November 2007
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