Customer Reviews

The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have no background in environmentalism or connection to the author. As a general reader I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it informative, inspiring and entertaining in equal parts. An unequivocal five stars!
The author is a journalist and disillusioned environmental activist. He is also a new father, and, concerned for his daughter's future, decided to do a global survey of existing, practical methods of achieving environmental sustainability. His perspective is what makes this book so refreshing: tired of the mainstream environmental movement's two main weapons of guilt and apocalyptic predictions, he searches for not just the means but the inspiration to change the way the world's resources are used. I found this practical, hopeful approach much more compelling than the doom-and-gloom, armchair analyst approach of, say, George Monbiot's Heat.
Potential readers should keep in mind that the author's previous opus was Planet Simpson, an exploration of the cultural significance of an animated cartoon series. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it informs his writing with a pop-culture sensibility that makes for entertaining asides and a contemporary grasp of how cultural fashions evolve. On the other hand, the one time I felt we may be getting a little too much information was in the final chapter. There he describes how the epiphany of embracing environmental sustainability occurred to him at a Seattle Lebowski Fest, a cult-like celebration of a movie that he admits to "only begin to understand after the fifth viewing". Presumably fatherhood changed his priorities, and rather than strain his credibility, I found this geeky anecdote disarming. A Greenpeace diatribe this is not.

The trouble with the majority of writing about climate change and other environmental worries is that they make people think, "Oh, hell. It's too late anyway. Why even try to do anything?" The Geography of Hope is an antidote to this kind of thinking. I am now 54 years old, and when I was 20 years old or so, I devoured ecological jeremiads such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The trouble is, back then I actually thought my civilization was doomed to fall apart before the end of the 20th century. This, fortunately, didn't happen and in the meantime I got sidelined by matters too complex to detail here. Now at last I am returning to my environmental roots, but I find I simply no longer have the patience and strength to wade through dour predictions of ecological gloom and doom. Chris Turner's The Geography of Hope is the first book on this topic that I have felt glad to pick up, because it shows that it is really possible to put the brakes to the looming climate train wreck before it occurs and that sustainability is already within our grasp using existing technology, if only we would commit to it. How inspiring!

Chris Turner takes a year-long tour around the world, visiting places that are implementing solutions for sustainable living. A zero-net energy island in Denmark. Community Supported Agriculture in the southern USA. Plug-in hybrid cars. Earthship homes in New Mexico. Radical improvements in waste recycling in various industries. Examples of New Urbanism in city planning and architecture in Florida, the UK, Denmark, Colorado. Mass transit and city policy in Portland. Finhorn in the UK and Tibetan refugee communities in India -- for agriculture and community and deliberate living. A micro-hydro installation in a remote village on the Burma/Thai border built by local villagers, folks from a nearby refugee camp students, and local NGOs. He looks at questions like "what kinds of planning and structures inspire community?" "What exists NOW that can be building blocks for a truly sustainable world?" Inspiring and casual at the same time.

Turner turns his back on his environmental-protest Greenpeace-volunteering past, and goes searching, somewhat frantically, for those who are actually building a sustainable future. For him, it's like turning from "I have a nightmare" to "I have a dream". There follows a whirling tour of the planet, from energy-self-reliant communities in Denmark or Thailand, to urban farms in Cuba, or micro-credit financed solar energy in India. Turner captures the excitement of people who feel their work is turning the world's tide. He wants us excited, and he wants ecological to win because it's cool. And he does cheer me up. He does make you feel far more can be done than our petty individual reductions in consumption. But as for how most of us are gonna fit in all this transition, the book still leaves us with no clear band wagons to jump on. It's still, Turner admits, just us, being a little more alert to how our own place can change.

--author of The Gardens of Their Dreams

When I read this book, I was very glad to see that there are solutions to the problems we face and that there is hope that our quality of life can become much better than it is. I really appreciate all books that tell us about solutions to problems and/or better alternatives to the status quo!

If anyone is feeling that the world is coming to an end because of human folly...then you must read "The Geography Of Hope"Here you will meet individuals all over the world who are making the world a better place and there is HOPE !!!! Brav0 !!!