Customer Reviews

Hey Mr. Green: Sierra Magazine's Answer Guy Tackles Your Toughest Green Living Questions

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I've read Mr. Green's advice column in Sierra Magazine for years, and was eager to get a copy of his book. Just as I expected, it's chock full of answers to questions that have been on my mind for years, "How much paper do you really have to recycle in order to save one tree?" as well as new green quandaries that I'd never even considered "Is it better to buy your beer in bottles or in cans?" The book is written in a friendly, chatty style, answering real letters that readers have written in to Mr. Green over the years, and Mr. Green's quirky humor shines through. Instead of being a preachy book, it tackles tough questions in a light way, and helps give you good realiable ammunition to convince your friends & family to make greener choices (my favorite is when he does the cost benefit analysis of turning off your lights when you leave a room-- over 10 years, you will save over $2,600! If that doesn't convince your relatives & friends to save electricity, I don't know what will!). This would be a good gift for anyone you know who is trying to live a more green lifestyle.

One review of "Hey Mr. Green!" is incredibly unfair, as anybody can see by scanning the book's 28 pages of references to sources.

In his terrific book, Schildgen cites hundreds of academic, government, industry, and news publications, while also

listing experts in various fields with whom he personally communicated by phone or e-mail, even giving the dates when he got in touch with them. All this clearly involves more than Googling, and since there's not a single reference to Wikipedia, how on Earth can anybody accuse him of relying on it? One wonders if this reviewer ever spent more than a minute or two with this carefully documented volume.

By the way, "Hey Mr. Green!" is a great read.

Good, straight forward tips for greening our lives. Bob Schildgen mixes in some humor and doesn't get preachey.

Mr. Green knows how to fight back when an inquiry requires it. He's certainly funny and knowledgeable about the underlying political forces that prevent sensible measures from being widely adapted. It's great that he is not discouraged in the face of those "stake holders" and others of us that simply have trouble changing very old habits and mind sets, but want to blame it on something else. For those who do know more about what we all should be doing, he covers little content that is new, but I still found it a fun read and picked up a few new good web sites for future reference. Best of all, I was encouraged to be a bit more spunky myself by his spirited commentary.

This book compiles material from Schildgen's readable and informative monthly column in Sierra magazine. Mr. Green doesn't have all the answers on complex environmental debates, but he doesn't pretend to either. Thus, readers of this book will feel equally informed by his answers to old readers' questions and by the questions themselves, which can be surprisingly esoteric and insightful. While this book does contain some environmentalist philosophy and ethics, those aren't really Schildgen's strongest areas and he occasionally lapses into cranky opinionating (though I do like his no-nonsense approach to the obstructionist and non-intellectual strategies employed by typical anti-environmentalists).

Regardless, what makes this book (and the original Hey Mr. Green column) unique are the thoughful answers Schildgen comes up with for esoteric questions about all aspects of green living, big and small - like the energy requirements of producing beer bottles vs. beer cans or the true environmental costs of farmer's markets vs. store-bought foods. The answers are well-researched too, with nearly a fourth of this book's bulk dedicated to footnotes. Schildgen also does a great job trying to figure out the happy medium between contradictory environmental philosophies and encourages readers to strike the best balance between the big stuff and the small stuff. Thanks to Mr. Green, sometimes you don't need to follow portentous ethical philosophies to do your small part for the planet. [~doomsdayer520~]

This is just folksy wisdom. Schildgen is merely a middle man, trying to disseminate information that he's gathered somewhere, maybe wikipedia or google. Don't get this if you want numbers or scientific information. Sure he gives numbers, but often relative to nothing tangible.

He advises people where to buy or not buy their gasoline, but knows nothing about how little this effects the bottom line of the oil company.

Don't expect much more than advice from an advice column in a small-town newspaper.