“The Revenge of Gaia – Why the Earth is fighting back and how we can still save humanity”

by James Lovelock

reviewed by Fiona Richmond

This book has been a surprising best-seller. It carries a stark warning:

 “…if we fail to take care of the Earth, it will surely take care of itself by making us no longer welcome.”

 Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of the green movement.  He invented the electron capture device which helped highlight the potentially disastrous effect chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from aerosols and air-conditioning are having on the ozone layer. He is also the originator of Gaia Theory, a holistic and systems-based analysis that views the earth as a living entity. Now 86, Lovelock is widely respected for his amazing insight.

“The Revenge of Gaia” will come as quite a shock to many in the green movement who have been among the most receptive of Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. He seems to almost revel in being in opposition to many of the green movement’s cherished principles like sustainable development, renewable energy, and in his scientist’s love of nuclear power. At times he seems to be acting as an apologist for the nuclear industry, minimising the threat posed by radiation.

To have such a respected and perceptive scientist favour nuclear power demands hard questions. Is it just possible, that given the dire situation we are in regarding climate change, that he could be right? Like many greens I have a deep-seated loathing of nuclear power. But there is too much at stake to dismiss the question. But when I came to ask myself about the nuclear option, more questions arose. Most nuclear power stations are built around the coast. What will happen to these if we face a sea level rise of several metres? Where will the new nuclear power stations be built? Those of us who are already committed greens need to keep re-examining our hostility to nuclear power. There is too much at stake to allow our possible prejudices to make the wrong choice.

Lovelock likens our fossil fuel addiction to that of a smoker who refuses to give up until they become ill. Of course by then, it is too late. The great majority of the world’s population currently shows not the slightest sign of intending to give up or even reduce their fossil fuel consumption.

Some of Lovelock’s analogies are excellent in helping us visualise our predicament. For example as we approach the climate tipping point he likens us to passengers on a pleasure boat, serenely sailing towards the Niagara Falls, unaware that the engine is about to fail. He also likens the current response of the Kyoto treaty to the role of those who reacted to the threat of the approaching Second World War by appeasing the enemy. We are playing for time rather than effecting real change. Lovelock is also a very learned man, after years of research and study. If nothing else I learnt a new term from this book: iatrogenic, meaning a treatment aht adds to damage rather than curing a malady.

At times Lovelock comes across as misanthropic, referring to “a plague of people”, or suggesting saving the tropical forests by using them as a repository for nuclear waste! He comes across as prejudiced against wind power. And he is unnecessarily scornful of city-living environmentalists. But he clearly cares deeply about the future of the Earth, and mourns the loss of much beauty in the English countryside due to agribusiness.

Lovelock favours a managed retreat, preferably one along the lines of Dunkirk, where people rallied round and made sacrifice, rather than Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow. People still talk of the “Dunkirk” spirit – could that be revived to encourage the notion of sacrifice for one’s count? Would the Ipod/wristband generation accept “carbon rationing”? Lovelock concludes:

“We need the people of the world to sense the real and present danger so that they will spontaneously  mobilise and unstintingly bring about and orderly and sustainable withdrawal to a world where we try to live in harmony with Gaia.”

I will remember this book as one that asks greens hard questions about the role of nuclear power. I am no longer so certain in dismissing the nuclear option having read this book.

"Half Gone – Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Global Energy Crisis”

 by Jeremy Leggett, published by Portobello Books

 reviewed by Fiona Archer

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Do not read this book if you want cheering up. Do not read it if you are easily disturbed. But if you want the unvarnished truth about the reality of the energy and climate crisis, this one of the best sources around. Packed with facts and figures, it is an authoritative account of how on the one hand we at the “topping point”, the point of “peak oil”, when the market are about to go into panic stations over a shrinking supply of the resource that keeps the wheels of the global economy turning, while demand for that resource is rising. And on the other hand, Leggett explains how the burning of that resource is about to bring us catastrophic climate change.

Jeremy Leggett is ideally placed to tell this story, having worked at the heart of the oil industry, and then jumped tanker, to work as chief scientific advisor to Greenpeace. Once you have read this book it is unlikely you will ever view our profligate energy consumption the same again. It will probably scare you into urgent action. It did me!  

“Half Gone” is a story of two halves, firstly about global oil reserves, and secondly about the climate disaster that is looming from our addiction to oil. Reserves have been exaggerated by the oil producing nations and the oil companies, because for a variety of reasons it has been in their short term financial interest to do so. The same nations and industry have been among the fiercest opponents of action to limit damage to the world’s climate, which Leggett also documents in convincing detail.

“Half Gone” contains some remarkable facts. Did you know for example that in the 1930s, the American oil company Chevron joined forces with General Motors to buy up the suburban electric railway around Los Angeles, and then closed it down to create dependency upon their products? Plenty of fuel there for the conspiracy theorists!

Leggett highlights the fact that one of the biggest players in deciding when we wake up to climate catastrophe is going to be the trillion dollar insurance industry, which uses risk analysis as a basis for its calculations. A threat to the insurance industry would undermine the whole global economy, which is a bit sad for those of us hoping to find a pension left for us at the end of our working lives. When the oil runs out and climate catastrophe strikes, all the assumptions on which we have based our daily lives for decades, will come tumbling down.

Having scared the life out of the reader, the book tries to end on an optimistic note, suggesting what needs to be done. However by this stage, the reader is likely to conclude that it will be too little, too late. “Half Gone” is a major contribution to the debate about Peak Oil and Global Warming, with over 300 references and notes, and is recommended reading.

Book sites:
Amazon

Further Book Reviews:

Guardian Books
Independent Books
London Review of Books

Ottakers

Green Metropolis

Book People

“Saturday” by Ian McEwan

reviewed by Fiona Archer 

This is a great novel that deserves the rave reviews. It covers a day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon that happens to be the day of the great march against the Iraq War, a day when the perfect life of a man with the perfect family, at the peak of his life, starts to unravel, through fears of terrorism, a brush with the underworld, and a feeling of being overtaken by events. The writing is crisp, urgent and technically assured, and explores and rights and wrongs of military action in Iraq. My only problem with a book written with such realism is how Henry is supposed to have fitted in witnessing a possible terrorist incident and the great march, two separate bouts of love-making, a road rage incident, a game of squash,  watching his son’s band perform, making homemade fish stew, being victim of an aggravated burglary, and neurosurgery into one day, but then perhaps I am just jealous.

"The Monk who sold his Ferrari"

by Robin S. Sharma

reviewed by Fiona Archer

It's corny, trite, patronising, simplistic, it's American, but...............there is something about this book that makes it a bit extraordinary. "The Monk" is a fictional tale about a highly successful and wealthy American lawyer who has a heart attack, re-evaluates his life, and goes to Indian in search of redemption and enlightenment. There he meets a community of monks who take him in, teach him the deep wisdom of the ancients, and encourage him to return to the fallen world and spread their message. A semi-autobiographical fable by Sharma, who must have made a mint out of his personal development seminars and commercial spin-offs, nonetheless distills an extraordinary wealth of wisdom about life into a cheesy but enticing story, in an accessible medium. Reviews of the book range from those enthralled and captivated, to the hostile. There are lessons within the book for us all, especially as the damage caused by the lifestyles of the affluent becomes daily clearer, and force all to re-evaluate our lives. Readers keen on personal development may also enjoy "Awakening the Giant Within" by Anthony Robbins, and "Be Your Own Life Coach" by Fiona Harrold, both recommended.

"Small Island"

by Andrea Levy

reviewed by Fiona Archer

Small island, big book. This book came to me as a Christmas present with a high recommendation. It is the fictional story of the lives of four characters shortly before, during, and after World War Two, and serves as a useful insight into the petty racism of some of the small-minded inhabitants of our small island. Parts of the book lived up to expectations. In particular the description of the reaction of three redneck GIs to the presence of a black man talking to a white woman in a genteel tea shop was memorable and amusing. Likewise the description of the excuses landlords gave to a black man seeking a room to rent - it was always blamed on someone else, and he longed to meet this mythical person who would object to living next door to a black man. The book has won several literary awards, but I have to say that it dragged in places, and I only finished reading it because I felt I had to. Some of it was unnecessarily graphic. Aspects of Bernard's character just didn't ring true. It is no doubt a book that will be talked about for years to come, as some readers have raved about it, but for me it really needed editing down to about half the length, and to focus on what the clearly talented author does best.

"The Google Story"

by David Vise

reviewed by Fiona Archer

This is an account of life inside the hottest business, media and technology success of our time. Started from a garage, every day over 64 million people now use Google, in more than 100 languages. This from a company that is only 8 years old, but has enjoyed a meterioc rise to become a company worth £20 Billion, that is prepared to challenge Bill Gates and the Microsoft empire.

The Google Story is an intimate account of life inside the "Googleplex", where Sergey Brin and Larry Page set out to change the world, with their philosophy "Do no evil". It makes a fascinating and inspiring read, about a company that aims to compete with the corporate giants while remaining human and alternative. There are contradictions in some of the rather ruthless tactics adopted to beat the competition, but the founders of Google come across as the good guys. Some of the insights suggest how "straight" companies might achieve more: at Google staff have a day a week to work on whatever creative projects they want. Staff get free healthy food and healthcare.

Google remains a company to watch in a rapidly changing world, and this is an excellent insight into the company.

"Cloud Atlas" by David Mitchell

reviewed by Fiona Archer

This is not so much a book as another world. It is easy to see why "Cloud Atlas" was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize. In a hugely ambitious epic, David Mitchell interweaves six mini-novels set over several centuries. The first two of these left me stunned by Mitchell's extraordinary verbal dexterity, of Dickensian genius, combined in places with brilliant humour. The reader is transported in turn to the world of a writer on board a 19th Century sailing vessel, and then into the world of a caddish but gifted musician. So it was disappointing then to find the remainder of the book of such mixed quality. The "Luisa Rey" mystery is a good but unremarkable thriller about a nuclear cover-up reminiscent of Silkwood. The "Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish" is amusing with some keenly observed digs about the state of rail travel in the UK, but rambled and descended into slapstick. Then came the really disappointing part of the whole book. A science fiction section that was so awful and far-fetched that I gave up on it, and a further section that I couldn't grasp at all. The book then closed with a reprise from the two initial themes, finishing with a profound and wise assessment of the meaning life, to the effect that the struggle for civilised values is a struggle against nature red in tooth and claw. Mitchell is a writer of extraodinary talent, and his worst offerings are better than anything I could achieve, but it was disappointing to see work of such genius alongside sections that were of such indifferent quality.

"Beyond Coincidence" by Martin Plimmer and Brian King. Published by Icon Books,

reviewed by Fiona Richmond.

This is an extraordinary book, and if you are looking for something to give you faith in something more than the mechanistic world view, this could be it. "Beyond Coincidence" investigates the phenomenon of coincidence with scientific vigour, suggesting that co-incidences may arise due to the quirky quantum nature of reality at the microscopic scale. There are 250 incredible stories, which are entertaining, amusing and guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.

Take this one:

"Three English men were the only occupants of a carriage on a train travelling through Peru in the 1920s. Their names were Bingham, Powell, and Bingham-Powell."

or this-

"Margaret Bird was involved in a collision with another car and a van. All three drivers were called Bird."

Coincidences seem to be like the glue that bind our lives together and occasionally give it a sense of meaning or the feeling that there is more going on than meets the eye. A study of quantum physics has convinced many scientists of much the same, that there are features of the universe that defy logic and which really are almost paranormal. This book is guaranteed to get you thinking and the funny thing about coincidences is that the more you look out for them the more you notice them!

“Touching the Void”

by Joe Simpson, reviewed by Fiona Richmond.

Having a bad day? Not half as bad as poor Joe Simpson had when he broke a leg high in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. Joe was one of two young climbers who set out to ascend the unclimbed West Face of the remote Siula Grande. They reached the summit, but just as they were starting the descent, disaster struck. Joe broke his leg.
His partner Simon Yates began the heroic task of trying to lower him all the way down the mountain tied to a rope. Disaster struck again when the rope by which Joe was being lowered suddenly slipped, and Joe fell over the side of a crevasse. Simon could not lift him up, and could get not response from the end of the rope, deep down the crevasse. He thought Joe was dead. The weight of the rope was dragging him into the crevasse as well. Simon was forced to take the agonising decision to cut the rope.

But Joe was not dead. “Touching the Void” tells the extraordinary story of how Joe survived. He was unable to climb up out of the crevasse with his broken leg. He took the only choice. An act of faith. He lowered himself down into the crevasse, a dark and possibly bottomless void. Luckily for Joe and the reader, at the bottom of the crevasse, there was a way out. Joe dragged himself inch by inch down the mountainside, in agony due to his broken leg. Hour after hour, day after day, until he finally reached base camp, and his survival confronted Simon with the awful truth about what he had done. It explores the emotions of both parties, of someone who has been left for dead by a good friend, and how that person felt in making such an awful choice.

This is an extraordinary book about an extraordinary true story. It can act as an inspiration to us all whenever we are having a bad day. You don’t have to be into mountaineering to enjoy this book. It makes a gripping read, and has also been made into a powerful film.