Here are reviews of climate change and environmental books. Please feel free to send in your own book reviews to share here.
Together Resilient
Building Community in the Age of Climate Disruption
Together Resilient looks at the benefits of “Intentional Community” living – a kind of modern look at how we would set up a “commune” today. Don’t let that put you off!!
Here the author looks at the benefits of living in communities, sharing resources and considering ways to live more happily whilst maintaining our modern living standards and privacy. This might involve separate living accommodation with shared community areas or separate housing. It may involve community energy production or community growing.
The pros and cons of various existing groups is considered, along with measuring their carbon foot prints. Interesting measurements include the carbon savings that could be has whilst eating together.
(It would be interesting to measure the carbon savings from our Bonar Bridge Food Stop events, run by the Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust. Saving are made with only using one kitchen, larger pots, and even only warming one room. Or indeed, if we started sharing meals more again as is done in Italy, Spain and France, for instance.).
For Sutherland, we could reach for the stars and actually develop an area of eco housing with some levels of community living and sharing. Certainly, more quickly, some of us may wish to take on some aspects included in the book. Indeed, car and tool sharing is something that’s already being considered.
No matter the level of community living that we may wish to consider, this book is a good read and will surely initiate some thoughts for living in a reduced carbon world.
The book is available in the Lairg Learning Centre Carbon Library.
Interesting Factoid: Bhutan is the only nation in the world with a negative carbon footprint!
Visualising Climate Change
Are you stuck on ideas on how to help people see that climate change is real?About how to get more people changing their habits? This is the book for you!
It’s a workbook with steps and strategies that help to build ideas and projects. The key concept is visualisation – the benefits of using images to help to get the message across and to invigorate action.
Various case studies are includes to e.g. help people see potential flooding issues or to help communities see how their village / town could be adapted to mitigate climate change issues.
The 2 main themes are first, to help us understand the holistic considerations required looking ate Causes, Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptaion and secondly, looking at the individual learning journeys of several people in a village.
Read more about Visualizing Climate Change here.
The book is available in the Lairg Learning Centre Library.
This Book Is Not Rubbish
50 Ways to Ditch Plastic & Save the World
Here’s a thought… are we actually doing the right thing with eco-bricks (putting lots of plastic inside a bottle and then building things with that)? What happens when it deteriorates? Is it just putting the problem off til later? Is it “allowing” us to keep buying plastic stuff…? It’s such a difficult thought…
Before Covid, we did have our crisp packet collections around various places and in schools. But should we have been promoting simply eating less? Should crisps be a treat rather than part of our daily calorie intake? On our Plastic Free July, Week 1, Kitchen, I pledged to give up crisps – I was ashamed at the number of crisp packs I’d collected. I’ve switched over to savoury biscuits and other tasty foods. Still plastic involved, but much less and .. well the next step would be to bake my own…
There are loads of resources on line to help us ditch plastic and a really interesting book, above – 50 ways to ditch plastic. Anyone got this? I’d love to borrow it…