Published in 2002, this is a foundation book within the twelve books on Water that I am reading, with all reviews both here and at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog where you can easily use Reviews/Water to see all my reviews of books on water.
Right up front the author impresses me with her discussion of the paradigm war–a culture clash–between those who see water as sacred and its provision as a duty for the preservation of water, and those that view water as a commodity and its exploitation for profit as a fundamental corporate right.
Up front she lists and discusses the key lessons she has drawn:
This is a solid five in my view because the author goes beyond weaving a story about green gone wrong in three main areas (food, shelter, transportation), providing what almost all other books miss: the systems of systems “its all connected” and “what's good for one part of the system may be very bad for other parts,” both views developed by, among others, Buckminster Fuller, Robert Ackoff, and Herman Daly.
As much as I read, I can say up front that I found no false notes or glibness in this book, and found many nuggets that were new to me. Among the concepts covered by the book that were new to me were “food miles” (a portion of “true cost”), Eathship, Passivhaus (Passive House), Baugruppe (families hiring community builders directly, cutting out the middlemen developers), Agro-Ecology, Socio-Ecology, and the Jevons Paradox (conservation savings get poured back into expansion, nullifying the savings).
Two bottom lines up front:
EDUCATION of both the public and the politicians, and of all those associated with creating anything, is the sucking chest wound in our society. Green to Gold, Cradle to Cradle, Sustainable Design, Ecological Economics, all of this is going nowhere unless we can ramp up the speed and depth of public education on these topics.
GREEN TECHNOLOGY MAINTENANCE & REPAIR is the other sucking chest wound. The momentum is not there yet, meaning that well-intentioned groups can buy in to ecologically-sensible technology, but the company that installs it is generally not local, and there are no local green maintenance & repair skill sets on call. This struck me as a huge opportunity for community colleges.
Both a Tour of Substance, and an Eye Opener for Book People
July 29, 2010
James McEnteer
This is a 6 Star and Beyond book and is so categorized at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog, where one can browse all 1600+ of my non-fiction reviews sorted into 98 categories and easily found with keywords–I've tried for years to get Amazon to give us this functionality and finally created it for my own work.
I was so impressed, so engaged, so absolutely educated by this author that I spent no less than four hours, and it might be as much as six, creating a table of all 120 films that he mentioned, with the directors, the year of release, and hot links. The complete list with hot links is at Phi Beta Iota, and should have been an appendix–I certainly give the list to the author should he wish to post it anywhere.
A few highlights, followed by the complete table of 120 films:
EDIT of 2 August 2010: However great the mind or the man, we all make mistakes. Paul Hawkins made his with Monsanto, I've made mine. ClimateGate established with clarity the fraud associated with both the fabricated science and the intended “sub-prime mortgaging” of the Earth's atmosphere. Maurice Strong and Al Gore are pushing fraud, not fixing. Mercury and sulfer and methane are bigger problems than carbon, and global warming is a small element–not even close to being the main event–within Environmental Degradation, threat #3 after poverty and infectious disease. It troubles me when people vote against the messenger–McKibben is a great man–he's also made a mistake. Get over it and do more reading, integrate more, and it will all come out fine.
. . . . . . .
I was so annoyed with the narrow first third that glorifies the likes of Al Gore, Thomas Friedman, and Larry “women can't think like scientists” Summers that I was actually contemplating three stars. This is a weakly researched book that buys into the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Maurice Strong carbon fraud, while ignoring the vastly more intelligent findings of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility–Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, in which Environmental Degradation is #3 and more broadly defined.
Any book that quotes the discredited James Hansen of NASA and that builds a case around Op-Eds and undocumented assertions is a stain upon scholarship, and the first third of this book falls into that sinkhole. Despite many references to the Copenhagen summit, there is not a word in this book about ClimateGate (see the Rolling Update at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog) and therefore I find this author guilty of active misrepresentation bordering on a lack of integrity in this specific instance. The author is spending too much time with newspapers and not enough time with books representing the distilled reflections of others.
Having said that, and deducted one star for the lapse, I find the balance of the book absorbing, fascinating, and rich in gems of insight and fact. It should be read in conjunction with:
My criticism and praise of this important work are based on the above and the other 1,600 non-fiction reviews I have posted to Amazon, all more easily accessible in 98 reading categories at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Network.
The Nobel Prize to Yanus was a righteous one–unlike the political idiocy of awards to Al Gore and Barack Obama. I can only hope that the Norwegian public shames its overly political Nobel Committee into getting back on track with awards such as this one.
Beyond 5 Stars, a Cornerstone Book, Most Extraordinary Strategic Depth
June 30, 2010
David Halpern
Amazon has recently been allowing longer reviews by inserting a “Read More” line and I hope this entire review is allowed to stand. It will also be posted to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog, with links back to Amazon.
This is a Beyond Five Stars book. Although there is a fine literature emerging on collective intelligence and wealth of networks–and there is an increasingly robust Open Money movement that also includes local communities currencies that keep the wealth local–this book does something no other book has done–it connects economics to humanity and reality and the intangibles in all their forms.
This is not a book about underground economies, barter systems, alternative currencies, etcetera. It is one of the most profoundly relevant, erudite yet easy to read books I have ever read, with a direct bearing on every aspect of human life, and in particular the role of government as it should be.
The author specifically quantifies the financial and intangible value of “getting along” and being part of deep interconnections that define, drive, and develop (or not) the hidden wealth of nations.
The author has provided an extraordinarily well-organized book with a well-presented series of chapters that left me with so many flyleaf notes I fear I will not do the author and the intellectual tour de force he has provided, quite enough justice. Buy and read the book. Tell elected and appointed leaders about it–or send them a copy of this review. [I am stunned that there are no other reviews as this book was published in 2009.]
With Power Hungry, energy journalist and Austin apiarist Robert Bryce marshals lots of accurate numbers in context to make plain how modern culture exacts power from energy to save time, increase wealth, and raise standards of living. He also dispenses common sense to citizens and policy makers for an improved environment, a better, more productive economy, and more enlightened civil society. Inspired by the environmental economics of Rockefeller University's Jesse Ausubel and the University of Manitoba's prolific Vaclav Smil, he makes the case for continuing down the path of de-carbonizing our machine fuels–a process begun two hundred years ago when we turned from wood to fossil fuels and huge reservoirs of impounded water. As the world's population continues to urbanize, people will inevitably demand cleaner, healthier, environmentally sensitive energy choices.
Today, the world uses hydrocarbons for 90 percent of its energy, getting a lot of bang for its buck. Bryce offers convincing evidence that, over the next several generations, particularly since broad energy transformations require much time and financial investment, relatively cleaner burning natural gas will provide a bridge to pervasive use of nuclear power–” the only always-on, no-carbon source than can replace significant amounts of coal in our electricity generation portfolio.” And if nuclear ultimately becomes the centerpiece for the electricity sector, which constitutes about 40 percent of our total energy use, this development would accelerate the de-carbonization of the transportation and heating sectors as well.
His narrative transcends the current climate change debate. He thinks the evidence on either side is equivocal, at best provisional, and, even if it could be proven conclusively that humans were responsible for precipitously warming the earth by producing a surfeit of carbon dioxide, there is little that could be done about the situation now that would be consequential or practical, except embrace imaginative adaptation approaches.
Bryce organizes his ideas around four interrelated “Imperatives” that serve as a prime motif for human history and explain much contemporary circumstance: power density, energy density, scale and cost. He shows that, although energy is the ability to do work, what people really crave is the ability to control the rate at which work gets done–power. Performing work faster means more time to do something else. This begets an appetitive feedback loop, where more power unleashes more time to produce more power. As the scale of this process increases, costs are reduced, making what power creates more affordable.
Original, Grounded, a Foundation Book
Starts Weak, Ends Strong, Not the Whole Picture
Nutrition Action for Energy Appetites,
