Bill McKibben was arrested in August this year while protesting against TransCanada’s proposed plans to build a pipeline that would carry oil from the Alberta tar sands to Texas. McKibben has written:  “This is really really important. Jim Hansen, the world’s most important climatologist, has said that if we burn these tar sands in a big way it will be ‘essentially game over for the climate.’ That’s worth reading again. The oil companies and the Koch Bros are willing to take a few years of big profits in return for cratering the planet’s climate system.”

You might think that the facts would speak loudly enough for themselves, but McKibben has also written an introduction to this collection of short stories which aims to show that fiction can speak as persuasively as fact in making the point about the wounds we are inflicting upon our own planet. The book’s title is taken from a quote attributed to the environmentalist John Muir, ”When it comes to a war between the races, I’m with the bears.”

Not-too-preachy

There are ten stories from an impressive array of internationally acclaimed authors who write, for the most part, either literary or science fiction. When I picked it up to read I was truly hoping it wouldn’t be too ‘preachy’ and offputting in its approach to telling tales from a ‘damaged planet’. Of course, since these stories are essentially intended to be  environmental parables for our age, it would be surprising if there weren’t a certain amount of implicit preaching involved. But luckily, I also found a lot of variety in tone and subject matter and the authors’ approach to the topic

The collection begins with T.C. Boyle’s story of eco-activists fighting against deforestation. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Sacred Space looks at the environmental changes facing the Sierra Nevada region. As expected, these stories are clearly directly connected to the effects of human environmental destruction.

Oblique twists

But my favourite stories in the book take a more oblique angle on the theme. In Lydia Millet’s Zoogoing there is no immediate, overt environmental angle. Initially this seems to be the story of someone who likes getting too close for most people’s comfort to animals in zoos. But the story goes on to consider a very human angle on what it means to be endangered and waiting for extinction.

Similarly, Nathaniel Rich’s Hermie uses humour, featuring a talking hermit crab. Like so many of these stories it has a tinge of sadness despite the humorous style. But there are plenty of smiles to be found too, with creations like Toby Litt’s ‘Tescocommunists’ and ‘Walmarxists’ in a story which kookily conflates the blitz of the second world war with the blitz club of the 1980s London dance scene,  aping the postmodern way that most nostalgic reruns of historic trends manage to make a mash up of time. Even the title of the story, Newromancer, is a pun on the classic William Gibson cyberpunk novel Neuromancer.

Future planet earth

There are two stories set in 2040. Helen Simpson’s contribution is a diary account and possibly the most terrifying vision of societal breakdown to go with climate destruction. David Mitchell’s, The Siphoners is also a scarey vision of the future, featuring a story within a story, reminiscent of the complexity of his novel Cloud Atlas.  But it also involves a sobering reflection upon the possibilities and implications of population control.

One of the impressive features of this collection is the variety of different approaches to the topic, including reflections upon the numerous different ways in which we have trashed our planet, or at least exploited it, and may one day be called to account.  For example The Tamarisk Hunter considers the importance of water supply as a vital resource and extrapolates upon the lengths that people will go to to obtain supplies.

Even the stories that have speculative or predictive elements to them are firmly rooted within the past and the present.  Margaret Atwood’s short-short story ends the book with a creation myth that turns into a destruction myth.  She writes, In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it.

This collection may not persuade everyone to side with the bears, and that’s fair enough, but it does present some of the possible reasons to do so in interesting and entertaining short-fictional ways. Royalties from the sale of this book go to 350.org, an international grassroots movement to reduce the amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:
Plastiki: Across the Pacific on Plastic
The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change
A No Nonsense Guide to Climate Change

This review is a collaboration with and will also appear in The Short Review.

Edgelands are the spaces outside of towns and cities that play host to a rough element. Largely considered no-man’s-land, they too deserve attention, Marion Shoard argues. Two poets respond to the call.

The term edgelands was coined in 2003 by Marion Shoard.  She wrote, “The expanses of no-man’s-land which have sprung up on the margins of our towns and cities play host to a mix of uses characteristic of our age. Rough and ready in the naked functionalism of their edifices and in the lawlessness and vigour of their natural vegetation, these places are unappreciated by the arbiters of landscape taste, but they too have their story and their needs. The time has come to give these ‘edgelands’ their due and recognise them as landscapes in their own right.”

Answering Shoard

In their book Edgelands: Journeys into England’s True Wilderness poets Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts have done what Shoard requested, presenting a non-fictional celebration of these marginal spaces.  Perhaps, like the process of identifying our own personal limits and boundaries, beginning to understand what happens on the outskirts of our habitable spaces will help us to love and understand these edgelands better, rather than simply regard their rag tag spaces as necessary evils.

This book handles an extraordinary breadth of subject matter with individual chapters that cover different types of edgeland spaces or characteristics, including subjects such as wasteland, dens, landfill, sewage, wire, ruins, piers, mines and bridges.  The writing is not encyclopaedic, more a meditative contemplation, often drifting back and forth within and in-and-out of the declared topic to wander off at a tangent.

The art of the edge

The authors pose the question (and then go on to answer it by example) of how exactly poets can cope with barbed wire fencing and IKEA car parks without becoming prosaic?  How do the metaphors we use about journeying fit in with post- and pre-industrialised spaces?  If Robert Frost regretted missing the path “less travelled by” then the authors characterise their own spiritual path as “a track worn down by dog-walkers and schoolkids, on the outskirts of a north-west English conurbation.

It would start on scrappy grass, then weave its way through a copse of feral trees.  Every now and then a makeshift den or tree house can be seen, or a water tower looming where the trees peter out.  Charred bonfire patches crop up on one side or the other, and the sky is overcast above.”

The book takes many other examples from art,  literature and music to illustrate its thesis: from Marilene Oliver’s sculptures featuring text messages, through the poetry of Philip Gross about communication mast platforms and Keith Arnatt’s photograpy of rubbish to the music of The Fall about container drivers.

There are also painters whose work represents the edgeland landscapes of England, including David Rayson and  George Shaw.  Perhaps we need these artists to moderate some of these landscapes for us, to be able to see their peculiar beauty.  The struggle to perceive is one that the authors document when they describe the act of searching, as adults, for present-day dens that match those of their own childhoods, “…you are aware of how differently you see this world, how you can no longer get your eye in, or realise the imaginative potential in what you see.”

There are plenty of fanciful imaginings of potential in this book.  Self-storage facilities as shrines or temples of contemplation to escape from consumerism rather than spaces in which to store its excesses. Rats are considered as possible communications repeaters, murderers guilty of disposing of their victims to landfill, commuters capable of plucking herbs in the ruins of supermarkets. It is a co-written book, presented in a singular first person plural voice but that ‘first person combined’ voice is not an impersonal one, rather it is something highly individualistic.

At one point the authors list, like verses, the wild flowers that flourish on the wasteland of different cities, following each stanza with the constant refrain of exactly the same array of shopping chains that exist in all locations.

Out of sight, out of mind

“Rubbish is part of the texture of edgelands….The edgelands become a place of forgetting, never more so than when they are used for dumping or for landfill.”  Graffiti and litter are recurring themes in this book, but often they can be swallowed up and hidden by colonising wild plants.

The authors are insistent that edgeland spaces are transient places, always subject to change.  “Edgelands ruins contain a collage of time, built up in layers of mould and pigeon shit, in the way a groundsel rises through a crack in a concrete floor open to the elements.  They turn space inside out….Encountering the decay and abandonment of these places is to be made more aware than ever that we are only passing through; that there is something much bigger than us.”  They also argue that edgelands are some of the most biodiverse environments in England.

In some ways the spaces that fight out the battle between humanity and nature are those in which flora and fauna are taking back for themselves. The former landfill site, Salt Ayre, Lancaster became ‘an unplanned ecosystem’. Gulls established a large colony, attracted by edible rubbish.  Human scavengers settled there too, for what profits could be made, and Salt Ayre once even provided the final resting place for a forty-foot fin whale that had been stranded in Morecambe Bay.

Swaddywell Pit, Peterborough, once a dump is now a nature reserve. “There is wild carrot and yellow wort. Grasshopper warblers reel in the sedge and undergrowth; common darter, four-spotted chaser, emperor and black-tailed skimmer dragonflies cruise the air….Insects and birds and wildflowers are not interested in aesthetics.  All that matters is a biological opportunity.”  Of course, unregulated dumping is no friend to the environment and examples such as some Lebanese landfill sites show what a threat it can present.

The edge of the world

This book is about very English landscapes and spaces.  The mention of “true wilderness”  in the title reminds us that many so-called ‘rural’ spaces in the United Kingdom are closely managed. Woodland is often intensively planted for timber; the National Parks and designated long-distance footpaths are controlled and maintained for leisure purposes; watercourses are strictly managed to maintain levels, supplies and prevent flooding.

Of course, the authors are writing about the edgelands of a country which is not at war with itself or its  neighbours. In times of conflict, some unoccupied, boundary spaces can become far more contested and politically charged, such as the Iraqi Marshlands.  However, the concepts discussed in this book and the device of closely observing and recording could be translated and applied to any country at any stage of development.

For example, the book quotes Jimmie Durham describing the Arkansas of his childhood in the 1940s-50s, “…towns still had edges, no-man’s lands, that were not yet the surrounding farms…where the city’s refuse was casually dumped, so that the edge of town was not a ‘natural’ place. There lived racoons, opossums, rats, snakes, bobcats, skunks, hobos who were in fact outlaws(not homeless street people), families of African Americans and displaced Indians. All of us, shunned by the city, used the city’s surplus.”

It would be fascinating to read similar narratives that chronicle the edgelands of the Middle East. How much of their sights, sounds and smells would be similar and how much would differ from those of England’s edgelands.

For example, the idea of ‘allotment’ gardens for growing vegetables is a very British idea and the plots are often situated in archetypal edgeland spaces.  But a very similar 21^st century Urban Farming movement has emerged from Detroit and spread throughout the United States and internationally.  Today there are urban farming movements in both Israel and Egypt and it is the “waste ground, rooftops, industrial ruins, lost spaces” that become fruitful growing places in cities and on their edges.

Whether urbanisation and industrialisation is expanding, has reached a steady-state, or is in flux and decline, there will always be outer edges and frontiers where settlements meet untenanted and unworked areas of land.  It is to be hoped that Shoard’s challenge to describe these environments will be taken up in the Middle East and around the world.

Reviewer Pauline Masurel is a gardener and writer who lives in the United Kingdom near Bristol.  She is a regular reviewer of fiction for The Short Review website and has reviewed books for Amateur Gardening magazine.  Her own short stories have been published in anthologies, broadcast on BBC radio and featured online.  She was a runner up in the 2010 Chapter One International Short Story competition and is a member of the storytelling group Heads & Tales. More about her own writing can be found on her website www.unfurling.net.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Book Review of Plastiki: Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic

Interview with Locavore Expert Leda Meredith

Book Review: The Ethical Challenge of Climate Changes by Stephen Gardiner

Stephen M. Gardiner regards climate change more or less as an ethical failure on the part of the human race, something that implicates our institutions’ moral and political theories alongside ourselves as supposedly moral beings.

He employs the well known philosophical perspectives the ‘prisoners dilemma’ and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ to support his argument, demonstrating the idea that while it is individually rational to not to cooperate with attempts to curtail climate change, such a stance simultaneously means that we all suffer as a result.

Passing the Buck

He also argues that these two perspectives are in themselves insufficient to describe climate change since the immorality of global warming is ‘inter-generational,’ or in other words, we are ‘passing the buck’ to future generations. This means that the solutions to the previously mentioned philosophical problems are not actually available to us in this particular instance.

Gardiner also refers to ‘game theory’ – the idea that climate change is a problem that focuses on the individual self-interest of nations. Yet he suggests that the drive towards green energy cancels this out since with a green economy there is no tragedy of the commons and no intergenerational prejudice.

The Layman

I’m not a particular convert to the philosophical approach to climate change politics myself, having read a number of psychological texts on the issue. I find therefore that Gardiner’s book is rather a complex mix of theoretical assumptions, models and hypotheses which, while interesting to the academic, would certainly serve to deter the layman.

I find the most convincing argument put forward by Gardiner to be the intergenerational prejudice idea, something that I have encountered before and fully accept. He also correctly identifies the prospect for abrupt, sudden climate change, the nightmare prospect of runaway global warming, being exacerbated in itself by three very difficult blocking factors – economics, psychology and the intergenerational problem, all of which serve to create a sense of political inertia that rather stifles action for change.

Ethical motivation

This is all rather deep stuff and it can be difficult to wade through at times, but nevertheless Gardiner has expertly explored some very instinctual and vitally important considerations which cannot realistically be ignored. In his conclusion he argues that self-interested consumption and group-focused politics is unlikely to meet the challenge. Rather he proposes a channeling of ethical motivation through political groups and institutions and thereby into people’s individual character.

He nevertheless warns the reader that, though essential, this is a major task which requires the participation of all disciplines, particularly psychology, law, economics, political science and sociology.

The most positive function of the book, ultimately, is to argue urgently that the major business of the day is to confront and challenge the notion of ‘business-as-usual’. Although, I suspect somehow that most of us already realise this, it’s just that not many of us are quite sure how to go about it.

In essence, difficult but required reading.

‘ A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change’ by Stephen M. Gardiner, published by Oxford University Press, UK, 2011

Reviewed by Robin Whitlock, a freelance writer and researcher with a special interest in environmental issues – particularly climate change and energy – as well as mythology and history. Based in Bristol, UK. Robin blogs at: http://robinwhitlock.blogspot.com/

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:
Book Review: Plastiki – Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic
Book Review: A No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change
Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach

Ken Finn is a passionate man. Sitting with him in his Brighton kitchen (which he built himself), our conversation ranges from his book, ‘My Journey With a Remarkable Tree’, to the current state of the economy: “We’ve got to decouple the juggernaut [of economic meltdown] that is hurtling towards us” is a memorable quote from him: to the recent summer of unrest throughout the UK, and both the malaise and regeneration of human, tribal, society, to an exploration of the benefits of travel and our human stories.

I’m here to talk to him about the book, and to be interviewed for his radio show (more about this later), but mainly because since we met at the UKAware Festival 2 years ago in London, I’ve wanted to catch up and have a longer conversation with this deeply engaged individual. I find him warm, deeply articulate and insightful on what he sees around him.

Ken’s concerns start on a very local level, from the foxes and huge seagulls that seem to dominate Brighton, to the slowly building strength of the Green Party locally – they control the Local Council and Caroline Lucas (the GP Leader) is the local MP, both firsts in a stagnant British political system; through to deforestation and the ruination of the world’s natural resources, and particularly on to the human story of Sena, a key character in the book, whose life was threatened in Phnom Penh and who has recently fled to Holland.

‘My Journey’ is both a travelogue of Ken’s movement with a mission through Cambodia and Vietnam, and a tragic, dispiriting account of the impact human greed has upon the forest and those who have depended on it for their livelihood and well-being for centuries.

When I read of the corrupt rangers being bought by local province governors and politicians not to protect the forests but instead to allow them to be clear-felled and destroyed in the name of personal and corporate profit, I felt as sick as the author. He travelled with various guides (Sena being the most involved with the campaign against felling) and met Shamen and forest dwellers who revere their spirit trees.

Some of the book reads like a lulling motorbike read, bumping along forest tracks, immersed in sights and thoughts of food and the oddness of global travel, and then he is into an encounter and right into the experience, for good or ill – such as with the guards at a checkpoint who after consuming a crate of beer, suddenly seem to understand English, or the times he gets trapped into tourist nightmares and tries to wriggle out.

“I was ready to ask the questions I’d wanted to ask since I’d arrived. “So do you use any Cambodian timber?”

“No, nothing from Cambodia.”

I changed track, “My clients only want to buy environmentally sound products. What safeguards to you have in place to make sure that what you use is sustainable?”

“Everything is FSC certified, so you know it’s sustainable. See it’s here in our brochure.”

I could feel myself going red, ‘the fucking liar’ I said in my head but kept cool. “But that can’t be. Laos and Vietnam have no FSC accredited forests and there are only three small ones in the whole of Malaysia.”

Now he wasn’t sure, I’d set off alarm bells and definitely pissed him off.

“No, everything is sustainable.” He was closing the books and closing our meeting. He was avoiding eye contact too. He didn’t mean it of course but he didn’t know if I was trouble. I hoped I could be.

“Of course, I will be in touch.” I said, somehow wanting it to seem like a threat. It was over and Hai walked me out to the car. I let out a shout inside my head.”

All of us who’ve travelled and found ways to engage with communities will identify with this book. I understand when Ken tells me about the struggles to continue the campaign, and re-adapting afterwards to our Western lifestyle, where casual consumer use and throwaway culture still predominates. Garden furniture (and many other wood products) is everywhere in the UK and the Middle East, and much of it remains made out of illegal timber. Always look for the FSC logo I preach (Forestry Stewardship Council).

‘My Journey’ is also a book to invigorate anyone who believes in protecting something natural: a kind of manual for the journey. We will not win all our battles, much will be lost, but the journey itself is often remarkable. Thanks Ken for articulating that passion.

http://www.eye-books.com/remarkabletree/author.htm

Ken Finn also hosts a radio show, ‘Earth Boots’, on Brighton community Radio. Find podcasts from his shows, and one featuring our extended conversation, at: http://kenfinn.podomatic.com/entry/2011-10-03T16_45_21-07_00 his own website is at: http://www.ken-finn.com/

Read more Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Book Review: Plastiki – Across the Pacific Ocean on Plastic

Book Review: A No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Change

Book Review: Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach

Renown economist Partha Dasgupta’s recent book, ‘Human Well-being and the Natural Environment’ is not for the faint-hearted. It is academic in style and suitable for ‘economists, and students of economics, environmental studies, political science and political philosophy’, as is described on the jacket. It would also interest motivated readers.

Not being familiar with economic theory, equations or statistics, I did find this a challenging read and much was inaccessible to me. I am an intuitive person by nature and was attracted by the title. I am grateful that it had such appeal because it is unlikely that I would have picked it up if it had been called, ‘An in-depth theoretical study of how to evaluate policy change impact on social well-being and the natural environment in regions of poverty’, which may have been more accurate. Having said that, this book gave me much food for thought and stimulated a desire in me to speak with the author.

I gained much from this work including an insight into: the importance of which indicators can be used to measure well-being, particularly when studying ‘poor people in poor countries’ i.e. ‘private consumption per head, life expectancy at birth, literacy, and civil and political liberties.’; the limitations of using GNP (Gross National Product) as an indicator of social well-being; the need for a holistic understanding of the non-market transactions of a community prior to implementing change; and the difficulties of fully accounting for the impact of change in a meaningful way.

I gained a fuller understanding of the complexity of human existence across a range of countries and the interrelationship between democratic processes, civil conflict, war and the natural environment. For example, the author notes that, ‘the majority of the poorest countries today lie in the tropics. In contrast, most of the rich countries are in the temporate zones’, equally, ‘many infectious diseases are endemic in the tropics and subtropical zones…..Warm climate enables the pathogens to flourish over the entire year, making it that much more difficult to control diseases.’

Where malnutrition plays a part in a country’s well-being, the author notes, ‘Undernourishment displays hysteresis. (Stunting and cognitive disability, caused by early malnutrition and infection, can’t be erased in later life.) This makes the labour and credit markets discriminate even more against those who are poor.’

I was made to consider the various stakeholders of the natural environment; ‘Watershed forests purify water and protect downstream farmers and fishermen from floods, drought, and sediments. In tropical watersheds, forests house a significant quantity of carbon and are the major location of biodiversity, A forest canopy can house several thousand species of living forms in a single hectare…..Some of the products of watersheds are necessities for local inhabitants (forest dwellers, downstream farmers, fishermen), some are sources of revenue for commercial firms (timber companies), whilst others are luxuries for outsiders (eco-tourists).‘

For me, as a concerned citizen and as a keen traveller who has visited some of these so-called ‘un-developed countries’ Dasgupta describes, it has opened up a whole new world of looking at what we value, how we evaluate the impact of change and how we need to understand the cultural differences of ‘poor’ communities where there may be a need to intervene.

I was left with a question: How does one calculate the increase to the power base of a company that exploits small local communities for its own ends? It is, after all the power base that will enable the company to continue to exploit further local communities and influence government decision-making. I feel if this measurement isn’t included and accounted for against the social and natural environment costs, the long-term costs of globalisation on social well-being and natural resources will continue to be underestimated.

‘Human Well-being and the Natural Environment’ by Partha Dasgupta, 2010
Published by Oxford University Press, UK

Louise Gethin, reviewer, was brought up in Bristol, where she currently lives, though she has lived in France, Germany and New Zealand, and has spent time holidaying in Jerusalem, Spain, Ireland, Indonesia, Australia and Singapore. She’s a keen amateur photographer, cyclist and hockey player. Her biggest ambition is to publish her collection of short stories ‘Anecdotes of Love and Death’.

Want a reference book to living ethically? Want to know the truth about the costs of globalisation and profit-driven business practices on our health and society? Want to know what you can do to bring about change? This is the book for you.

Unlike the other books by Leo Hickman that I have reviewed (The Final Call and A Life Stripped Bare), the absence of the writer’s perspective and his interactions with others in A Good Life makes the book a bit harder to read.

It is much more about the theory of ethical living, about the origin of our food and what’s in it, power dynamics of globalisation, the costs to health, society and our environment of living unethically, and the different ways we can live more ethically.

I do like the way this book has been organised.  The eight chapters are broken into logical topics: Food and Drink, Home and Garden, Travel, You, Family, Community, Money and Work. At the end of each chapter there is a directory of related organisations, websites and magazines.

There are also ‘Explainer’ sections with a detailed explanation of terms like Toxic Chemicals, Fairtrade, Organic Food, Climate Change.

The ‘Dilemma’ boxes are useful throughout for exploring such questions as: do we need to wash our hair? Incineration or Landfill? Should I employ a cleaner?

The ‘Spotlight’ topics focus on our love affair with MDF, Trash Miles, Carbon Neutral, the rise of ‘unethical’ investments’, along with other highlighted issues.

It is well researched and packed full of useful information, including a section on further reading and resources, but it is text heavy and more a study of ethical living than an easily accessible practical guide.

I recommend A Good Life as a reference book, dipping into the different sections and accompanying directories when looking for something specific at a particular time.

A Good Life – The guide to ethical living, by Leo Hickman. Transworld Publishers (Eden Project Books).

This review was written by Louise Gethin of Bristol, UK.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

Review of Leo Hickman’s ‘A Life Stripped Bare’

Living A Simpler, Deeper Life With ‘The Moneyless Man’

It is a gentle meander through England, a ramble across the counties, a dip in the sea, a view from a cliff, a walk on the moor, an exploration of people who have created or conserved spaces of tranquility, and a discovery of unspoiled and restored locations.  It is also a tribute to those who strive hard to create a Slow Life and run a business.

For any reader who thinks Slow is easy, they will soon discover it’s not. As demonstrated through the life stories of the people named in “Go Slow England,” time, commitment, hard work and an ability to balance organic dreams with making a living are essential ingredients for success.

The underpinning concepts of Going Slow are an appreciation of community, family and environment as well as a meaningful understanding of the impact of our actions on others.  Many of the businesses profiled have been started by people like James & Siận at the Royal Oak in Somerset who state ‘We wanted to change direction and be closer to our parents.’  All of them have a desire to create positive change in their lives and in the lives of those around them.

There are role models who put their money where their mouths are and, like Susan Lilienthal at the Parsonage Farm in Somerset, offer discounted accommodation to those who arrive on public transport, bicycle or on foot; there are many who buy only locally-produced and preferably organic food for their kitchens, grow their own vegetables, make their own bread, keep animals, sell locally-produced and home-made goods.

Most of the settings are rural, but not all. Cottages, hotels, manor houses, farms, a semi-detached redbrick house in London and even a Tipi site nestle comfortably next to each other in this book.  Each location has a distinct flavour that blends the creativity and dreams of its host/hostess with the local landscape and community.

The book is broken into digestible sections, starting with Cornwall and Devon, moving through Somerset, Wiltshire and Dorset, onto London, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, up to Suffolk, Norfolk and Northamptonshire, across to Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, into Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire, and finally landing in Yorkshire, Cumbria and Northumberland.

Interspersed with photographs, recipes, (I would love to try Glynis Bidwell’s Plum Fudge Pudding on page 58), poems and historic anecdotes are indexed maps, pricing information, contact details, useful websites and even a comparative guide on ‘How to be fast’ and ‘How to be slow.’

It would take a lifetime to visit all these places and do them justice.  In fact, having reviewed Go Slow England, I see no reason to ever go abroad for a holiday again, unless, of course, I am searching for a guaranteed blend of sunshine, blue skies and high temperatures which, being in England, none of these locations can offer.

Go Slow England by Alistair Sawday and Gail McKenzie. Publishers: Alistair Sawday Publishing Co. Ltd, ISBN -13 : 978-1906136-03-1

‘It is an enviable life, but they have worked harder than we can imagine to create it.’ (Go Slow England – Page 107)

About the reviewer, Louise Gethin:

Originally trained as a nurse in Bristol, she spent four years working with people with HIV in the mid nineties. Highlights of her life include: trekking to Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal; working in New Zealand; being an aunt to three nephews and two nieces; and living for three years on a houseboat only a stone’s throw away from Windsor Castle.

More Book Reviews on Green Prophet:

A Review on Bill McKibben’s “Deep Economy”

Julian gets to grips with green business in a double book review

You’ve heard of tobacco and cannabis but what about jimsonweed or torchwood?  This book demonstrates that there’s a lot more to smoke created from plant material than just nicotine and narcotics.

We are familiar with plants as a food source or sometimes a construction material, but this volume is a fascinating excursion into a facet of plants that I’ve never seen discussed in this way before.  There are over two thousand reported uses of plant-derived smoke.  It has been used down the ages as insecticide, medicine, fragrance, food preservative, recreational drug, poison, disinfectant, magical agent and spiritual purgative.

Uses & Abuses

Incense is “any material that is burned or volatized to emit fragrant fumes” and it has been used for over five thousand years by cultures including the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians and Hebrews. The resins from the torchwood family of trees of southern Oman, including frankincense and myrrh, were once part of a trade that was probably more valuable than today’s oil markets.

It has been suggested that plant smoke was used by the Delphic oracles of ancient Greece to produce hallucinogenic vapors. Since then, many plant substances have been smoked by people around the world in the hope of inducing psychedelic visions, including a craze in the 1960s for smoking banana skins.  Research by the US Food and Drug Administration concluded that any such affects were due more to psychic suggestibility than the effects of chemical substances within the peel.

There are over a thousand reported medical uses for plant-derived smoke. It has been used for everything from aborting pregnancies, to strengthening newborn babies. Inhalation is a particularly effective way for the body to absorb the substances present in plant smoke. Plant smoke has sometimes been used as a painkiller and cannabis is perhaps the most controversial example of this. It has also been used for respiratory problems, for example Datura stramonium (or jimsonweed) has been widely used by asthma sufferers.  It was also used for “dulling the sense of people sacrificed during ceremonial executions” and for its hallucinogenic properties.

Toxic smoke

Unfortunately, jimsonweed also contains lethal toxic ingredients and there is ample evidence of the dangers of inhaling its smoke. A number of the other plants listed in this book can be used to make thoroughly nasty poisons, such as poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and ricin which is derived from the castor-oil plant, Ricinus communis. So it’s no surprise to learn that the latter plant has also been used as an ingredient in smoke that was intended to cause blindness in one’s enemies.

The authors point out that their information is drawn from many different sources and whilst every effort has been made to ensure its accuracy, survey data is subject to different methods and rigor and even the correct identification of a plant species may be in question for some ethnobotanical field studies.  And just because a particular plant material has been used as part of the rituals of a particular culture somewhere in the world, doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily a good idea to try setting light to it in our own homes.

This book provides no endorsements for plant smoke and even where it gives indications of the ingredients in historic recipes, there’s no suggestion that these are suitable for the home-grower and smoker.  This is not, therefore, a book for home experimentation with plant smoke.

List of plants

The first part of the book is a fascinating read and I was disappointed when it ended all too soon and gave way to the list of individual plant species.  This main part, the directory of individual plants, also contains some real gems, but I was left wishing that some of this information had been gathered together into a more discursive exposition that grouped plant smoke uses together in terms of other characteristics such as belief systems and geographical location.

The plant list also presents some problems for a lay reader. Despite a few line drawings of plants, it’s a rather dry prospect, visually,  and organised alphabetically by Latin plant names. So you either have to be prepared to browse this un-appetising-looking directory and dip in at random, or use the index to look up plants by their common names. In some cases this isn’t easy either.

For example, Papaver somniferum can be found in the index under ‘opium’  but not under ‘poppy’. You can only find plums if you happen to know that their botanic name is prunus. However, it does contain some fascinating revelations which repay the effort of finding your way around and it would be a very useful source book for anyone researching individual plant species in detail.

And there’s still much of interest here for the general reader. For example, anyone who has ever followed a recipe that requires you to dry-fry a fresh chili pepper will know that the resulting smoke can provoke a choking cough. So it’s interesting to discover that a tribe in Ecuador used to punish their children by making them stand over fires into which quantities of the plant had been thrown. An equally curious practice is the burning of a mix of garlic and pig excrement which has been used in Hungary to calm frightened children. Definitely not a recipe that many people will be tempted to try at home.

The future of plant smoke

Plant-derived smoke has a long history, but it also has a lot of future potential. The book’s preface offers the tantalising proposal that “few of the plants listed in this book have been studied for novel compounds that arise from the combustion of their parts. A whole new class of compounds quite possibly awaits discovery.” There may be a lot more uses for plant smoke and its derivatives.

Although this book remains morally neutral on the rights and wrongs of smoking various substances, it goes some way towards countering the view that plant smoke is always a bad thing.

This book was reviewed by Pauline Masurel, a Green Prophet guest writer

Uses & Abuses of Plant-Derived Smoke: Its Ethnobotany as Hallucinogen, Perfume, Incense & Medicine (Marcello Pennacchio, Lara Jefferson & Kayri Havens) Oxford University Press

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image via Stinkie Pinkie

Tamzin Pinkerton and Rob Hopkins are authors of ‘Local Food, How to make it happen in your community’ – a big, hearty book. In a time when the supermarkets look set on taking over, they give  practical guidance on how to set up community projects to help us gain more food independence: food security, self-sufficiency and organic eating are central to their message. ‘Local Food’ is packed with real- life examples of community schemes including farmer’s markets, community gardens and school projects.

Dig in

Not only a handbook for those looking to create a neighbourhood project, ‘Local Food’ is also an informative, inspiring read that is relevant to the current food-crisis. It seems to me that more and more people are buying local produce, preferring organic food and feeling the need to get back in touch with nature and the soil.

After many years of people growing more dependent on supermarkets for their food and losing touch with where that food comes from, there seems to be a shift occurring, even in the mainstream, back to the 1930s when the ‘Dig for Victory’ movement was beginning as a result of rationing during the Second World War. As Rob Hopkins points out, ‘By the end of the war, 10 percent of the nation’s diet was coming from allotments and back gardens…Nutritionists argue that the nation had never been healthier.’

Even when the government was rationing an average adult one egg and the value of 6 pence of meat per week (with other essentials in equally low amounts) the people of Britain were healthy due to working their own land. For me that shows how much more we could be doing in England today.

Juicing the fruits of labour

This book raises awareness of what is possible and how, with some planning and a few loyal helpers, we can all eat food grown in our local soil. On a personal level I have seen how effective a community project can be. My parents planted an orchard in 2007 with the help of neighbours as part of the Gloucestershire orchard group.

Next weekend we will be picking and juicing the apples from the forty-year old apple trees in the garden; we also have plums, quinces, pears and mirabelles. Everyone involved works hard to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Not only have we created a beautiful organic orchard of splendid trees but our village community is stronger as a result.

‘Local Food’ champions Britain as a nation of potential ‘produce- consumers’ by giving working examples of projects as well as ideas such as ‘The Great Reskilling’ described in chapter two.

‘We need to relearn all the skills and trades that once made up the thriving local food economies of a pre-oil society and that will help us to steer a steady course through the times of unprecedented change that lie ahead,’ they write.

Easy nibbles

I know that I need training from experienced people to become an active gardener, a preserver and a forager. This book has reminded me that I want to learn about edible wild plants such as blackberries and elderflower to further my current ‘easy nibbles’ repertoire. I also like the idea of a community composting scheme because, even without an allotment, I am adamant that my lovely compost will go to help some needy soil just down the road from my house.

If you are a budding community project organiser, or just an intrigued reader, the personal stories and photographs from established initiatives, as well as the engaging text on climate change, peak-oil, supermarkets, and growing your own food should entice you to get your nose deep in this book. I have!

This review was compiled by Ellen Grant. Ellen was brought up to love animals and plants and when, at the age of fourteen, her family moved to an old farmhouse with fifteen acres of land Ellen was infected with the green bug. She now lives in Bristol and attends Bath Spa University.

Read more about sustainable food:
How Does Your (Community) Garden Grow?
Edible Weeds In Your Middle East Garden
RECIPE: Mulberry Chutney ]]> http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/10/ellen-local-food/feed/ 0 http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/09/ben-law-woodland-year/ http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/09/ben-law-woodland-year/#comments Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:28:58 +0000 James Murray-White http://www.greenprophet.com/?p=30062 More green wisdom from the United Kingdom: this week Clare unravels the many reasons to celebrate and cherish woodlands.

Anne Frank found solace in the giant Chestnut tree that stood outside her home, while a Moroccan activist risked arrest to protect a precious stand of Cedar trees. And in Israel, to the outrage of Omer’s Mayor, the Bedouins are accused of cutting down thousands of trees on disputed lands.

Though they have spiritual significance to some and spell money to others, trees are critical to breathing our carbon emissions, and according to essayist Chip Ward, “sweat” the moisture that is necessary for agriculture. They prevent soil erosion and provide fuel and building materials. The numerous reasons we should protect remaining trees are hard to illustrate, unless you’re Ben Law. Clare Reddaway reveals what he knows.

Celebrity woodsman

The author of ‘The Woodland Year,’ Ben Law is something of a celebrity woodsman in Britain. He is particularly famous for his sustainable wooden house in the forest, the building of which was filmed for Channel Four’s ‘Grand Designs.’ I have never seen the programme, but I instantly warmed to Ben’s apple-cheeked wide smile, and his open, passionate and knowledgeable writing about his wood.

The book is divided into the months of the year. In each chapter Ben describes the work that takes place during that month. This could be coppicing the hazel, steam bending sweet chestnut for the crown of a yurt, felling larch for floor joists, or harvesting nuts and blackberries. He describes how the wood is managed productively as a sustainable woodland and how it provides an ecologically viable way of life. He also relishes the glory of nature as the year passes, and shares some mouthwatering recipes created out of foraged food.

Each chapter has a piece written by other woodsmen and women from all over the country. Rebecca Oaks contributes from the Lake District, Stewart Whitehead from Ceiriog Valley in Wales, and Anthony Waters from Cornwall. They each focus on their own areas of interest. Frankie Woodgate describes working her wood with heavy horses. Hugh Ross writes about making charcoal. Paul Morton tells how three years ago he was working in a jam factory; now he is earning his living from 38 acres of woodland, which he owns and manages.

Cramp balls

It is not only the beauty of the photographs that brings this book to life. It is the intimacy of the writing and Ben Law’s extraordinary, wide-ranging knowledge about woods. The reader learns that King Alfred’s Cakes or cramp balls, black fungi that grow mainly on ash trees, are nature’s firelighters. Law describes coming across a badger’s set with debris piled outside after a spring clean, noting that badgers are clean animals. He lists the uses for each type of wood. Who would have guessed that alder makes the best clog soles, or that wood from the wild service tree is much in demand in France by musical instrument makers?

Snedding  is the removal of side branches and the top of a felled tree, and those side branches are known as ‘brash.’ When berries are softened by frost they are ‘bletted.’ I reveled in the names of English wild flowers:  Dog’s Mercury, Spurge, Enchanter’s Nightshade, Stitchwort. I might even be able to indentify them from the photographs.  All of this speaks of a man who is steeped in his craft and that craft has its roots in ancient woodland lore that has been all but forgotten in modern Britain.

Shiitake spawn

There was one activity that I particularly enjoyed. In March, Law inoculated logs with mushroom spawn.  After ten years of trials, he has discovered that his most reliable inoculation has been the Japanese shiitake mushroom into sweet chestnut logs. He drilled holes in the logs with a specialist Japanese drill bit and then filled them with spawn-impregnated sawdust. The holes were sealed with wax and the logs stacked in the shade of the woods for the mushrooms to colonise. Sometimes the logs were ‘shocked’, by plunging them into water to stimulate growth. A few days later he would have a log full of shiitake to sell to the local gastropub. So that pile of rotting logs in the woods is in fact a woodsman’s log larder.

This is not a ‘how to’ book for a trainee woodsman. It is more of a lyrical call for readers to work more in harmony with nature, and to appreciate the resources that lie around them. As such it works. I, for one, will be walking in my local woods with my eyes newly attuned to my surroundings. I shall search out local charcoal made in local charcoal kilns. Although I think it’s unlikely that I will try Ben Law’s recipe for squirrel stew, I am waiting for the first frost to ‘blett’ the sloes so that I can pick them for sloe gin, and I’ve got my eye on my beech hedge for beech leaf noyeau (more gin).

Not all of us can live the life that Ben Law lives, but through this book we can get an idea of the importance of his work. He is leading a woodland renaissance in Britain, and reading about it is a tranquil pleasure.

THE WOODLAND YEAR By Ben Law
Published by Permanent Publications, The Sustainability Centre, East Meon, Hampshire, UK http://www.permanent-publications.co.uk/index.htm

Reviewed by Clare Reddaway

More books to check out on Green Prophet:
Sustainable Love and the Five Percent Rule: Who Comes First?
Living A Simpler, Deeper Life With ‘The Moneyless Man’
Green Student Life Using “10 Ways to Change the World in Your Twenties”