Just before Christmas I walked past a progressive bookshop in Santa Monica, CA. The window display was a sign of a lot of what is wrong with the liberal / left. Various grotesque caricatures of Donald Rumsfeld and George W almost certainly invigorated the true believers...and left the other 95% cold.
Which is why the little earth book is such a refreshing change. 40 odd mini chapters (1-2 pages each) in this easy to digest book cover what we are doing to the planet, and in places set out some fairly innovative solutions.
Read The Little Earth Book and find out about things as diverse as:
* How enforced privatization of the water system in many developing countries is causing a lot of the world's poor to go without clean water
* How global warming might in fact cause Northern Europe to get colder and not warmer, as the gulf stream stops flowing
* How it is possible for a country to switch to a hydrogen (as opposed to fossil fuel) economy. Iceland will be there by around 2040...when oil supplies start running low
* How countries such as Zambia and Nicaragua spend more on repaying their debts to us than on health and education.
The chapters are presented in an informative and non preachy way. Even John Pilger resists the temptation to have a rant against the US in his chapter on the new American Imperium, conceding that the US could be a force for good and then outlining why he thinks it isn't.
This little book is an excellent if somewhat depressing read. Together the chapters show how we are sleep walking into a world that our children and grandchildren will find very different to the one we know. Read it and weep!