3.5 out of 5 stars
Contrary to the message that is pumped out by the oil industry, we are in the middle of a climate crisis. As well as the billions of tonnes of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, there is a massive loss of biodiversity and a scandalous amount of waste and pollution. For the regular person, they can all feel a little hopeless with all this bad news.
But we have got ourselves into this mess and we are the only species that can do something to turn this around, however, we seem to be lacking the political willpower to do something. There is lots of hot air from politicians, but there are still significant people in our current government who are still banging out the mantra from the oil companies that net-zero is unachievable.
I first came across 39 Ways To Save the Planet on Radio 4. Tom Heap is an enthusiastic presenter and when I found there was a book at my local library I grabbed it. Each of the 39 ideas is a short essay on a specific idea that people are actually doing to solve one aspect of the climate crisis. There are some excellent ideas here and they have been grouped into various broader subjects such as energy, society, transport and industry. Three I like in particular are, bamboo, thorium nuclear energy and low carbon steel.
Each essay is short and to the point, what Heap is trying to show is there are lots of people out there that do care and that they care enough to actually do something about it. There is a brief summation of the benefits of each of the ideas at the end of each chapter. I would have liked to have seen a summary at the end to total up all of these changes to show what an impact just these 39 could have. There are a lot more out there trying to make a difference and my fear is that we might be too late!
Has this inspired you to make any changes?
We have been for years anyway. A lot of the projects in the book are big scale ones. Sadly we have a government that is talking the talk, but not doing anything to help
The whole Radio 4 series is available on BBC Sounds, even for those of us overseas. Most of Tb hem are 14-minute episodes, perfect for a tea break.
That was how I first came across it. Really good little series
That does sound interesting although, like you say, big projects rather than things we can put into effect ourselves.
Have a listen to some of the Radio 4 series. It is well worth it