Ten Journeys on a Fragile Planet
Author: Rod Taylor
Publisher: Odyssey Books (October 2020)
Publisher Website: https://www.odysseybooks.com.au/titles/9781925652789/
ASIN: B08N5WS43W
ISBN: 978-1925652789
Pages: 284
Price: Kindle $9.99, Paperback $27.95
Reviewed by Dr. Bob Rich
This book could be titled “Ten case studies in the best of humanity.” It so happens that I am Australian, the author is Australian, and all ten of the interviewees are Australians, but this is incidental. The events, environment and culture that provide the setting would be different in another land, but there are jewels like these ten everywhere.
While the book features ten jewels, my review is about eleven. Rod writes in a very personal style, and never blows his own trumpet, but comes through to be like his interviewees.
Here is a sample of Rod showing himself: “In my youth, there was talk of nuclear war and the possibility that our world would be consumed by the insane strategy of Mutually Assured Destruction. To us it was a theoretical proposition, a disaster that could happen. We had the possibility of calamity, but climate change is different because it is actually happening. In my lifetime it’s gone from just being a possibility to us seeing glimpses of what a disrupted global climate system looks like. Nuclear weapons and global warming aren’t going away. Humanity is doing a poor job on both fronts.”
These eleven are people who care, who have made a difference through intelligence, perseverance and creativity. Some are well known, others I’ve never heard off, but all have a passion for truth, science, decency, being of service. Because of these attitudes, they are all alarmed by our environmental crisis, and in different ways are doing their best to work for a survivable future.
I can’t do better than to quote Rod on what the book is about: “If there’s one defining attribute shared by the people in this book, it’s motivation — these are people who understand why we need to act. Each has seized upon the idea that there is something important; that there’s something they can do for the environment and for the community. The people in Fragile Planet are fiercely driven to avert the worst of climate change.”
I really enjoyed Rod’s style of bringing a person to life, faults and all. While staying the journalist interviewing someone, he has the skill of showing his subject’s inside reality, “what makes her tick.” For example, I got to really like maggot farmer Olympia, and strongly approve of what she is doing: in effect converting agriculture from a single-line process of fertiliser-to-waste to a circular economy of waste providing feed in a forever-loop.
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