BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - NON-FICTION

Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth (1969) R. Buckminster Fuller I came to this 1969 cult 'classic' in the fervent hope that it might allow me, finally, to 'get' modern environmentalism for which this is a seminal text. Part of my subsequent lack of enthusiasm is down to style. There is no doubt that Buckminster Fuller was a genius of sorts - at least as an engineer, planner and technologist - but he writes like a 'speak your weight' machine with a propensity for creating neologistic compound words that would put German philosophy to shame. Far from inspiring, the man just cannot write imaginative prose and yet his subject cries out for imagination. I am sure that he says precisely what he means but it is next to impossible to sustain an interest while being hectored by a person, no doubt kindly in intention in his way, who is egotistical to the nth degree - a 'speech-talker', as my daughter would term such types. Still, great thoughts are ...

Rubbish! (2005)  Richard Girling Rubbish! is a tirade against the Blair Government but also by extension any British Government since all governments are essentially the same crew whatever the party. Environment policy is seen here through the eyes of a senior specialist journalist whose text ostensibly majors on 'rubbish' but who also covers the degradation of land and water resources, the collusion between government and business at the expense of everything from food security to clean air, and waste itself (especially hazardous waste). There is anger at the incompetence of policy-makers at every level - but largely at those at the top. One chapter is a genuine eye-opener, about the scale of the traffic of Western waste into the developed world. A picture emerges of a pre-credit crunch global economy that trafficked sex slaves and skivvies in one direction and the detritus of growth in the other. It is a shame that the baby of a theory of imperialist exploitation h...