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jedwardsusc's review against another edition
3.0
I appreciate the arguments. I agree with many of the proposals. I wasn't always sure, however, who the audience is supposed to be.
lostwaterbottle's review
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I’m not sure the book had as much flow as I was expecting and at time I was confused why the author had written a section. But the second half of the book was way more interesting to me and was the bulk of Purdy’s argument. He outlines how we got to the modern inequality and environmental degradation, and then why a commonwealth rooted in the mutual success of people and the natural world are necessary. I especially appreciated the history of the environmental justice movement!
bernrr's review against another edition
4.0
This book is more personal than I expected, and it seems to me Purdy is trying to work out a positive approach to the struggle without feeling much to be hopeful about. But I appreciate this. At its heart, the book is about how the decisions we make now, especially those that have anything to do with energy, climate, agricultural, and the environment is a decision about who gets to live in the 21st century. It is an urgent and scary question and if we dodge it we are acknowledging we are ceding this decision to others.
I also appreciate his statement that while everything we do to live our lives exacts its price on the environment, we do not, in his words, "choose the terrible ecological terms in which these choices have their costs."
Update: I wrote the original review in March, but as I am reading on related topics this book continues to echo. In an interview about the book, Purdy stated, "for every human being, on average, there’s 4,000 tons of built environment supporting us. About a third of that is intensively farmed soil, so cut that out if you want, and you still get about 2,700 tons per person of roads, buildings, cars, cables, etc." This is in illustration of how removed we are from the natural world. Everyone cares about nature, but few of us are in a vantage point where we can see how devastating our current climate degradation really is.
I also appreciate his statement that while everything we do to live our lives exacts its price on the environment, we do not, in his words, "choose the terrible ecological terms in which these choices have their costs."
Update: I wrote the original review in March, but as I am reading on related topics this book continues to echo. In an interview about the book, Purdy stated, "for every human being, on average, there’s 4,000 tons of built environment supporting us. About a third of that is intensively farmed soil, so cut that out if you want, and you still get about 2,700 tons per person of roads, buildings, cars, cables, etc." This is in illustration of how removed we are from the natural world. Everyone cares about nature, but few of us are in a vantage point where we can see how devastating our current climate degradation really is.
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