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A review by jplayjames
Soil, Not Oil: Climate Change, Peak Oil and Food Insecurity by Vandana Shiva
slow-paced
3.5
It's not that the book never lost me - I don't mind the dip into more spirituality style stuff occasionally so can ride through the appeals to Gaea and that but self-aggrandizing terms like "Earth democracy" were a bridge too far at times, and sometimes the claims made were a bit ill-defined/overzealous (eg. Indonesian deforestation) or clumsily conflated ideas-as-metaphor (eg. entropy).
However, when it hit - as the kids say - it hit. There was a lot in here to make me think and research further, even if I didn't agree with all of it. Elements of the book definitely impacted my thinking long term (particularly on synthetic fertilisers, monocultures, and the downsides of GM crops beyond just the obvious flaws of patenting seeds, providing infertile crops, and leeching farmers). Some of the articles used as sources were interesting as starting points for further investigation or discussion with people I know more knowledgeable in the field.
It didn't grip me and at the beginning it seemed kinda unconvincing, but overall an experience I learned from even if I didn't always enjoy.
However, when it hit - as the kids say - it hit. There was a lot in here to make me think and research further, even if I didn't agree with all of it. Elements of the book definitely impacted my thinking long term (particularly on synthetic fertilisers, monocultures, and the downsides of GM crops beyond just the obvious flaws of patenting seeds, providing infertile crops, and leeching farmers). Some of the articles used as sources were interesting as starting points for further investigation or discussion with people I know more knowledgeable in the field.
It didn't grip me and at the beginning it seemed kinda unconvincing, but overall an experience I learned from even if I didn't always enjoy.