Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying

So awhile ago, I found a couple more David Bach books that I wanted to read at the library.  Today I wasn't feeling great...so once I decided I needed to stay up rather than keep sleeping, I decided to read Go Green, Live Rich: 50 Simple Ways to Save the Earth and Get Rich Trying instead of mindlessly wasting what was left of the day watching Youtube.  Bach claimed this would be another fast read (two hours), which also appealed to me; I didn't want something that would take a lot of concentration while I'm not feeling 100%.  I do think it took a bit longer than he said, but I still finished it in less than a day. 

So Go Green, Live Rich was written over a decade ago, when the climate crisis was just coming to mainstream attention (about two years after Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth came out, just to give it a bit more context). The book is made up of 50 tips to help you save the planet (while also purportedly making you rich in the process).  It's broken up into several smaller sections with tips for greening your transportation, family, work, travel, etc.  The last two sections detail how to make some money (mainly investing in green businesses), and gifting green (basically tithing to green causes - tithing has come up in both of Bach's other books that I've read so far, so I wasn't surprised to find it here as well). 

I'm not going to lie...most of the tips are kind of obvious.  Bach breaks down some common-sense things that you can do to both help the environment and save some money.  I actually felt like I was reading 397 Ways to Save Money again because there was a lot of overlap (although obviously 397 Ways to Save Money has way more tips), such as swapping out old light bulbs for energy efficient ones, getting newer and more energy efficient appliances when your old ones break down, etc.  When Bach got to the family stuff, he also started to remind me of the tips I read in Plastic Purge.  So I guess Go Green, Live Rich is kind a combination of Taylor's and SanClements' books.

I did like the breakdowns Bach included though of not only roughly how much money you would save in using his tips but also the impact it would have on the environment (most often in tons of CO2 avoided, but also things like trees saved and stuff like that).  But he also included a lot of websites; while I didn't check them all, I'm sure some of the sources are quite out of date since the book is over a decade old (but to be fair, I was able to find the couple that I went looking for, so not all of them are out of date!)  Hilariously, the one link I looked for that was obsolete was Bach's own website (greengreen.com, which now just redirects to davidback.com) - I discovered that when I went looking for his reading list of green books (which I have been completely unable to find).

Overall, I think this is a good starting point if you're looking for ways to green your life.  It has a lot of the same tips and ideas that are in 397 Ways to Save Money, but it's a faster and easier read.  But if you're already on board with living more sustainably, you should probably give this book a pass; it's full of tips you've probably already considered.  On the personal finance front, it's also not nearly as in depth as his other books (like The Automatic Millionaire), so you'd be better off reading one of those if that's your interest.

The Soil Will Save Us: How Scientists, Farmers, and Foodies Are Healing the Soil to Save the Planet

After getting through The Great Transition, I wasn't exactly eager to read more nonfiction.  But thankfully, Kristin Ohlson's The Soil Will Save Us is far less of a slog than The Great Transition was!

The Soil Will Save Us looks at how various people (namely farmers, scientists, and foodies, as per the subtitle) are working on healing the soil.  Healthy soil is more productive, so it's in everyone's best interest (more productive = more food for the billions of people on the planet).  But healthy soil also sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.  So it's quite possible that healing the soil can save us from global warming, too.

The soil has released a lot of carbon that used to be previously safely sequestered in it.  Prior to the industrial revolution, this carbon was released thanks to agriculture; the soil did not evolve with anything plowing it and disturbing the microbes and fungi that reside underneath.  The microbes and fungi work together with plants in a vast trading network, trading carbon from plants for the other nutrients that the plants need.  When the soil is disturbed, the carbon that was sequestered in it is released into the air (it binds with oxygen), leaving the microbes to starve. 

The methods for building soil carbon aren't glamorous, which is why politically people tend to ignore them.  They also don't need vast amounts of money (or chemical fertilizers), so the big companies who rely on selling farmers and gardeners fertilizers and other things also want nothing to do with them (these methods cut into their profits).  They're also very hard to look at scientifically: the soil is a vastly interconnected ecosystem, and often parts can't successfully be removed to be studied on their own.  And many studies find funding for three years, while it can take 5 or more to see a difference in soil.

But despite these hurdles, there are many people around the world who are conducting their own experiments on their farms.  And they're seeing some amazing things: like how their soil retains water in droughts compared to their neighbours' soil, or just how much food their healthy soil produces.  This book filled me with hope for the future, that maybe we can feed everyone and save the climate in such a low-impact way. :)

The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy

Continuing with the nonfiction reading I've been doing, I started reading Lester R. Brown's The Great Transition: Shifting from Fossil Fuels to Solar and Wind Energy.  I was specifically looking for a more positive book on global warming, and this was one of the books near the top of the list.  None of those books were available locally at the library, and this one was the cheapest on Kindle, which is why I ultimately decided to read it.

The Great Transition looks at various sources of energy (including coal, oil, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric), then goes about making a case for why solar and wind are the clear winners.  Coal is very dirty; while it still powers a large part of the world, its dominance is diminishing because people are demanding clean air.  Oil and natural gas may be a bit cleaner than coal, but they are getting harder to access now that the easy oil fields are discovered and being used up.  Nuclear was once touted as the energy of the future, but costs to get power plants online have soared (plus thanks to several really bad nuclear accidents like the Chernobyl disaster and the more recent Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, most people no longer support nuclear power plants coming online); nuclear is no longer a good bet in our transitioning energy economy.  In contrast, the costs for both solar and wind have dramatically decreased.  Plus they have very low environmental footprints compared to traditional energy sources.  Geothermal is a possibility, but it is costly to look for sources for geothermal wells (plus there is no guarantee that you'll actually find a good place while you're investigating).  And hydroelectric projects, while renewable, are costly and disruptive; plus many of the large rivers have already been dammed, so the era of making mega-dams is drawing to a close.

This book is packed full of facts and figures about how many megawatts different projects bring in for different countries.  It's good information, but it's a bit overwhelming to read all at once (and also to keep straight at times).  I like that the book has a global focus, but it still zeroes in a lot more on the United States (in most cases it will talk about what a certain country is doing, then zero in on different things happening in multiple different States).  Since I'm not American, I wasn't as interested in the happenings of different States and admit that I found it a slog to read through parts of some chapters as a result.  I applaud the individual States for their projects and successes, I just personally didn't need to be reading so in depth about them.

But the one major issue I had with reading The Great Transition is that, unfortunately, it's out of date.  The facts and figures were all from around 2014, which I presume is when the book was written (it was published in 2015).  But I'm reading it in 2019, four years later; that means that presumably a lot has changed.  Many of the projects that were slated to open within the last four years should be open now.  And I'm sure many of the counties listed in the book that were working on transitioning to renewables have now a higher percentage of their power coming from renewable sources than what was reported in this book.  Being out of date also made the book a bit of a slog to read through, which was unfortunate.  I think it would have been an easier read if it had focussed more on discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the different resources, and how they affected each country, rather than relying so heavily on the specific megawatts of each country and project.  While it's been awhile, I think Just Cool It! did a better job of this than The Great Transition. 

So all in all, I'm glad I read The Great Transition.  It is a book that is full of hope for the future: the technology was here in 2015 to cheaply harness solar and wind power, and it will only continue to get better.  But honestly, you're better off waiting for a revised edition of this book to come out.  Or just check out Just Cool It!, which talks about the different resources that are available in the here and now to replace fossil fuels without the very specific and out of date facts and figures.

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change

Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall is another book from Bustle's list of books that will inspire you to live a more sustainable life that I wanted to read.  My local library didn't have a copy, but they were able to bring it in for me through interlibrary loan, so yay!

Marshall is an expert in climate change communications.  Over the years he has seen scientists struggle to get their message out while climate change skeptics have increasingly banded together.  He also knows that many people agree that climate change is real, but do nothing to stop it.  So he decided to investigate why all of this is.  He met with psychologists, environmental activists, skeptics, people who work for the oil industry, evangelicals, and pretty much everyone else he possibly could to examine the issue.  What he found is that humans look at climate change as a simple problem, even though it is in reality a very complex problem.  Because of its complexity it can be framed in a variety of ways, such as as an environmental issue. Some people will support a particular frame while others will oppose it, and so this divides people on the issue.  He also found that the skeptics are having more success at building their narrative than people who support climate change are.  Humans are hard-wired for stories and narrative, so this means supporters are having a harder time convincing people. 

I found Don't Even Think About It fascinating (full disclosure: I have a background in psychology).  It's rather amazing how climate change happens to work against our brains in a lot of ways.  Most of the book is a bit depressing, but the end is rather hopeful: even though we are wired to ignore climate change, in some ways we're also wired to take action, as long as we can change the narrative from one of competition to one of cooperation.   

I will warn you though: Don't Even Think About It is in many ways a dense read.  I found myself only able to read about 20-40 pages in a sitting before having to take a bit of a break.  Thankfully the book is about half the size of This Changes Everything though, so I was able to get through it a bit faster.

Oh and one really nice touch that Marshall added to the book was a periodic summary of what he has examined thus far.  I don't think I've ever seen that in a book before, but it was great to kind of take a deep breath and have a chance to look at everything a little more in context within the larger narrative of the book.

All in all, I am really glad I read Don't Even Think About It; I'll have to keep an eye out for some of Marshall's other books (Carbon Detox, I'm looking at you!)

Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

I came across Bustle's list of books that will inspire you to live a more sustainable life back in July I think.  Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time sounded interesting.  And the library even had a copy!  So I snagged it and finally got around to reading it now.

Walkable City explains the many advantages of making your city walkable, before going into a comprehensive list of ten steps to actually making your city more walkable.  Speck uses examples from the world's most walkable cities to illustrate his points.  Walkable City is aimed mainly at small and mid-sized American cities (emphasis on American).  After decades of suburban sprawl dominating city development, Speck believes that now is the time when redeveloping cities urban cores is going to be increasingly important. Millennials are increasingly attracted to urban life (they are far less likely to own cars than people of older generations).  And Boomers are moving back into urban centres because their big suburban houses are empty and they increasingly don't want to (or are becoming physically unable to) maintain their big suburban yards.  Plus they want to be more social, and where is better than a walkable urban core?

So once that's all established, Speck looks at the various things you need to consider and implement to make your city more walkable.  Many of the steps are designed to slow traffic down, while others are concerned with making walking more interesting and safer.  Speck cautions that you need all of the steps working together to make your city more walkable.  He also cautions that not every area of your city will be walkable (for example, streets in the auto district won't be). 

While a little dense at times (largely because people who aren't architects or city planners may not necessarily care about some of the points), Speck's prose is generally pretty entertaining to read.  I especially liked some of his snarky comments in the notes.  All in all, I think this was a great book to read.  It sure gave me a lot to think about!!!

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate

Awhile ago, my brother recommended Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate to me.  I can't remember exactly why now, but I think it was because I had just read another of his recommendations, A Short History of Progress, and he felt that Klein's book would similarly change my outlook on the world. I'm not going to lie, but I've put off reading This Changes Everything for the stupidest of reasons, primarily because the book is big.  It’s 466 pages of text, plus notes and index, which brings it to a whopping 566 pages in total.  566 pages of much denser reading than most fiction.  And even though I won’t be reading a lot of the extras, 466 pages is still the equivalent of two shorter books.  And when I was worried about making my Goodreads reading challenge over the last few years, I was far more worried about quantity than quality.  Heck, even this year, when I pledged to read just 25 books, I still waited until I was finished reading those 25 books before actually starting to read This Changes Everything.  But it's been coming up more and more in the other things I've been reading (I can't remember the exact count, but I know David Suzuki and Ian Hanington mentioned it several times in their text).  So I took This Changes Everything out from the library a second time and actually started reading it.

Of course, after starting I came across a fact in the introduction that said humanity has to get our emissions under control by 2017.  And I knew I should have read this book far sooner.  But such is life; better late than never, right?

This Changes Everything looks at how our current world (specifically the economy) has been set up to be in direct opposition to taking care of the environment.  The economy is built on the idea that humans can take and take from the "machine" that is nature.  It's also built on the idea that humans from one part of the world can take resources from, or basically sacrifice, another part of the world so that the first part of the world lives a richer life.  

But that model of economic thinking is starting to fall apart.  People everywhere are starting to realize that we can't take and take from nature (because nature will start fighting back and humanity WILL NOT WIN).  The sacrifice zones have also started getting bigger and more widespread in the quest to extract as much fossil fuels as possible from the earth, and more people are saying "not in my backyard."  People with diverse backgrounds and beliefs are starting to fight against this extraction together (in what Klein calls "Blockadia").  She believes that people need to fight against big fuel and fundamentally change the economy to make it more cooperative and fair (in a way that movements over the last century or so have been fighting).  This is the last decade where we can halt even more dramatic climate change, so Klein hopes that everyone will be able to rise up together to stop it; otherwise we will lose our shared home due to corporate and billionaire greed.

I will admit, This Changes Everything is a difficult read. For one thing, it is very heavily fact-based, which makes it a bit tough to get through quickly.  But This Changes Everything will also fundamentally upset you at how very unfair the world is (and has actively become over the last few decades).  I was close to tears when I read the first few chapters and discovered that the economy was built in a way to ignore the environment, and that the environment was either ignored in trade agreements or actively taken out of them.  I was furious to hear how people are often beaten down by the lobbyists from fossil fuel industries.  And how our governments have worked hand in hand to lock our countries into fossil fuels through infrastructure decisions (even while the technology has existed and gotten good enough that we could have been working towards switching our societies to clean energy long before now).  But after those first few chapters, the book starts to look up: people in greater and greater numbers are starting to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and change the way things work.  Klein is hopeful that we will not squander this critical mass of people and instead use it to build a better future for everyone.

So while This Changes Everything is in many ways a difficult read, it is still very much worth reading.  It will teach you just how much our current political environment has forced us down this path (even though scientists have long known that global warming was happening and that we needed to change our ways), and will get you thinking about how we can move forward together. 

Just Cool It! The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do

Continuing on with the books I've had out from the library for awhile that I was considering returning, here is Just Cool It! The Climate Crisis and What We Can Do by David Suzuki and Ian Hanington.  This one I actually started reading a few weeks ago, but stopped for some reason (I honestly can't remember why).  Then after finishing The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs, I decided to restart reading this book.

The climate crisis has been a huge concern of mine for the last while, so I was very interested in reading Just Cool It! when I first encountered it.  I liked the idea that it isn't just doom and gloom about the future, but that it has a game-plan for tackling global warming.  Also, I've read some of Suzuki's articles in the local paper, so I was interested in reading a full book authored by him (and Hanington, who I will admit I have never heard of prior to this book - on Goodreads it says he is the senior editor at the David Suzuki Foundation. Makes sense).

Just Cool It! is split into two parts.  Part one talks about the climate crisis in detail, looking at the science that supports it, the consequences from it, and the many barriers that prevent us as a species from dealing with it.  Part two is all about the many solutions, looking at personal, agricultural, technological, and institutional solutions that are possibilities moving forward.  The book examines the pros and cons of all of the proposed solutions and makes recommendations on which ones offer the best hope for the future (just so you know, the book has a very clear bias towards getting society off of fossil fuels in favour of renewable resources like solar and wind power - this argument is consistently made in the latter half of the book).

I really liked how Just Cool It! was broken down, both in terms of the challenges and the possible solutions, and in terms of looking at the individual proposed solutions.  In a lot of ways I found this book rather inspiring - even though we have waited so long to confront this issue, the fact that globally people are starting to and that there ARE possible solutions helps to lessen the dread I feel for the future somewhat.  That being said though, this book is a bit on the dry side and is rather repetitive, to the point where it felt like paragraphs were copied and pasted from one part of the book into another.  There were also points where something was discussed in a previous section, then mentioned and defined in a later section (I'm looking at you, life cycle analysis - this was mentioned and defined on pg 205, and linked back to the discussion on biofuels on pg 194, where it was mentioned but not defined). Just Cool It! really could have used some better editing. 

All in all, I thought Just Cool It! was a good, comprehensive look at where humanity is at in terms of the climate crisis.  While a little dry and repetitive, it's a relatively short and quick read, so it'll get you up to speed in the crisis in no time!