The book discusses such issues as sport: How Green is golf? for example. It's not, of course, particularly in Spain and the USA where it consumes water and land like a cancer. This chimes with my conviction that 'Sport ' is a grotesque juggernaut of fantasy, financial greed, egomania, xenophobia, racism and bad taste, 'Soccer'of course being the worst offender, the spectating of which reduces otherwise normal humans to the level of decorticate monkeys...
Sorry, but I've been adversely affected by the World Cup... I was talking Green Stuff. The book has a good essay by Philip Pullman who describes how he counted 17 contrails in the sky above his Oxfordshire garden and had a moment of realisation: I thought: all this stuff is going on all the time,this is really unsustainable, it really can't go on. I experienced a similar feeling when I looked up at the sky when the volcanic ash flight ban was in place and thought: how nice, the sky unscarred! That was my Green Moment of the year.
The most significant aspect of the book, for me, is its engagement with trade and shopping. Contemporary, Mall style shopping exploits cheap labour in China and the Third World and causes massive pollution. We need to get back to local production and local trade. Buy Local is the slogan. It needs to be supplemented by the slogan Make it Local. One of the main reasons I stand market is that I sell local goods that Sharon and I make. [ Unfortunately to make ends meet I have to buy in goods: I'm not comfortable with that].
Making and selling your own stuff feels wonderful. It's Human. I talk to people, they talk to me. This doesn't happen in the Bluewater Shopping Centre, Meadowhall, the Arndale Centre or some other depersonalised corporate Disneyland where the punters drift about in a retail trance having their wealth hoovered up via their plastic cards. We are considering making or business slogan [or should it be 'motto' - that sounds nice and old fashioned!] Love what's Local. What do you think?
The only jarring note in the book is from the inclusion of an article by David Cameron who, naturally, I distrust whatever Green Noises he emits, suspecting him of covert Thatcherism.
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