Changes

There aren't many climate -change deniers left, are there? We all know it's there. We all know, too, that the world's population growth is on a collision course with the dwindling of its resources. The world's going to get hotter, its weather more extreme. Fossil fuels are going to run out. More and more people will compete for fewer and fewer of civilisation's luxuries. We're all worried.

Bill Butterworth thinks recycling of waste to land is the answer. Most people know that farmers traditionally used manure from livestock to fertilise their land. Few people know that traditionally they also took local waste for composting and after time, used that too as fertiliser. Post-climate change, Butterworth's suggestion is that proximity recycling of waste can be used by farms to produce biofuel for local use and food for wider use, creating a kind of closed -loop system in which food and fuel is are grown from composts made from wastes, pumping oxygen back into the sytemsystem. The key to this idea is that the closed -loop does not rely on matter exchange with any part outside of the system.

Butterworth has an informal style and is mostly very easy to read. However, the book - necessarily - does go into quite a bit of detail, and sometimes the narrative flow suffers for it. I don't think it's anything that could have been easily avoided though. Proofreading falls on the odd occasion and some tougher editing might have tightened it up a little. Overall, however, the book reads like a presentation or long talk, and is absolutely appropriate to the practical approach to the topic.

We do need more of this practical approach in the debate about climate change, I think. We hear politicians grandstanding and campaigners being emotive, but what we actually need are costed and simple plans. Butterworth's closed -loop recycling of waste to land is without a doubt a great example of such a plan. The blueprint is relatively simple, relatively cost-effective, understandable by just about everyone, and doesn't frighten us by prescribing too painful a hair shirt.

For more general reading on climate change, look no further than [[Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning by George Monbiot]]. If you want to make a personal difference, try [[The Everyday Activist by Michael Norton]]. And if you have children who need educating, then [[Planet In Peril by Anita Ganeri and Mike Phillips]] is a great choice. You might also appreciate [[Climb the Green Ladder: Make Your Company and Career More Sustainable by Amy V Fetzer and Shari Aaron]].