August 2001Issue 337


MIXED MEDIA

The Little Earth Book

This is a book that can make a difference. For people who care and want to do something to save the planet. It takes all the ideas and facts about society, the environment, energy, agriculture, equality and economics that you’ve vaguely thought or read about, and puts them together in a cohesive, connected, completely comprehensible form. And suddenly everything makes sense.

It’s delightfully brief, eminently readable and provides clarity on very complex issues. For example, when dealing with banks, it tells you that Josiah Stamp, director of the Bank of England, said in 1937: ‘The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing’. Which makes it ‘the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented’. Yet from this ‘nothing’, entire societies are willingly enslaved. In the US, 33 per cent of the average (two salaries) income goes to repay mortgages. In Japan there are generational mortgages which pass the debt on to their children. The whole thing is like the Emperor’s new clothes. Totally ridiculous, but everyone pretends it’s all right.

Reading about how cod became an endangered species or how GM companies manipulate governments makes you angry but engaged. And The Little Earth Book goes on to suggest ways in which the reader can personally get involved in fighting environmental degradation or making lifestyle changes which make a difference.

Product information
by James Bruges
Star rating
****
Publisher
Alastair Sawday Publishing
Product number
ISBN 1 901970 23 X




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