Hugh MacLeod, cartoonist and writer behind Gapingvoid.com, has just published a book full of tips for young artists/creatives/people. My top five:

5. You are responsible for your own experience.
13. Never compare your inside with somebody else’s outside.
16. The world is changing.
27. The best way to get approval is not to need it.
37. Meaning Scales, People Don’t.

Hugh McLeod: Ignore Everybody (via Amazon)

White Books

I’m a sucker for books. At any given time I’ll be reading five, six books in parallel (though at different speeds), and I hardly ever give up on one, not wanting to miss the wisdom hidden on the later pages. Unfortunately, I also hardly ever capture the learning from books I read. After having made the International Day of the Book the theme of our Toastmaster Meeting on 23 April, I’ll follow up with a summary of books I’ve finished in 2009.
[Read more →]

Worried about climate change? Sure. But unfortunately it’s not the only way humans are changing the life-support systems of our planet. Biodiversity – the net of genes, species and ecosystems – itself is in danger: Since 1970 we’ve lost 40% of species abundance, endangered every fourth mammal and driven two thirds of ecosystem services into decline.

Wait – but don’t we have more species than we can handle? Yes and no: While scientist have only named 1.8 mio of the up to 100 mio species on this planet, these unknown organisms are still crucial parts of the web of life. Most of them are tiny insects, algae or bacteria: Hard to find, even harder to distinguish and not at all part of the ‘charismatic megafauna’ that conservationists so cherish.

In his book ‘The Diversity of Life‘, E.O. Wilson, the celebrity biologist from the US, describes how this diversity came about, how extinctions change entire ecosystems and what threats biodiversity faces. A scientist, his mission is to catalogue and assemble all existing knowledge on species in one ‘encyclopedia of life’. This year’s TED conference granted him this wish.

The irony was obvious: Me, on a long-distance flight from South Africa to Britain, devouring a book subtitled ‘How to stop the planet burning’. Its conclusion: It is possible to save 90% of carbon emissions without a significant loss of freedom or comfort – if only we let go of the freedom to fly.

George Monbiot sets out on an impressive mission: To save the world from catastrophic climate change, he concludes, we need to keep global warming below 2°C. This translates into a reduction of 90% of carbon emissions. Will this be possible without plunging back into lifestyles of the stone age?

The answer is “Yes, but”. Changes there must be, and changes for everyone, in every sector. This means that we have to stop trusting into voluntary action, and start introducing government regulation that forces these changes. The main tool: Rationing carbon emissions. Figure out how much carbon you can emit, divide it by the number of people on the planet, and hand out allowances (so-called ‘icecaps’) to everyone. To reduce bureaucracy, only 40% of the allowances would be given directly to people to spend on electricity, heating and fuel. The other 60% would be given to the government who then auctions the ones it doesn’t need for its own operations to industry. The resulting market would make sure that all products and services include the true costs of their emissions.

But – such a system is doomed for failure wherever the infrastructure doesn’t allow people to choose the most efficient means of doing their business. This particularly applies to housing, transport and energy supply. In addition, he analyzes two particularly polluting industry sectors: Retailing and cement production. The conclusions:

1. While new houses can – and should – be made to comply with the passive house standard, it will be more difficult to improve existing housing. Still, landlords and home-owners can be made to comply with certain efficiency standards. The use of energy within the house can be reduced through smart meters and less and better appliances. Still, most of the cuts will have to be made through the choice of fuel and electricity.
2. Here, Monbiot estimates that 50% of energy can be supplied through renewables (wave and wind), while the rest should be supplied through efficient gas power stations in combination with carbon capture and storage techniques.
3. Heating, however, cannot be replaced by either: The area available for biofuels is limited, and small gas ovens cannot capture their emissions. The solution: a micro-generating system using solar-panels and hydrogen fuel cells/boilers. The hydrogen would either be supplied through a pipeline network, or produced using electricity from the grid.
4. 40% of car journeys can be replaced by walking or cycling, 40% with an improved public transport system (relying on bus lanes and overland coaches), while 20% cannot be swapped. Still, there is room for telework, shared journeys – and far more efficient cars.
5. There is no low-carbon way for long-distance travel. High-speed trains or ships turn out to be at least equally destructive as planes. Alas – no more shopping in New York, visiting friends in Australia or political meetings in Porto Alegre!
6. Compared to this, industry emissions seem to be easy to replace: No more shopping malls – rather warehouses and delivery services. No more cement – rather geopolymers.

Radical, practical and well-researched, this book challenges prevailing perceptions. Do we really want to fight climate change – or are we content with some targets and white papers? Are we willing to substantially change lifestyles and habits – for the sake of the victims of climate change far away? It is our choice, now, in the next couple of years, to determine how the threat of climate change is going to change the world. But change the world it will, and dramatically.

How can one become part of the solution, not the problem?

There are many organisations already campaigning against climate change and the activities which cause it. I want you to join them. I want you to set up your group only if they turn out to be going nowhere. I want you to find out how you can be most useful to them. But above all, I want you to make an imaginative leap seldom demanded of you by governments or advertisers or newspapers or teachers.
For the campaign against climate change is an odd one. Unless almost all the public protests which have preceded it, it is a campaign not for abundance but for austerity. It is a campaign not for more freedom, but for less. Strangest of all, it is a campaign not just against other people, but also against ourselves.

It’s not going to be easy, and it’s not going to be pretty. But that should be even more encouragement for us to go in there and join forces, to make mistakes and to learn from them, and to rise up to the challenge that we ourselves have created.

Monbiot.com | Heat. How to Stop the Planet Burning

Phew. Here’s what’s left unread after four years collection on three different Amazon wishlists:

Fiction

• A Woman Who (Rebecca Miller)
• Any Human Heart (William Boyd)
• Berlin. Steinerne Stadt (Jason Lutes)
• Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
• Die Bibliothek von Babel. (Jorge L. Borges)
• Fiktionen. Erzählungen 1939 – 1944 (Jorge L. Borges)
• Liebesgedichte (Spanisch – Deutsch) (Pablo Neruda)
• Love Poems (Erich Fried)
• Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)
• Talk Talk (T. C. Boyle)
• The Big Over Easy. An investigation with the Nursery Crime Division (Jasper Fforde)
• The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: Children’s Edition (Mark Haddon)
• The Fourth Bear (Jasper Fforde)
• To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)

Communication and Communities

• Communities Dominate Brands: Business and Marketing Challenges for the 21st Century (Tomi Ahonen)
• Community Building on the Web: Secret Strategies for Successful Online Communities (Amy Jo Kim)
• Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge (Etienne Wenger)
• Die heimliche Medienrevolution – Wie Weblogs, Wikis und freie Software die Welt verändern (TELEPOLIS) (Erik Möller)
• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (William Zinsser)
• Style Guide (Profile Books Ltd)
• Sustainable Development and Learning: Framing the Issues (Sir Neil Chalmers)
• The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World (Paul H. Ray)
• Zielgerichtet moderieren (Martin Hartmann)

Music

• Altes Gasthaus Love (Erdmöbel)
• Faking the Books (Lali Puna)
• Lady in Satin (Billie Holiday)
• Lilith Fair [2cd] (Various)
• Pure Vernunft Darf Niemals Siegen (Tocotronic)
• Stolz der Rose – das Beste und mehr (Rosenstolz)

Politics

• A Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela (Nelson Mandela)
• An Inconvenient Truth (DVD ~ Davis Guggenheim)
• Erste Rechts-Hilfe (Rolf Gössner)
• Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Climate Change – Is Time Running Out? (Elizabeth Kolbert)
• go. stop. act! (Marc Amann)
• Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (Amartya Sen)
• Rules for Radicals (Saul Alinsky)
• The Campaigning Handbook (Mark Lattimer)
• The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen)
• The Root Causes of Biodiversity Loss (Alexander Wood)
• Trade, Aid and Security: An Agenda for Peace and Development (Lloyd Axworthy)
• Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (by Haruki Murakami)
• Was für eine Welt wollen wir? (Richard von Weizsäcker)

Life and Stuff

• Kauderwelsch, Scots, die Sprache der Schotten (Manfred Malzahn)
• Kochen (fast) ohne Rezept (Hans Gerlach)
• Kochen! Das Gelbe von GU. 1295 Rezepte, die man wirklich braucht (Sebastian Dickhaut)
• Proofs from the Book (Martin Aigner)
• Self-Made Man (Norah Vincent)
• The Ancestor’s Tale (Richard Dawkins)
• The Good Shopping Guide: Your Guide to Shopping with a Clear Conscience (Ethical Consumer Research Association)
• The Return of the Naked Chef (Jamie Oliver)
• The Tao of Pooh & the Te of Piglet (Benjamin Hoff)

Business and Productivity

• Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out (Douglas Rushkoff)
• Getting Things Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (David Allen)
• Managing from Clarity (James L. Ritchie-Dunham)
• Never Check E-mail in the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work (Julie Morgenstern)
• On Bullshit (by Harry G. Frankfurt)
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Stephen R. Covey)
• The Dilbert Principle (Scott Adams)
• The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Peter F. Drucker)
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (by Malcolm Gladwell)
• The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (by James Surowiecki (Author))
• What Color Is Your Parachute?: A Practical Guide for Job-Hunters and Career Changers (Richard N. Bolles)
• Why Smart People Do Dumb Things (Mortimer R. Feinberg)

Guess it’s time for a visit to my local bookshop.