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Guy Dauncey’s Earthfuture: Seeds of a Sustainable World (New Society $17.95)
Goodbye Garbage. Farewell Toxics. The Dawning of the Solar Age. I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas. Hamlet's Ode to the Motorcar. The Pangs of Gaia's Wounds. These are some of the 50 vignettes and utopian visions in Guy Dauncey's Earthfuture: Seeds of a Sustainable World (New Society $17.95), a radically optimistic portrayal of life in B.C. and other parts of the world ten years from now, after a new environmental consciousness has dawned.
Each vignette describes a situation-from neighbors converting a Victoria street into a linear park to a cooperative loan organization forming in Bangladesh-through the eyes of a central character. Each scenario has some basis in present fact; redundant streets can be converted to linear parks, revolving loan cooperatives are a current reality.
Diverse topics such as recycling, energy conservation, pollution abatement, neighborhood renewal, organic farming and so-called 'Third World' are all presented to dispel doom and gloom for the reader. And Earthfuture is definitely wired; each topic is followed by a list of websites providing more detail.
Dauncey came to Canada from his native Britain ten years ago, promptly fell in love with British Columbia and a British Columbian, and has lived in Victoria ever since. He has authored several other books, including After the Crash: The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy, and is the winner of 'The Observer' Green Book award.
Earthfuture is suitable as a resource tool for schools and community groups, as it touches on a very large range of practical environmental and social action activities. All of the situations presented in the book assume fundamental, positive changes in the way we relate to the earth, and to each other, but the book's author does not apologize for what could be interpreted as a 'Pollyanna' philosophy.
"The biggest problem we face is our own cynicism,"; says Dauncey, a futurist and sustainable communities consultant. "If we are unable to shape some kind o f a positive vision for our future, then we really are in trouble.";
The future, Guy Dauncey says, is actually happening now.
That's a philosophy he shares with techno-geak and futurist Al Gore, a leading advocate for sustainability and a recent customer of Dauncey's publisher. This summer Jonathan Weiss, an advisor in Al Gore's office, called New Society Publishers on Gabriola Island because Gore had heard New Society were the publishers on sustainability. Specifically Gore's office had heard about NSP's "conscientious commerce"; series that includes Mark Roseland's Toward Sustainable Communities, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees' Our Ecological Footprint and Eben Fodor's Better Not Bigger.
The NSP office is located in a clearing next to Chris and Judith Plant's henhouse and vegetable patch. When the call came from the White House, New Society assumed it was either a joke or someone calling from the local pub, 'the White Hart'. Weiss ordered two copies each of various New Society titles. New Society's Judith Plant says she ended up sending the books to the White House for free because she didn't have the nerve to ask for Al Gore's credit card number. 0-86571-407-X
[Don Gayton / BCBW WINTER 1999]
Each vignette describes a situation-from neighbors converting a Victoria street into a linear park to a cooperative loan organization forming in Bangladesh-through the eyes of a central character. Each scenario has some basis in present fact; redundant streets can be converted to linear parks, revolving loan cooperatives are a current reality.
Diverse topics such as recycling, energy conservation, pollution abatement, neighborhood renewal, organic farming and so-called 'Third World' are all presented to dispel doom and gloom for the reader. And Earthfuture is definitely wired; each topic is followed by a list of websites providing more detail.
Dauncey came to Canada from his native Britain ten years ago, promptly fell in love with British Columbia and a British Columbian, and has lived in Victoria ever since. He has authored several other books, including After the Crash: The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy, and is the winner of 'The Observer' Green Book award.
Earthfuture is suitable as a resource tool for schools and community groups, as it touches on a very large range of practical environmental and social action activities. All of the situations presented in the book assume fundamental, positive changes in the way we relate to the earth, and to each other, but the book's author does not apologize for what could be interpreted as a 'Pollyanna' philosophy.
"The biggest problem we face is our own cynicism,"; says Dauncey, a futurist and sustainable communities consultant. "If we are unable to shape some kind o f a positive vision for our future, then we really are in trouble.";
The future, Guy Dauncey says, is actually happening now.
That's a philosophy he shares with techno-geak and futurist Al Gore, a leading advocate for sustainability and a recent customer of Dauncey's publisher. This summer Jonathan Weiss, an advisor in Al Gore's office, called New Society Publishers on Gabriola Island because Gore had heard New Society were the publishers on sustainability. Specifically Gore's office had heard about NSP's "conscientious commerce"; series that includes Mark Roseland's Toward Sustainable Communities, Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees' Our Ecological Footprint and Eben Fodor's Better Not Bigger.
The NSP office is located in a clearing next to Chris and Judith Plant's henhouse and vegetable patch. When the call came from the White House, New Society assumed it was either a joke or someone calling from the local pub, 'the White Hart'. Weiss ordered two copies each of various New Society titles. New Society's Judith Plant says she ended up sending the books to the White House for free because she didn't have the nerve to ask for Al Gore's credit card number. 0-86571-407-X
[Don Gayton / BCBW WINTER 1999]
Submitted on July 22, 2003 in By David.
