Confessions of an Eco Sinner by Fred Pearce

This is from my review in the super soar away socialist newspaper the Morning Star, although I have some political differences, it is a good read and covers all the left including lots of plugs for the Green Party...so buy a copy, you will like it honest.

Confessions of an Eco Sinner by Fred Pearce
(Eden Project, £12.99)

NOT another crappy "how to be green" book, I thought when I first picked up Fred Pearce's brick-like tome.

Too many forests have been cut down to provide us with Viz comic-like tips about turning the taps off and killing the stand-by button.

The environmental crisis is, let's face it, a product of a wasteful capitalist system. It's political. The exploitation of one social class by another creates environmental destruction.

It's economic. We need a system of production that respects basic ecological realities. It's also cultural. It's about our relationship to each other and the rest of nature.

However, in our society, the politics is stripped out and replaced by "ethical" consumption of the organic toothbrush and the like.

I am not against green lifestyle, but changing society to make it possible to be green is the life and death priority.

But, while Pearce looks at what we consume, his book isn't a mere bible of moralistic tips.

Pearce, who writes on the environment for New Scientist, looks at where the goods he consumes come from. In 35 chapters, he traces the journey of everything from his gold wedding ring to the margarine on his sandwich to the prawns in his curry.

It's fascinating stuff. Pearce writes in an engaging way and has a good handle on complex scientific issues, although I was pretty shocked by his claim that beaches are too clean and that a little more human effluent would be good for bird colonies. I guess that I would still not like to see sewage dumped at sea, but, like much else in the book, it gave me pause for thought.

Every chapter could be extended into a book-long discussion on its own. Pearce, for example, reveals that, according to the World Wildlife Fund, sugar is the single most devastating cause of habitat destruction on the planet. He is also very good at showing how palm oil, which is used in virtually all processed foods, margarine and cosmetics, is destroying the rainforests.

Pearce illustrates how Stalin's far from ecological approach to agriculture ruined the environment of Uzbekistan. Yet the fall of the Soviet Union, he argues, has led to even worse abuse for the people and their natural environment. Cotton growing to produce cheap T-shirts is leading to a new and rapidly expanding desert where we used to find the Aral Sea.

Unfortunately, though, Pearce has too much optimism about corporations and not enough on how ecological alternatives are being created in places such as Cuba and Venezuela.

However, Pearce has produced a book that all of us concerned with issue of ecology and social justice should read with care. I will even forgive him for flying around the world to do his research. He shows, in graphic terms, how land is enclosed, forests cut down, peasants exploited and workers attacked.

The book is a serious encyclopedia of the environmental issues from Heathrow to recycling to everything that you wanted to know about population issues but were too afraid to ask.

DEREK WALL