Chris Turner’s book, The Geography of Hope, seems especially prescient with the election of Barack Obama on a ticket of hope. At a time when environmentalism is rife with dire pronouncements on the state of the planet, Turner is suggesting sustainable development as a way forward, and demonstrating the world we need is much closer than we realize.
Turner does not diminish the severity of the crisis, but he recognizes that many people are demoralized by predictions of a coming catastrophe. The book takes readers on a global tour of projects that demonstrate how climate change could be arrested if not reversed by sustainable action.
The Anthropocene Era
The context for Turner’s thesis is humanity’s dependence on fossil fuels and an unsustainable way of life. CO2 emissions threaten to make the earth inhospitable to human life. There are many sources for greenhouse gas emissions, but the bulk—more than 75 percent in the industrialized West—are the result of burning coal, oil and natural gas to fuel economic activity and our way of life. If we are going to reduce CO2 emissions to manageable levels, we must diminish our dependence on fossil fuels.
Turner refers to humanity’s current state as the Anthropocene Age, meaning manmade. The term was coined in 2000 by Nobel-winning chemist Paul Crutzen and ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer. The antidote to climate change and ecological destruction, both features of the Anthropocene Age, is sustainability: human activity which entails no toxic emissions and no hidden bills down the road.
Lesson from Samsø
To counter the prevailing pessimism of the environmental movement, Turner set out to investigate sustainable projects and communities. During his travels, Turner visited the island of Samsø off the coast of Denmark. With obvious delight, he recounts how an unassuming group of dairy farmers have been converted into paragons of sustainability. The Danes are exemplary, erecting alternative power sources like wind power and district heating systems powered by solar technology. From an inauspicious start, a ground swell of support has emerged, with a quarter million Danes buying shares in wind farms.
Samsø offers several lessons in the how-to of promoting and integrating sustainable development. Chief among these are:
- Radical change does not come about because of policy initiatives; it requires grassroots consciousness-raising and an intimate familiarity with local cultures and traditions
- Do not make renewable energy a political statement. Instead, talk about advantages economically and socially for local areas
- Identify connectors, salespeople and mavens who can further the sustainable cause through personal networks
And one more item: stay away from the environmentalists; they will undermine the best-intentioned efforts.
Rational Exuberance
Turner employs several analogies to make his points. In one effective example, he compares an enthusiastic embrace of sustainability with the widespread adoption of mobile platforms, implying that if people espoused sustainability as exuberantly as cellphone technology, the world would be a better place.
At other times, Turner’s preoccupation with analogies feels overwrought. A chapter on sustainable community goes into immense detail about the author’s affection for the 1998 film, The Big Lebowski. One wishes his editor had been more vigilant in editing this ramble and Turner’s resort to coarse language, both of which belie an otherwise articulate message.
Die-hard environmentalists of the Greenpeace stripe will be enraged by Turner’s dismissal of their cause as “a sort of mythology of death—passionate, lyrical, righteous and hopeless.” Most readers, however, will be encouraged by a message of hope being created by ordinary people in unremarkable surroundings. It’s how long-lasting change usually comes about.
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