Tipping Points

I just finished reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Ironically, the book has been out since 2002 and I've had a couple of people recommend it to me over the years, but in the last few weeks several people have said I should read it. I guess I hit a tipping point of friend recommendations and so I went and checked it out from the library.

The book itself is excellent reading, and covers a wide variety of subjects from fashion trends to crimewaves to cigarette addiction. For anyone interested in taking sustainable actions and helping them to become trends in the general populace, I think The Tipping Point has a lot to say as well. As you know, I've posted updates occasionally here on the number of cyclists that I see on my evening commute. Well, I seem to have reached some sort of tipping point there because the other night there were simply too many to count. Just as one was zooming by in one direction, another was passing or going by in another. I had to think "did I already count the lady in the red hat?" and when it gets to that point really, what's the point of counting? I lost it somewhere after 65, which I think means the number of cyclists in my commute has gone from "a few" to "a lot" to "too numerous to count individuals". In other words, it's a trend that has tipped.

It seems as if the initial spike in gas prices (you all remember when gas was over $4 a gallon, right?) set the trend in motion, and it was given a boost by the economic crisis. Once there is a critical mass of cyclists on the road, then people who might otherwise feel it's "too dangerous" to cycle begin to feel that it's a safe and reasonable thing to do. Or perhaps they see another parent toting their kids, or another businessman in a suit, or another person who is older than they are riding a bicycle and they realize that they can do it too. Whatever the numerous causes, at least in my town it has tipped and there are cyclists zipping here, there, and everywhere. I think the urban gardens are approaching that tipping point here as well. Last summer I had a few to choose from to take photos of for this blog, and now they're simply everywhere - in front of expensive homes and apartment blocks and duplexes, at least in my end of town. Now when the truly suburban lawns start getting torn up in subdivisions with CC&Rs, then I'll say for sure that urban gardening has truly tipped.

In the meanwhile, if you're already tired of your fluffy summer reads, let me be one of perhaps the many friends who will recommend that you read The Tipping Point.

Book Review: You Are Here

I wanted to take a moment to review a book I just read called You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet

I am of mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I think the message is a vital one. The author, Thomas M. Kostigen takes journeys to some of the most environmental fragile and ravaged places on the planet. He shows us directly the outcomes of our actions, the actions we take on a daily basis. It's depressing as all hell. If you want to feel like you should just drown yourself in your Yerba Mate', by all means pick up this book. I know the author means really really well, and his most urgent hope is that by reading this we will feel called to act. Unfortunately, he doesn't tie what he's seeing and experience to direct and very real things that each of us can do. He tries to, but this is where the book falls completely flat.

In some places, he makes sweeping pronouncements that most anyone who would buy this book probably already knows, like "We've yet to realize that the global village people have talked about is for so long is here. Now the question is, how do we all live together and make the best of it?"

In other places, he offers us vague and unachievable aims like "With an oil palm sustainability label on products, consumers could make informed choices about the products they eat and/or buy at the supermarket. It's these types of solutions that will make the difference" So, how exactly am I supposed to get such a label on products, how does that "expose the vital link" between my actions and the outcome (deforestation in Borneo due to palm oil plantations).

But my biggest beef with this book is the shoddy quality of the writing. God, are there no book editors left on this planet?

Check out this "paragraph" for an example:

From an environmental perspective, the past is the best measure of things to come. It always has been. Certain weather cycles exist as they have for centuries. Certain wind patterns occur at the same time each year. On a very basic level, the change of seasons informs us of temperature changes because we've experienced those seasons before. Think about the first time someone lived through winter. I bet the next year they buttoned up.

I dare you to give me the author's theme for that paragraph! What the heck is he trying to say? is something I asked myself frequently while reading this book. Sometimes I had to go back and read a paragraph over to make sense out of it.

Here's another example:

Still, exaggeration and alarmism are too frequent in environmental writings. Like everything, the conditions that plague Mumbai are complicated and consist of many factors, not just one or a few. We are, after all, talking about a society that has existed for five thousands years. But there are parallels and there are consequences, which are very real. We can take preventative steps -- even little ones count.

If not for the political slant of this book, I would wonder if it was ghost written by George W. Bush, so convoluted and confusticating is the prose. And after that last little homily about little steps counting, the author fails to name even one that we could take, to avoid whatever he's talking about in Mumbai. Instead, he jumps right on to another subject.

All in all, this book shows some interesting things. The author has taken bold steps to visit logging camps in Borneo or remote villages in Alaska that are sliding into the sea. But aside from making us all want to slit our wrists in depression, he accomplishes nothing whatsoever with this journey that he takes us on. What I would love to see is real actions tied to the horrific environmental catastrophes that he takes us to.

Bottom line: not recommended. Treehugging, spotted-owl-saving, recycling liberals will be depressed and non-liberals will just be confused.