Inspiring read in spite of subject matter
The reason why the BBC had to give its permission is because this is what’s called in the trade a tie-in book, published to accompany the television series of the same name that was first broadcast earlier this year.
The subtitle of the book is: What is destroying the Earth and what you can do to help, which is pretty clear and self-explanatory. It’s divided into three sections.
The first section is called, Living Earth and it’s about the importance of biodiversity and the astonishing speed with which we’re destroying it. Tony Juniper is a naturalist, in fact he’s a world expert on parrots, as well as being the director of Friends of the Earth in Britain and vice-chairman of Friends of the Earth International.
He’s not only knowledgeable about natural history, he’s also obviously passionate about it. He orders his material well and has the knack of explaining scientific things simply and clearly. This is the best section of the book with a good overview of the subject as well as fascinating examples of creatures that are extinct or endangered and the reasons for their plight.
I learnt that commercial long-line fishermen accidentally kill 400,000 albatrosses a year with their fishing gear and as a result 21 out of the 24 species of albatross in the world are in serious danger of extinction. Even more dramatic is the fact that experts believe that our close relative, the orangutan, will be extinct in the wild by 2020 because of the damage done by humans to its rainforest habitat in south-east Asia.
And, as you’d expect from a book based on a television series, the standard of illustration is superb. In fact the whole book is a high quality production on good paper, which it proudly proclaims is made from wood certified to come from forests managed in accordance with the rules of the Forest Stewardship Council. And all royalties go to selected wildlife charities.
The second section is called Warming World and is as good a short synopsis of the most modern research on climate change as you’ll get. It’s also probably better than the first section when it comes to solutions — in other words spelling out exactly what we have to do to slow down the speed of global warming.
The final section is called, Plundered Planet and it’s a shocking overview of the damage we’re doing to our world in so many different ways. It’s particularly strong on the unsustainability of modern commercial fishing and the damage being done by legal and illegal logging.
All this sounds like the subject matter for a depressing book. But one of Mr Juniper’s achievements is his optimism and his positive attitude. He definitely thinks in terms of solutions rather than problems and I found the book more inspiring than depressing.
Unfortunately there is a problem with these tie-in books which I’ve encountered myself in the past. It takes longer to produce a book than it takes to produce a television series but ideally both should appear at the same time so the book publication is always a rushed job.
This shows in Saving Planet Earth which has an unacceptable number of misprints and other errors which a proof-reader should have spotted. There are even some pages bound in the wrong order. My review copy is marked at £20 so I expect the retail price here will be about €30.
* dick.warner@examiner.ie
