I'd like to think that I take the environment seriously - I recycle as much as possible but this book gave me a hefty slap in terms of how much I actually know about climate change. I'm not going to call it Global Warming which if we are honest has become a byword for the green marketing machine. Thomas Kostigan - the author - travels to parts of the planet actually affected by what we do here. He connects the dots in a way that is both revealing and horrifying. The most polluted city in China - and no it's not Bejing - polluted because US consumers want cheap Chinese made goods (I knew I hated Walmart for more than just it's annoying adverts). Mumbai - our future if we don't wake up and do something about it. Fresh Kills, New York - the world's biggest landfill and best kept secret. You see all the things we throw away don't actually go away - they come back in our air, our water, our food.
This book - out in October - should be required reading for school children.
As a side note after Kostigan's comments about where our clothes come from I checked the labels in the four loads of laundry I'm doing, China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, England (clothes I bought in UK) and only 2 T-shirts were made in the US.
I finally got a copy of the next Susan Hill - The Pure In Heart and I'm dotting the I's and changing commas to full stops on my 3rd draft.
Update
I've spent the weekend researching alternative energy sources and home composting. The Susan Hill is good but it's not going to end well:-(
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