By Duncan Kinney

In this optimistic ode to a sustainable planet, Calgary-based writer Chris Turner tours the world, offering up slices of sustainability from Indian office parks, rural Thailand and other locales.

Turner, a former door knocker for Greenpeace, mixes a cheery outlook with a pop culture commentator vibe that makes the book quite readable. This is an excellent  introduction to basic sustainability concepts in energy, food, shelter and transportation but it also has a beating heart. His sincerity is engaging without being preachy. I particularly enjoyed his examination of carpet company Interface and his sojourns to Denmark.

I have a bit of a history with Turner. My parents gave me his first book, Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation, as a gift five years ago and I remember it as decent. What I liked about the book weren’t the dissections of various characters or discussions about the best Simpsons episodes of all time. It was that it widened my view of the pop culture world. He introduced me to things like street art, Banksy and Adbusters. In Hope, he does much the same, opening my eyes to the cool world of sustainability.

Turner can write but he’s also a helpful curator. After reading Hope, I went out and added books like Natural Capitalism and Small Is Beautiful to my reading list. My Internet browser bookmarks were similarly burnished with new places to visit like Grist (link).

Of course it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are times when he goes too far with the background information. If you’re familiar with architecture, the introductory preambles on Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller and LEED might be a bit much. Also, his relentlessly optimistic approach glosses over some of the hard realities he’s talking about. Just because BP is investing in solar energy means little without context. He tends to curse, which I don’t really mind in real life but it hurts the message and seems out of place.

If you’re a nascent greenie or just want to introduce yourself to what a sustainable world would look like, I recommend The Geography of Hope by Chris Turner.

Read an excerpt from the Geography of Hope from issue 5 of Unlimited.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 4:18 am and is filed under Editor's Pick, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.