Reviews for Thinking the thinkable

The average rating for Thinking the thinkable based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-12-04 00:00:00 Mary Fromson Anthology published over 20 years ago by one of the great names of modern environmentalism. The book clearly shows his age but in a way it's an interesting reading also today exactly for that because apart from a few authors from a sort of “pre history” of environmentalism (Malthus, George Perkins Marsh...), most of the extracts are from the '60s and the '70s and come from books and authors that were very famous and influential in their time but that in the last couple of decades have often been slowly forgotten: some of them don't even have their own wikipedia page, and this says all! It's thus an important and and interesting book to everyone interested in environmentalism and its history, to see what's changed in these 40-50 years, and not just the more obvious fact that back in the “old days” the two currents highlights of environmentalism (gmo and global warming) were either unexistent in the debate (gmos) or in their “infancy” (global warming, that in these '80s texts seems to be linked as much to deforestation than greenhouse gases emissions), while most of the attention was to issues like chemical pollution or people having way too many children, “old fashioned” arguments that imho if not altogether disappeared surely aren't anymore the top issues (sure in part because at least in the “developed” countries they're much less relevant than some decades ago). The less obvious fact is that these “vintage” texts seem to be as a rule much less anti technological and anti-growth than lots of current environmentalism... positions that anyway don't come out of the blue, as these “modern” attitudes can already be spotted in some of these authors, like the closing chapter by Robert Waller, the weird and utopian “Be human or die” that beside advocating an artisans/agricultural utopia (imho completely unattainable) is also bizarelly hyper moralistic, e.g: “If we rob nature […] we rob ourselves, unless we repent. […] Morality will once again become an essential element of the good life”. Another “interesting” chapter is “Buddhist Economics” by E. F. Schumacher (another very influential author with his “Small is beautiful” that I suspect is much less read and known nowadays), with another utopia that seems me completely at odds with the realities of Burma in the early '70s, that imho was more a military dictatorship than a model of “successfully [blending] the religious and spiritual values of [their] heritage with the benefits of modern technology”. My favourite excerpts is possibly “The historical roots of our ecological crisis” by Lynn White, something often cited but that, interestingly, is much less anti-Christian than often claimed by both his supporters and critics. Another good point of the book is that it shows how environmentalism is more diverse than often assumed (e.g. not everybody is against the nuclear power). On amazon.co.uk “Thinking Green” can be bought as second hand in good/very good conditions for a mere £ 0.01 and I strongly suggest anybody who's interested in this topic to get a copy of this book.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-12-01 00:00:00 Lucas Dawson Despite being a bit out of date, the information is still relevant. I enjoyed Baskin's writing style, clearly many topics from multiple disciplines in an easy to understand way. Though at points the message sounds bleak, this is a worthwhile read. I wish books like this would be incorporated into high school curriculum instead of other books. Perhaps courses should read this instead of Darwin; let's put aside the evolution debate and worry about understanding and saving out only planet.