ISBN 978-1-85675-293-0. "Easy Eco Auditing - How to make your home and workplace planet-friendly" was written by Donnachadh McCarthy. Published by Octopus publishing in 2008. This paperback has 304 pages which includes an introduction eleven chapters, Appendices, Resources, Eco-audit form, example home eco-audit report, Index and Acknowledgements. I first met the author in person before I had any idea of his fame. I certainly had no idea that he had published two books and had such a glittering writing career. If you wish to know anything about him then it is all here. Pretty much a potted history of his life over the last twenty years. And to think he used to be a freelance ballet dancer. So I brought his two books second-hand off Amazon. Donnachadh is a nice enough chap in person but I think the term "planet-friendly" jars a little. It wouldn't have been my choice. It isn't difficult to get to hate those tired old clichés about "saving the planet" but this author falls for it on every page. This planet friendly cliché may be partly offset on page 33 (pardon the pun) by his pro-carbon-offsetting stance.

Whereas many greens vent their spleen again carbon offsetting Donnachadh sets a more reasonable tone. He writes “the fact remains that well-run carbon-offsetting schemes have a positive role to play in moving us towards a low-carbon economy.” Indeed he manages to devote over a page (34 through 35) to the “reasons to carbon offset”. He goes as far as agreeing with exactly the point made on this web site going back to 2007 and it is this “this voluntary tax on carbon emissions” doesn’t “disappear in general taxation”. It enshrines the “polluter pays” principle. In our view most of the people paying this voluntary tax are the sort of ...   more »

ISBN 9781905211371. "Bad Samaritans - The Guilty Secrets of Rich Nations & the threat to global prosperity" by Ha-Joon Chang was published by Random House in 2007. This paperback has 276 pages with Acknowledgements, Prologue, nine chapters, Epilogue, Notes and Index. Chang is a new author to the pages of Post-Carbon Living and an unusual choice as his work doesn't directly address climate change or peak oil. However his work is enlightening in the economic sphere as it serves as a timely defence of Keynesianism. In these neo-Liberal times, where Governments throw up their hands in horror at the idea of brokering a Green New Deal, it remains a salutary lesson to recall, as Chang demonstrates, that all our modern Western countries became industrialised because they adopted the very policies we now need to build low-carbon economies. But as soon as they become wealthy they decried these methods in favour of a new-found religion of the "free market" which, as Chang points out, means that other economies are NOT FREE TO CHOOSE any alternative path. Ironic. The apt phrase Chang chooses is "kicking away the ladder" of economic development from the developing nations. It keeps them firmly where they already are - poor.

The trouble is that we are all now "re-developing" nations. We are in transition through a new industrial revolution towards a post-carbon economy. Now is not the time to forget the lessons of history for reasons of pure dogma. This could place this book somewhere between Chomsky and Korten but this is not anti-capitalist rant. It is more an appeal to reason. The author surveys the evidence in the history books to compare the reality of how economic development happens versus the rhetoric of the World Trade Organisation and the "Washington Consensus" supplied by the World Bank ...   more »