Eco Friendly House And Garden

These days, can you just pick a chair you like the look of?

Of course you can, but do you want to? I mean, what is the history of that chair? Is buying it going against some of your principles? Have you been paying to NOT buy that chair – and then buying it anyway?

I mean where your chair comes from, what it is made of, who made it and how it was made are all important ethical and environmental issues – as well as how that chair got to your store, how it is held together, and what will happen when you don’t want it anymore.

And is it even safe to use?

If you donate to or fundraise for wildlife, humanitarian or environmental charities you should consider these questions in detail – otherwise you could be causing the very problems your charities are trying to prevent.

By not thinking about the direct and knock-on effects of what you choose to buy – and therefore endorse – you are not only wasting your time and money – you are helping to destroy the very things you believe in.

Does that chair look better in your home that that tiger did in a jungle?

If you could actually see that painted chair off-gassing volitile chemicals in your nursery – would you still want it in your home?

The above examples just tell you what actually does happen in all these cases – but just because you can’t see it at the time – it doesn’t mean you can ignore it.

Study The Facts:
It is very easy for all of us to just carry on as ‘normal’ and buy whatever we want when we want to – and that may still be true for food and medicines – as these are human essentials and people aren’t willing to change that much.

But buying non-essentials like chairs and other furniture and nik naks should really be considered in a lot more detail as you have a clear choice about what you do and don’t buy. And when you buy anything – you are saying to the manufacturers that you agree with, or at least are not bothered by, what they are doing.

If you buy non-FSC wooden furniture you are saying that you don’t mind if rainforests are destroyed along with the animals and plants living in them. You are paying them to destroy an ecosystem.

If you buy non-organic or high VOC paints and adhesives in your chairs you are saying that you don’t mind if animals as well as our own air and waterways are slightly polluted with potentially dangerous or toxic chemicals. You are paying to risk the lives of both people and animals – and ultimately our food crops and drinking water.

photo credit: PINTOY®

The Grey Areas:
Of course, there are always a whole range of factors that go into making a chair, and what you feel strongly about – but say the perfect eco and human friendly chair = 10 points.

Even if everyone only settled on a midway chair or 5 points that is still going to make a huge difference to our planet as well as the lives of individuals. Ironically it is probably schools, nurseries and offices which buy all the worst furniture as the wholesale companies they use for practicality don’t often have such green credentials.

So the very place where young people play and eat, and the very places where adults spend most of the days are causing a huge dent in this 5 point average life.

I know price and ease of purchase are huge factors working against you buying the best eco products – but it isn’t just your choice of chair you are making – you are helping to choose the future, your family’s future.

So next time you really need a new chair – think about what else what you could be losing in exchange.

Ordering your food shopping online just acquired a great eco planning tool!

Online shopping always worked for clothes and furniture as what you see is what you get – you order a red top in size 10; you got a red top in size 10.

However food shopping had an extra variable – all food is different.

We all know how long we spend choosing the right pack of tomatoes or bananas – are they too ripe, too big, too small or too squished! I’ve seen people not happy with the whole top tray of melons and then heaving off the top tray and start to look underneath instead.

photo credit: edkohler

How Long Will It Last?
And what about the shelf life of the product? Surely we want the longest shelf life for most products – or at least enough time to eat them before they ‘go off’. I mean cakes or crisps for a birthday party next month will need to have a date at least that long to be worth buying.

And we really don’t like wasting food in our eco kitchens – so could you ever really trust your store to give you the best produce on your order?

I mean, it is in their best interest to give you the food with the shortest date on it, isn’t it? They don’t want everyone to leave the short-dated food on the shelf – as then they lose the money.

That’s why shops rotate their produce to sell the short-dated stuff first. And by short-dated, it doesn’t mean that it is any less nutritious or healthy than food with a longer date – it just means that they can’t sell it after that date – even though you can still eat it.

In an ideal eco world – we would all buy the food with the shortest dates on it anyway, and plan to eat it within that time.

Not only does this save on wasted food in the stores – it inadvertantly allows people who aren’t quite so eco conscious to have the longer dated foods in their cupboards and so are more likely to eat it instead of throwing it away – well they do need help to ‘do the right thing’.

Along Came Waitrose!
So imagine my delight when I found an advertisment for a UK supermarket chain who promised to only deliver food to you that had a decent shelf life in the first place.

They also say that they will print out your receipt for your online delivery with all the ‘Best Before’ or Use By’ dates clearly shown on it.

This could make your life so much more eco friendly and easier too!

It means that you don’t have to spend ages looking for all the dates on your fresh foods when they arrive to make sure nothing is short-dated.

You also don’t need to write yourself a list of the dates to help plan your eating – it is all done for you! Just stick the receipt on your fridge or pin board and you can refer to it whenever – and better plan your eco dinners.

It almost helps you to say goodbye to wasted food completely and make better use of your money; I mean by reducing wasted food, you are leaving your money in the bank!

I think planning in your eco kitchen just took a giant leap forward!

I have been sitting in traffic lately – and have found out why there are always big queues!

People seem to have trouble accelerating away from their standstill when the lights go green; I’m not sure why but there is always a massive delay with people pulling away at the lights when they change.

Seemingly, people forget that they have just been sat in traffic for ages and so pootle about themselves when they get to the front of the queue – creating even more of a queue behind them.

It is the same as the people who queue up for ages in a fast food restaurant, swapping from leg to leg while they wait for the orders up ahead to clear – yet when they get to the front, they have no idea what they want to order – and stand there ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’.

People don’t seem to connect their actions with cause of the problem – and have just come to accept queuing as a part of life rather than think about how they could make everything that little bit nicer if they just thought about others rather than themselves all the time.

The Traffic Lights:
I always wondered why the traffic all didn’t move forward together when the green light finally appeared.  The whole of a train can move forward at the same time – so why can’t a train of cars all go forward on green.

I thought that having sat in traffic for a while, they would all have their foot on the pedal waiting to take off again as soon as they could – but it seems as though people don’t do this.

photo credit: oksidor

I have recently watched people at the front of the lights sorting through their bag and not spotting the green light appear until someone honks at them.  I have also watched people not know whether to pass on the nearside or far side of a car at a junction when they have clearly had ages to think about it at the front of the queue (especially when passing on the passenger side means more cars can pass through at a time).

People pull away slowly, take extra wide corners, don’t accelerate at a normal speed and basically ‘dolly daydream’ a bit about the whole thing.

Yet we all need to get to work – and noone likes sitting in traffic!

Why Does It Matter?
Well being a slow driver doesn’t really matter in itself – but queues of traffic are no good for anyone.

Yes, we have all heard the stories about avoiding the busiest times on the road unless it is absolutely essential travel – and I am a true believer in this – but sometimes you just have to sit in it.

Now surely, if everyone sped up their actions a little bit around traffic lights and round-a-bouts etc, there would be less queues on the road – and less queues mean less sitting traffic; less pollution; less angry divers; less of a rush hour and faster moving traffic. 

All adding up to a healthier traffic network, less stressed people and means that the morning or evening commute will take less time and so more time can be spent at home with the family and less time is spent in your car polluting.

So next time you are sat in traffic wondering why the traffic isn’t moving up ahead even though you can see a green traffic light – think of the mantra: You aren’t stuck in traffic – you ARE the traffic!

Eco thinking isn’t just about turning lights off and shopping locally.

Sometimes it’s the thoughts and actions of the ordinary person that can change things down the line – creating a better result for many people.

For example, there is a new project underway in the US with carpenter Carter Oosterhouse from HGTV, who is working alongside several organisations looking to create ‘healthier’ homes for allergy sufferers; called the Build Smart – Breathe Easier project.

We aren’t just talking about avoiding air fresheners and not keeping shedding pets here – they are designing the whole home and all its materials to reduce the chances of triggering reactions in asthma sufferers.

Why Now?

Well, asthma is a very serious disease - with over 24 million Americans currently suffering.

Statistics show that 11 people a DAY die from asthma and around a quarter of all emergency room admissions a year are from asthma-related incidents.

So why wouldn’t you want to reduce your chances of suffering from an attack?

And with technology, materials and medicine all advancing at a rapid pace – it seems about right to start considering our health when we create new homes – rather than just the environment or our bank balance!

Ultimately though - the 3 are closely linked.

The Larger Picture:

As with all things eco, it isn’t just 1 thing that can make a difference – it leads to a change in a lot of things, and that can only be good.

For example, by keeping yourself healthy at home, you are reducing the medical resources need to keep you healthy; less medication, less days off work or school, less days at the doctors, less time in ER and more time with your family!

So by thinking a bit harder about the requirements of a low allergy home – even if there are costs involved – could actually save an awful lot of othr people resources, other peoples and your own time as well as the drain on the planet with medications, equipment and resulting waste.

To find out more - why not click on their video below……

A Real Guide To Sustainable Living – they say, and they mean business. 

This isn’t a book that you can take lightly – it is full of maths and equations to justify their suggestions; and some things really need explaining as they turn common eco conceptions on their head!

Basically this book explains how we should be approaching our lives if we truly want to live an eco friendly lifestyle – or to live ecologically within our ‘allotted’ means.  By ‘allotted’ they mean if we are only to use our fair share of worldly resources rather than just putting a green angle onto everything we do.

And to prove it, they open up with a look at the widely held beliefs of the world without even considering the eco consequences to see what we are expecting the Earth to do for us as we are today.  From there, they try to whittle us down to what the Earth can actually do for us.

The Book Itself:
The book is something you need to read with a notepad and calculator on one side and some strong coffee on the other!

I have a basic grasp of ‘footprints’, ‘embodied energy’ and the worlds finite resources – but the maths part was a bit too much to keep on top of piled thick, as it was, in the body of the text.

They did have a huge number of very easy to understand charts and tables of everything they were talking about (which helped make up for skipping all the equations) and I didn’t loose the thread of their arguments by not reading all the numbers and MJ’s etc.

The Authors help to explain why some of the things that we assume would be eco friendly turn out not to be based on a bigger picture – for example walking isn’t that ecologically sensible if you are getting all your energy (ie eating) processed cheeseburgers from a store.  Basically, the energy chain of land use, transport, chemicals, packaging, heating, storing and selling the burgers in the first place is so huge that the ‘eco’ effort of walking fuelled by burgers wasn’t really ‘saving the planet’.

photo credit: Bob B. Brown

Similarly a 20 minute shower in an eco friendly low-water shower still uses nearly twice the amount of water than a 5 minute shower in an old-style water-intensive shower.  Further more, sharing a bath between 2 people uses around the same water per person as that same eco-friendly – but long – shower.

They use compelling reasoning to hold this all together as well as extensive research data from around the globe.  And even though a lot of their arguments offer very simple solutions to the World’s ecological problems – much is still recommending a somewhat ‘alternative’ lifestyle, where you use hemp for clothes, buy less things, stay ‘behind the times’, somewhat, live in smaller houses with the lights off and share things with other people rather than buying your own.

Now I know that this will all reduce our eco footprints and keep our emissions down and the world turning – but these aren’t the eco friendly living tips that people want to hear.  The people that do want to hear this are probably already aware of most of their discussions already.

I totally agree that our actions are sometimes more important that the eco technology that is on offer (like flushing the toilet less times will save more water than flushing more times with a low-flush mechanism, and choosing a small basic home will be better in terms of resources than living in an enormous eco friendly house) but I think that it is preaching to the converted.

Result: 3/5:
Even if my not-so-eco-friendly friends could have forced themselves to have read this entire book in the first place, I don’t think they would be heeding much of it’s advice.

I think it is a great text-book style book and can really help to compare ecological differences between common activities and products, but I don’t think it will change peoples attitudes in the style in which it is written. 

Although I really enjoyed several section of this book, I noticed a flaw.  They spend so long working out the embodied energy (EE) of a product (or the products and activities that went into making the parts for that oringinal product) that they sometimes considered slightly different things as important in each case.

For example, in the only section of the book that I had a really good knowledge of (pets) they managed to completely write off the transport angle for the tinned food in their comparison of dog and cat food (even though they went into shoe leather replacement in the walking vrs driving section).  They say that the eco effect of tinned packaging was negligible because we are encourage to recycle tins!  Well, how on earth do they intend to get these tins to those 76.5 million hungry cats worldwide without making an ecological impact?

And secondly their argument included showing that a cat food with less meat content made less of an impact (obvious when you consider the land used for beef and the land used to grow the winter food for beef as well) – however, cats that are fed on low amounts of meat will be more likely to become ill, get dry skin, loose hair, get gum disease etc (as not enough meat or too much vegetable matter isn’t good for a cat).  As a result – you will be using your vet more often or maybe adding shampoos and supplements to your cat to ‘cover up’ all these new problems.

Now I’m sure that these cosmetics and medicines (and trips to the vets) have just as much of an impact as adding the few extra percents of meat in their food in the first place.  High quality dried pet food are fed in smaller quantities as other foods, and are known to reduce these health (and aesthetic) problems – as well as coming in bulk paper packaging instead of heavy, bulky tins filled with 80% water!

They also said that a well handled hamster will be happy to live on it’s own – where infact the most common type of hamster (the Syrian hamster) will ONLY ever live on it’s own.  If you put 2 in the same cage, they will no doubt fight to the death within just a few days!

So now, can I really believe all the other comparisons they made in areas that I know little about?

ISBN: 978-0-500-28790-3

Eco Friendly Food Has Just Got Really Tiny – And Really Crunchy!

If there was a nutritious food that you could buy in the shop, that wasn’t a cow or a pig – would you consider eating it for the sake of the planet?

Bearing in mind that meat production – especially beef – is currently one of the biggest concerns in the ‘fight’ against world hunger and deforestation (thus a curse to humanity and biodiversity!) – and then think of a way to get the same animal protein but at a much smaller environmental cost.

Below are a list of this new foods eco friendly qualities – and decide for yourself:

1) Living Space:
This food supply does not need a very large space to live in -  therefore there will be no need to leave millions of acres of land bare just to graze them – and the rainforests can stay standing!

2) Living Requirements:
This food supply comes in many different forms so can quite easily be farmed anywhere in the world without any extra requirements such as heat, specialist foods or disease resistance.

3) Food Supply:
As this food source has only minimal food requirements as an adult – there will be no need to use valuable farmland to grow food for our food (i.e.cows) to eat rather than for our people to eat directly.

4) Land Supply:
This food will not be affected by rising sea levels or other changing environments that prevent food being grown – so supply can continue to be produced regardless of the weather events.

5) Land Requirements:
Due to the way this food would be farmed – there are no specific land needs other than not too polluted or too cold.  Therefore you could use wasteland, roof space, disused factories and any salty, exhausted or otherwise useless farmland, etc.

6) Human Interest:
This food already has a successful market around the world although it has never really been a favourite of the developed world.  Millions of people around the world already eat this food almost every week and there are a whole host of recipes and uses already being used for these foods.

photo credit: waywuwei

So what am I going on about here?

Well, the UN are now starting to take the current food crisis seriously and are looking for serious solutions – and they have come up with insects.

Weight for weight; grasshoppers hold almost as much protein as ground beef, crickets are high in calcium and red ant eggs are great for carbs (and low in calories).

What if you could breed millions of insects in every town or city in just a large warehouse and feed hundreds of families nutritious food that is grown at low environmental cost and using only a fraction of the land and resources of cattle farming?

I know the thought of eating bugs doesn’t immediately appeal – but think what is in black pudding and all but the best sausages.  What is the other 40% in most hamburgers these days and even the ingredient breakdown of different cheeses doesn’t make for good reading!

Think about it.

Source: National Geographic Magazine 2010

Don’t think that ‘someone like you’ can’t make a bigger company have to make changes.

In today’s society there are plenty of ‘little poeple’ out there fighting for a larger cause – so don’t think that you couldn’t be one of them.  Not everyone wants to take on something huge – but if you do, then take the following as inspiration.

The Film CRUDE (2009) is all about a massive ongoing court case between the indigenous tribes of the Ecuadorian Amazon and Texaco (which was brought up in 2001 by Chevron).

30,000 people from the area filed a class action lawsuit against the huge oil company in 1993 for polluting their land.  They wanted them held responsible for causing human health issues, animal health issues, and environmental health issues through systematic ‘spilling’ of oil into the natural watercourses and penetration into the ground from continuous overflow and dumping of toxic petrochemical waste over the past decades.

And who took on this case for the people?  A newly qualified young lawyer called Pedro Fajardo who lives close by.

He had grown up watching his environment being destroyed and poisoned by the petrochemical company, and decided to work really hard towards fighting his case as soon as he was able.  Being from a poor family he worked extra hard to get good grades and so was able to get sponsorship from a Catholic School to take his law degree.  This case was his first case taken on after graduating!

How Is This Relevant To Me?
Well, what are you passionate enough about to make a real difference?  What things have you thought were ‘unfair’ or ‘unjust’ in your local area or around the world?

You can make a difference if you just make sure you are in the right environment to make a difference – and you make sure you can do the best job possible to achieve it.

For example a friend of mine found out that a property close to the entrance to her children’s school was going to be converted into 8 flats – with the drive emptying out into the street where her children walked every morning.  She found out about the application and what it meant for the local area and then produced a short print-out of facts to other parents – raising her concerns over increased traffic so close to children.

She managed to get enough signatures of complaint from other concerned parents that the application was refused – although she wasn’t too happy about the photo of her they put in the local paper!

I know this is only small fry compared to the years long battle in CRUDE, but every small step can lead to a larger one.  And every other person out there fighting a case is winning for truth.  As Pablo said in the film; Texaco have a harder job than him fighting the case as he is just telling the truth – they are having to think of a lie to cover that truth every time!

How Did He Do It Then?
Of course it wasn’t just a self-funding attorney from Ecuador that is taking on the entirety of the $200 billion annual revenue multi-national oil-producing Chevron – he had friends!

When you are fighting a true case like this – where the evidence speaks for itself – you will always find other people fighting for similar causes that will chip in – making your voice louder.

For example Pablo had won the attention of a US attorney and his board of funders – and they believed in his cause.  Whether they were really in it for the Ecuadorian people or the huge sums of money doesn’t matter – they were there when he needed them.

Other charities also stepped into assist, including Trudie Styler and Sting who work for their own humanitarian charity the Rainforest Foundation Fund – as well as articles in magazines such as Vanity Fair.  Of course the best voice for his cause was when this documentary was made by Joe Berlinger (and make sure you watch it) – as the world can now see first-hand the people involved and the damage they are having to live with.

So don’t think that when you start something you are alone – you can always find others willing to make a difference too – and together you can make it bigger!

During the bright sunny weather – there are butterflies everywhere!

But what are they all called, and why does it matter?  Well, it matters because butterflies are very specific feeders and so can tell us what the health of certain plants is like – and therefore which habitats are disappearing and which ones a expanding.  And this information is vital to biodiversity and conservation.

So – how many butterflies can you identify?  Which plants have you introduced or encouraged in your garden to attract butterflies?

Well, now is your chance to learn a few more and actually use this new information to help a national survey tell us about our changing environments.

The Survey:
The Butterfly Conservation Trust and Marks & Spencer have got together to organise a very simple sample survey of your local butterflies.

Basically, all they want you to do is tally up all the butterfly species you see in your garden or on a walk in just 15 minutes.

No need to learn a billion species or any rare butterflies – just the common and most widespread species in the UK.

They have even produced a fantastic, clear and comprehensive visual identification guide to around 15 butterflies – showing both upper and lower wing patterns.  They couldn’t have made it any easier!

So could you spare a few minutes now looking through the species guide and then 15 minutes at the end of July to tally them up?  A pair of binoculars wouldn’t be a bad idea either!

Why Butterflies?
Well, butterflies are very obvious in the environment.  They don’t try to hide – infact they brandish their wings to the sun; they come out during the brightest, clearest days and they are usually brightly coloured too – with some quite striking patterns.

Small Tortoiseshell Butterfly

This means that it would be a lot easier that trying to spot night-flying moths or small mammals etc!

As mentioned before, they only feed on certain plants and only lay their eggs on certain other plants, so you can be very sure that where there are White Admirals there will be Honeysuckle and where there are Silver-Washed Fritillary there will be Dog Violet.

Therefore if there certain plant species dying off or becoming more abundant due to land-use changes or differing weather patterns – the butterflies will have to change their local habitat to make sure they and their young can feed.

And this is where the survey can tell the specialist and awful lot!  The information for just our garden might not really tell us anything – but add that up between all the survey results and the picture will become much clearer.

So the more people who can spare 15 minutes of their time – the more definitive the results will be, and the more action can be taken to make sure we don’t lose butterflies from our gardens – and don’t lose entire habitats because we didn’t care to look!

So, go get your suncream and a pen!

When you visit you local stores – you aren’t just saving petrol these days!

There are many, many reasons to shop in your local stores, but supporting small businesses rather than national and international ‘brands’ is also a key factor in keeping your community intact and offering a wide variety of choice and prices to suit all budgets and households!

Take a look at the following list to get some idea of the difference you can make as an individual.

You Help Keep Money In The Local Economy:
The first and most important thing you do is to make sure that your lovely stores are re-investing their money in local services and your community.  Shop-keepers have a huge amount of ‘sway’ in the high street and your local community, with committees funding new ideas and urban improvements.

You Help Generate New Money:
By making your stores and your community a ‘place for shopping and eating’ as well as clean and organised, you will be attracting people from outside in to your environment who will bring money with them – fuelling further improvements.

You Help Improve Public Services And Transport:
By attracting all these people in to your community, you make sure that the services they – and you – need are there.  These include better public transport, clean toilets, public seating, better parking, cleaner streets and more events and activities being organised. 

Compare travelling through London on the Tube with a shop on every corner to arriving at a village train station in Norfolk with no buses, toilets or even a restaurant that takes credit cards! (and I only went there a couple of months ago!).

Creating Local Jobs & Keeping Local People:
By creating a healthy employment market in your town, you are attracting families to move in therefore keeping the housing market (and house prices) at a steady rate – as well as promoting healthy competition between schools with the influx of children – thus making education a priority.

This also includes making sure that elderly residents don’t have to travel some distance to get their shopping.  If you make sure that a variety of shops remain on the high street, then this gived those less mobile the opportunity to visit individual stores for their goods – rather than having to travel to out-of-town superstores all the time.

Support New Ideas And Entrepreneurs:
People who want to try something new can’t always get their foot in the door of larger companies, so want to start out alone – and your high street is the perfect place for them.  By visiting them and buying just one little thing can be the difference between them surviving the next few months!

You must remember the high streets a few months ago after we lost some big name shops – we need to help fill the gaps back up and see some new stores popping up.  They won’t move in unless they know you will support them.

Be Unique:
Unique things are what we love – think of the Brighton Lanes or London’s Covent Garden – we wouldn’t be without them.  Their individuality allows our homes to be unique too!  With a thousand different scarves to choose from – you can be just you!  Imagine if everyone had the same curtains, same ornament over the fireplace or 1 of only 3 types of fruit bowl in the world!

So grab your purse and your cotton bag – and head into town!

Our changing climate and what it means for life on earth – he says….

Basically this book explains some of the facts about the things we hear about in the news – but it does them in a nice way rather than scaremongering!

And to prove it, he opens up nice and early with a simple guide to how the world works at the moment - in terms of climate and atmosphere – and easily explains the difference between all the ‘eco words’ being bandied around at the moment, like global warming and climate change. 

The Book Itself:
Not too intimidating to read, or filled with scientific quotes and jargon, this book is quite an easy read – and it doesn’t display page after page filled with ‘amazing’ statistics and species names. 

It does however, cover all the points that are a global warming advocate favorites – like coral bleaching and coal-fired power stations – but he takes the time to discuss the actual science and facts behind them in really simple terms.  This goes a long way towards getting people to a level where they can form their own opinions.

So rather than saying ‘we are all doomed if the rainforests are cleared’ or ‘we will all drown when sea levels rise 100 meters’ causing panic – he simply explains how nature balances that particular environment at the moment, and what our actions could do to change that along current trends. 

Basically, he details what could biologically be the next step if all things remain the same – for example:  A normal human being needs to eat to stay alive, awake and healthy – but if it starts to eat too much a series of things will start to occur.  These may include weight gain (due to excess calories), tiredness (due to the extra weight being carried), likelihood of skin problems (due to bad circulation), shortness of breath (due to pressure on the lungs and heart), etc, etc. 

Flannery helps to explain how these things come about – not just what the end result might be.  He explains the negative and positive feedback systems that keep our environment alive and functioning as it is today.

He uses the Gaia Theory to put all this in perspective – whereby the whole world and it’s atmosphere are treated as one giant living organism – where an action in one part can have an effect on another part.  A giant version of the saying ‘if a butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Sahara, it can create a cyclone in the Pacific’.

I totally agree that our actions in different parts of the world are having a direct impact on things happening thousands of miles away, and can visualise how a change in the make-up of the atmosphere (more CO2) can change climate and the water cycle! 

Result: 4/5
I would have hoped for an updated version by now – seeing as it is 5 years old now, and science has come a long way since – and we have new world leaders to contend with!

I started to write down some of his short term ‘predictions’ as some of them had passed or were fast approaching – most were on target although a few were not quite as bad as he had thought they would be.

He has written several other books which I will be seeking out, and I will be waiting for the newest edition of this book to arrive!

ISBN: 978-0-141-02627-5