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The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need
After the fierce warnings and grim predictions of The Weather Makers and An Inconvenient Truth , acclaimed journalist and national bestselling author Chris Turner finds hope in the search for a sustainable future.
Point of no The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.
In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.
While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.
There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.
— from The Geography of Hope
Point of no The chilling phrase has become the ubiquitous mantra of ecological doomsayers, a troubling headline above stories of melting permafrost and receding ice caps, visions of catastrophe and fears of a problem with no solution. Daring to step beyond the rhetoric of panic and despair, The Geography of Hope points to the bright light at the end of this very dark tunnel.
With a mix of front-line reporting, analysis and passionate argument, Chris Turner pieces together the glimmers of optimism amid the gloom and the solutions already at work around the world, from Canada’s largest wind farm to Asia’s greenest building and Europe’s most eco-friendly communities. But The Geography of Hope goes far beyond mere technology. Turner seeks out the next generation of political, economic, social and spiritual institutions that could provide the global foundations for a sustainable future–from the green hills of northern Thailand to the parliament houses of Scandinavia, from the villages of southern India, where microcredit finance has remade the social fabric, to America’s most forward-thinking think tanks.
In this compelling first-person exploration, punctuated by the wonder and angst of a writer discovering the world’s beacons of possibility, Chris Turner pieces together a dazzling map of the disparate landmarks in a geography of hope.
While most of the world has been spinning in stagnant circles of recrimination and debate on the subject of climate change, paralyzed by visions of apocalypse both natural (if nothing of our way of life changes) and economic (if too much does), Denmark has simply marched off with steadfast resolve into the sustainable future, reaching the zenith of its pioneering trek on the island of Samsø. And so if there’s an encircled star on this patchwork map indicating hope’s modest capital, then it should be properly placed on this island. Perhaps, for the sake of precision, at the geographic centre of Jørgen Tranberg’s dairy farm.
There are, I’m sure, any number of images called to mind by talk of ecological revolution and renewable energy and sustainable living, but I’m pretty certain they don’t generally include a hearty fiftysomething Dane in rubber boots spotted with mud and cow shit. Which is why Samsø’s transformation is not just revolutionary but inspiring, not just a huge change but a tantalizingly attainable one. And it was a change that seemed at its most workaday–near-effortless, no more remarkable than the cool October wind gusting across the island–down on Tranberg’s farm.
— from The Geography of Hope
480 pages, Hardcover
First published October 5, 2007
12 people are currently reading
293 people want to read
About the author
Chris Turner
10 books36 followersCHRIS TURNER is an award-winning author and one of Canada’s leading writers and speakers on climate change solutions and the global energy transition. His bestsellers The Leap and The Geography of Hope were both National Business Book Award finalists. His feature writing has earned nine National Magazine Awards. He lives in Calgary with his wife, Ashley Bristowe, and their two children.
There is more than one author with this name
There is more than one author with this name
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
December 27, 2015
The premise for this book--to provide a tour of the sustainable world we need--is sound and exciting. The book flirts with brilliance on several occasions, and provides quite a few examples (though dated) of sustainable communities, design, and ideology. All fine and good.
That said, this book needs an editor. Turner writes well, and perhaps a tad too much. Meandering, bloated, diverging paragraphs--pages--are much too common. I've had to skim many a paragraph to get to the good stuff: stories about sustainability. The rest, from song lyrics to movie quotes and excessively verbose descriptions, distract from the main thesis of the book. Perhaps it's just me.
Cut this book by 30% and you have an interesting, hopeful, story-based narrative of sustainability, an accessible companion to Natural Capitalism or the Quest. But in its current shape, be prepared to skim.
That said, this book needs an editor. Turner writes well, and perhaps a tad too much. Meandering, bloated, diverging paragraphs--pages--are much too common. I've had to skim many a paragraph to get to the good stuff: stories about sustainability. The rest, from song lyrics to movie quotes and excessively verbose descriptions, distract from the main thesis of the book. Perhaps it's just me.
Cut this book by 30% and you have an interesting, hopeful, story-based narrative of sustainability, an accessible companion to Natural Capitalism or the Quest. But in its current shape, be prepared to skim.
September 5, 2020
Turner turns his back on his environmental-protest Greenpeace-volunteering past, and goes searching, somewhat frantically, for those who are actually building a sustainable future. For him, it's like turning from "I have a nightmare" to "I have a dream". There follows a whirling tour of the planet, from energy-self-reliant communities in Denmark or Thailand, to urban farms in Cuba, or micro-credit financed solar energy in India. Turner captures the excitement of people who feel their work is turning the world's tide. He wants us excited, and he wants ecological to win because it's cool. And he does cheer me up. He does make you feel far more can be done than our petty individual reductions in consumption. But as for how most of us are gonna fit in all this transition, the book leaves us with no clear band wagons to jump on. It's still, Turner admits, basically us, being a little more alert to how our own place can change.
June 28, 2020
Reading Chris Turner's book from 2007 now in 2020 is both a partial antidote to despair and partly a way of setting oneself up for either more despair, or more hope.
Will looking now for hope the way Chris did lead to finding the world is better or worse off than 13 years ago?
The answer is going to be that hope is what you choose to see.
I am always optimistic but I needed to read this book again now, to immerse myself in stories of hope.
I'm very grateful to Chris and his wife Ashley for all that went into this book. I suspect it took over their lives for two years, at least. That's a big contribution. Thanks.
Will looking now for hope the way Chris did lead to finding the world is better or worse off than 13 years ago?
The answer is going to be that hope is what you choose to see.
I am always optimistic but I needed to read this book again now, to immerse myself in stories of hope.
I'm very grateful to Chris and his wife Ashley for all that went into this book. I suspect it took over their lives for two years, at least. That's a big contribution. Thanks.
June 15, 2018
Outdated at this point, but not a bad book.
April 25, 2022
A fascinating and inspiring look at how to navigate the climate crisis.
June 12, 2009
"Under our current economic system, you can never have enough and you can never have too much. In fact, our entire economy is predicated on continued, endless growth. Yet we live in a finite world, with finite resources and a limited amount of space to dump our wastes. Bit of a problem there." David Suzuki p283
For years now we've been assaulted by the media shouting from the rooftops about global warming and dark predictions for the future. While "if it bleeds it leads" may still apply to journalism, no one welcomes the paralyzing terror that news organizations seem hellbent on shoving down our throats. It seemed as if all we could do was gird our loins and hope for the best until I came upon this book from MiniBookExpo In it, author Chris Turner explains what various countries and companies around the world are doing to create environmentally friendly and sustainable communities. For example, Singapore is working on a zero-emission automobile project and currently suffers from a grid-lock free city. The island of Samso, near Denmark has reduced their CO2 emissions to less than zero. And did you know that the Reichstag in Berlin generates its own power from vegetable oil?
This is the first book I've read that doesn't spell doom and gloom for our future. Turner focuses on the positive, on the leaps we've made in sustainable technology. He also makes it sound surprisingly easy to switch over to a more sustainable lifestyle. The book is helpfully divided into sections that each address areas of concern. From power to transport to housing, Turner draws upon examples from various countries and explains how they're adapting to the needs of their people and the changing world around them.
The leaps and bounds in technology though, sound like something out of Star Trek. A high-performance glass made by French company Saint-Gobain, is designed to allow 75 percent of available light in but only 25 percent of the heat and is ideally suited for Southern India's climate where it's being put to good use. As well currently ten percent of the roofs in Germany are covered in vegetation. They keep the buildings cool in the heat and warm in the cold, produce oxygen and provide great green space for workers to use for relaxation.
One danger that books on heavy subjects often suffer from is a dry style and complicated language but this book is surprisingly readable, most likely because Turner is a journalist. The writing also reads more like fiction at times, pulling the reader along. "The grey sky faded fast into black. In fits and starts, the lights of the village came on, gold and orange and the strobing blue of a TV or two against the encroaching dark. I felt ecstatic in the warm embrace of it all."
My only complaint was the swearing peppered throughout the book. I can understand the need to get angry at our current state of affairs but it diminishes the message and academic candor of the book.
If you're concerned about what we're doing to meet the challenges ahead of us then I would highly recommend this book. Turner provides a myriad of examples that give me hope for what we can accomplish.
For years now we've been assaulted by the media shouting from the rooftops about global warming and dark predictions for the future. While "if it bleeds it leads" may still apply to journalism, no one welcomes the paralyzing terror that news organizations seem hellbent on shoving down our throats. It seemed as if all we could do was gird our loins and hope for the best until I came upon this book from MiniBookExpo In it, author Chris Turner explains what various countries and companies around the world are doing to create environmentally friendly and sustainable communities. For example, Singapore is working on a zero-emission automobile project and currently suffers from a grid-lock free city. The island of Samso, near Denmark has reduced their CO2 emissions to less than zero. And did you know that the Reichstag in Berlin generates its own power from vegetable oil?
This is the first book I've read that doesn't spell doom and gloom for our future. Turner focuses on the positive, on the leaps we've made in sustainable technology. He also makes it sound surprisingly easy to switch over to a more sustainable lifestyle. The book is helpfully divided into sections that each address areas of concern. From power to transport to housing, Turner draws upon examples from various countries and explains how they're adapting to the needs of their people and the changing world around them.
The leaps and bounds in technology though, sound like something out of Star Trek. A high-performance glass made by French company Saint-Gobain, is designed to allow 75 percent of available light in but only 25 percent of the heat and is ideally suited for Southern India's climate where it's being put to good use. As well currently ten percent of the roofs in Germany are covered in vegetation. They keep the buildings cool in the heat and warm in the cold, produce oxygen and provide great green space for workers to use for relaxation.
One danger that books on heavy subjects often suffer from is a dry style and complicated language but this book is surprisingly readable, most likely because Turner is a journalist. The writing also reads more like fiction at times, pulling the reader along. "The grey sky faded fast into black. In fits and starts, the lights of the village came on, gold and orange and the strobing blue of a TV or two against the encroaching dark. I felt ecstatic in the warm embrace of it all."
My only complaint was the swearing peppered throughout the book. I can understand the need to get angry at our current state of affairs but it diminishes the message and academic candor of the book.
If you're concerned about what we're doing to meet the challenges ahead of us then I would highly recommend this book. Turner provides a myriad of examples that give me hope for what we can accomplish.
May 21, 2008
Hopefully I'll write a real review later, but as for right now, I've just got one minor complaint (although this was overall a GREAT read for anyone interested). My beef is that Chris seems to dismiss nuclear without giving me any real reason to take his side. From my point of view, I'm sitting here, trying to wrap my mind around what might be our real answers to this whole sustainability mess, and it seems he should have made a go at convincing me that nuclear options didn't deserve any place in his book on "hope". Obviously, he doesn't believe nuclear deserves more than a paragraph of mention, but at the very least, it would've been nice if that paragraph had been a concise and satisfying explanation of WHY it deserved so little of his attention.
Great book though! I'll edit this review later and elaborate!
Great book though! I'll edit this review later and elaborate!
October 23, 2008
The Geography of Hope is exactly what I'd hoped for when I ordered the book, an optimistic synopsis of the future. After receiving an "environmental must-reads" list from a friend, I whittled out several based on their cynicism and doomsaying. I heard about this book and checked out the author's website, liked his angle and sense of humor, and purchased the book through Amazon.ca.
Within the vignettes, the book imports a lot of ideas from other authors, with quotes, excerpts and book reviews in seemingly every chapter. As an activist who's always looking for case-studies and inspiration, The Geography of Hope is serious kindling. The vision Chris Turner has even left me breathless a few times.
Note to Reader: you may want to familiarize yourself with the Coen Brothers' film, "The Big Lebowski," before reading this book.
Within the vignettes, the book imports a lot of ideas from other authors, with quotes, excerpts and book reviews in seemingly every chapter. As an activist who's always looking for case-studies and inspiration, The Geography of Hope is serious kindling. The vision Chris Turner has even left me breathless a few times.
Note to Reader: you may want to familiarize yourself with the Coen Brothers' film, "The Big Lebowski," before reading this book.
September 5, 2013
I happened to read E.F. Schumacher's book, Economics as if People Mattered, shortly before reading this book, and the homage is notable (and acknowledged). This book is an extension of Schumacher's thoughts, and takes some of the modern technologies, ideas, and initiatives and relates them back to Schumacher's framework. It's an adaptive blueprint for our world, one where we can all take snippets, chunks, or entire chapters as needed for our lives.
January 15, 2014
Chris Turner is a gifted researcher and social commentator above all else. His turning of phrase is a joy to read. For example, on the matter of Sir Thomas More's book 'Utopia'Chris states, "...the name itself is cunningly, punningly ambiguous: it translates literally from the Greek as 'no place', but it plays on a homonym meaning 'good place'."
Wow. I would recommend this book to anyone who is truly curious about the world we live in. An epic adventure.
Wow. I would recommend this book to anyone who is truly curious about the world we live in. An epic adventure.
April 8, 2008
Good examples of existing, implemented technology for sustainable living with a focus on individual and small community action, with some asides and personal observations from the author's one-year world travels to collect these examples. Chris Turner lives in Calgary and has inspired my own stab at more sustainable living here -- ask me how I get my electricity from wind power now!
January 2, 2013
Great book. Really does a good job exploring all the positive environmental achievements made in Canada and around the world. It's a nice change from the doom and gloom negative aspects of the problem. It's not an easy read and I did it in two rounds. Some of the working is a little heavy. I can't wait to read his book "The Leap".
November 8, 2008
This book about sustainability and how the world is changing was just too damn long for me. It was good, but very complex and I had to pay attention. Still, I'm glad it was written and think other people out there might enjoy it more than I did.
May 30, 2008
Great book. Ones look at the sustainable places, people and ideas around the world. He travelled to all the places in this book.
September 26, 2011
I almost stopped reading this, the first chapter I found to be boring (and the last one too). but there many interesting things within the middle chapters of what's happening in the world
February 5, 2012
Chris Turner packs this tome with a dizzying array of information, a lot to think about, and reasons to hope. I'm so glad I read it.
February 18, 2013
This book will give you hope
January 9, 2014
I returned this...lets just say I finished the book.
To be honest though, I really liked this book. It was...like cake. Yummy.
To be honest though, I really liked this book. It was...like cake. Yummy.
April 6, 2014
Great detail
December 29, 2015
Excellent read. Chris Turner is a national treasure and a much needed voice in the wilderness of big energy PR spin and climate change denial.
March 27, 2017
A light look at an important idea: environmentalism needs to give people reasons to believe, not to fear. It may be too late though.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews