Looking Back, Looking Forward
This is no swan song; no sad farewell. Maybe, though, it’s time to pause a while and think back to what has been said. After more than 4 years writing a mixture of research articles, contrarian polemic, calls to arms and personal expressions of my search for something better, it is no surprise that the power of words sometimes needs reinforcing in its fragile, ephemeral state.
My friend Guy McPherson inspired this partial anthology of essays from The Earth Blog; his review of “greatest hits” on Nature Bats Last is dispassionate, letting the words speak for themselves. However, there is a proviso – the essays shown in this specially produced volume exist for a reason: writing on The Earth Blog is hard, often so hard that essays can take months from idea to publication. Each essay means something important, and the essays presented here I consider to be particularly important in reflecting the way I feel we must approach and tackle the problems inherent in the collapsing mess we were once proud to call Earth.
It is not an exhaustive set by any means; some important pieces, such as my interview with Carolyn Baker, and “100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine” just don’t fit, so the web sites (The Earth Blog, The Unsuitablog and A Matter of Scale) and my book “Time’s Up!” – which some of these essays are extensions of – remain the primary source of information.
The essays are unedited, unabridged, and often very intense. The order in which they are presented is in the form of a branching journey, culminating in the only piece of complete fiction published on The Earth Blog. If there is a stepping-off point where you can most surely take charge of your own destiny, then that is probably it.
Over the course of the years I have been fortunate to come into contact with some very imaginative, brilliant and life-affirming people: I do not want to name individuals for fear of missing someone out; but rest assured, their influence runs through the lines of these essays. Invention may be the domain of the individual, but change is the destiny only of those who are prepared to come together and make it happen.
Keith Farnish August 2010,
Scotland.
To download “Dispatches from The Earth Blog” or read it online, simply click on the following link, or paste it into your browser address bar:
http://www.archive.org/details/DispatchesFromTheEarthBlog
The mini-book is designed to be printed double-sided on A4 with long-sided stapling. It has 28 pages (7×4) so can also be printed in booklet form using appropriate formatting. Note: text is generally 10pt, and sans serif, so reduced will be small, but readable.
The Earth Blog 