Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff - Hardcover

Pearce, Fred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080708588X ISBN 13: 9780807085882

Publisher: Beacon Press, 2008

Synopsis

Where does everything in our daily lives come from? The clothes on our backs, the computers on our desks, the cabinets in our kitchens, and the food behind their doors? Under what conditions-environmental and social-are they harvested or manufactured? Veteran science journalist Fred Pearce set off to find out, and the resulting 100,000-mile journey took him to the end of his street and across the planet to more than twenty countries.

Pearce deftly shows us the hidden worlds that sustain a Western lifestyle, and he does it by examining the sources of everything in his own life; as an ordinary citizen of the Western world, he, like all of us, is an "eco-sinner."

In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Pearce surveys his home and then launches on a global tour to track down, among other things, the Tanzanians who grow and harvest his fair-trade coffee (which isn't as fair as one might hope), the Central American plantations that grow his daily banana (a treat that may disappear forever), the women in the Bangladeshi sweatshops who sew his jeans, the Chinese factory cities where the world's computers are made, and the African afterlife for old cell phones. It's a fascinating portrait, by turns sobering and hopeful, of the effects the world's more than 6 billion inhabitants-all eating, consuming, making-have on our planet, and of the working and living conditions of the people who produce most of these goods.

About this title

About the Author

Fred Pearce is a former news editor at New Scientist. Currently that magazine's environment and development consultant, he has also written for Audubon, Popular Science, Time, the Boston Globe, and Natural History. His books include With Speed and Violence, When the Rivers Run Dry, Keepers of the Spring, Turning Up the Heat, and Deep Jungle. He lives in England.

Reviews

Pearce's quest to discover the hidden world sustaining Western consumption habits is fulfilled with varying degrees of success in this, his third book. Tracking the routes taken by the items in his home—his coffee, cellphone, computer, green beans, chocolate, socks—from raw ingredient to finished product, the author presents fascinating firsthand investigations, as when he visits a group of fair-trade coffee farmers, follows the trail of his donated shirts to markets in Africa, visits Uzbek communities whose health, infrastructure and environment have been devastated by the cotton industry, and interviews female sweatshop workers who view their factory jobs as empowering. When Pearce strays from these journalistic portraits, however, he is prone to flaccid opining about the greenest fuel sources and simplistic boosting for urban planners designing small-footprint cities. The most effective chapters puncture the feel-good myths surrounding fair trade and recycling and introduce unique characters, such as the farmers and middlemen responsible for getting prawns from Bangladesh to a London curry shop. Although a timely effort, Pearce's diffusion of his reportorial mission with green-pleading mires his refreshing discoveries in moralizing and familiar cant. (Oct.)
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After addressing climate change in With Speed and Violence (2007), London-based journalist Pearce joins the growing ranks of the curious and intrepid who are determined to dispel the fog of globalization and find out exactly where our food and belongings come from, where our trash goes, and how this complicated cycle impacts the planet. Vitally interested in the lives of the people who extract, process, and cultivate the materials, plants, and animals that clothe, shelter, and feed us, Pearce begins his far-ranging inquiry by tracing his gold wedding band to an immense South African gold mine. Unsettling conversations with coffee and cocoa farmers, an up-close view of the fish crisis, and exposés of the environmental havoc wrought by the surging palm-oil industry and the high human and natural costs of cotton and aluminum––everywhere his favorite foods, clothes, and gadgets lead him, Pearce is confronted by imbalance and waste, tyranny and greed. And yet the “sheer ingenuity of people” infuses him with optimism. An uneven yet engaging and informative report on the consequences of overconsumption. --Donna Seaman

Edition details

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080708588X
• ISBN 13: 9780807085882
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288