Product Description

'I do love my kids, but not a day passes when I don't tell them what a burden they are to the planet.'

Meet Ethan Greenhart. He favours euthanasia as a solution to the world's over-crowding problems. He is opposed to throwing confetti at weddings because it contains bleach and artificial colourings that leak into the earth, and thus is the 'Wedding Day equivalent of acid rain'. He doesn't travel anywhere that can't be reached by foot. He hectors on every aspect of modern life, from driving to voting, from going on holiday to having children (did you know that the average British child emits 5 tonnes of carbon a year?!)

Based on his hugely popular (and provocative) weekly advice columns for Spiked magazine, Ethan's book promises to answer your most pressing environmental dilemmas.

A forest-friendly, carbon neutral production, it will be written from home, on a computer that is powered by solar energy, or, when the sun goes down, by a water-based treadmill that the author's children power with their feet.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #148806 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Review
'Ethan Greenhart, an aptly named environmentalist – although the first seven letters of that word might be redundant . . . I would recommend that you go out and buy Can I Recycle My Granny . . . richly comic.' (Independent )

'a skidmark on the gusset of environmentalism' (BBC Focus Magazine )

'Taking the imperilled world by storm . . . a book that should be in every Green Party Christmas stocking' (Irish Independent )

About the Author
Ethan Greenhart is the satirical creation of the journalist Brendan O'Neill. 'One of this country's sharpest social commentators' (Daily Telegraph), O'Neill is editor of the online magazine Spiked, and also publishes widely, in the Guardian, New Statesman, Spectator, Sunday Times, BBC News Online, Salon, Slate, and many more.

Customer Reviews

This book is a spoof written by an anti-green
Just for anyone that is not aware, this book is actually a spoof lampooning the green movement written by arch-anti-green, Brendan O'Neill.

Although some aspects of green-ism can be comical and extreme, O'Neill in his writings elsewhere seems to dismiss all green issues completely. He continually rails against a so-called "liberal elite", although he is not exactly clear who these people are, and he continually talks about "the masses" or "the working class", implying that a lot of current arguments and opinions are against them. Thus, O'Neill seems to view any attack or critique of things from cheap flights to violence at football matches as an a attack on the working class, without seeming to realise that things such as global warming and violence affect poorer people more severely than the better off.

O'Neill tends to stereotype poorer people as all sharing a number of negative characteristics, and then implies that any critique of such negative things is an attack on poorer people, or the masses. He doesn't appear to make any allowances for the fact that the less powerful in society might actually be quite diverse, and do not necessarily fall into a stereotype, eg: the tattooed football hooligan.

O'Neill's arguments tend to be very ad hominem, for example, he critices the perceived social standing of those who hold certain views on issues such as green issues, hooliganism, supermarkets, rather than addressing the issues and arguments themselves.

Enjoy this book by all means, but don't take it too seriously. Weigh up the arguments for yourself.

Tongue-in-cheek eco book
Eco dilemmas answered in an amusing, tongue in cheek manner. A fun book but not as helpful in seriously addressing eco problems as I had hoped!