The Carbon Diaries was a much better book than I expected. I don't know why I did not anticipate reading a great book - perhaps because climate change and carbon rationing are such important topics, that one almost fears to read a teen novel about them. However, I think this one was rather good.

Lloyd shows the reader first of all the initial fears and objections to carbon rationing: we feel like we just can't cope without our needless luxuries, that our life as we know it will be over. And although the citizens of the UK have themselves voted for carbon rationing, when time comes for it to be enforced, suddenly the government people seem like the enemies. I think this is a rather realistic view of things: were carbon really to be rationed on an individual level, the state would turn more or less into a police state. (That's one reason why I'm for tax & share scheme rather than individual rationing, although I think individual rationing and living in a police state are probably better alternatives than continuing business as usual.)

Already during the first year of rationing, Laura and her family learn that the initial difficulties of adjusting into a new lifestyle were just a beginning of their strife. It's one thing to have limited carbon spending rights; but when extreme weather really sets in, the whole society will break apart in many ways. Then it's no longer a question of not being able to buy all you want, but a question of there being nothing to buy in the shops. Or, indeed, a question of whether you can get into the shops at all. Likewise, if UK no longer has enough oil and gas, it doesn't really matter if private heating is tightly rationed: the problem is that energy and heat will be hard to come by in the first place. This message was one of the reasons why I liked The Carbon Diaries: it reminds us that although we are still in the privileged position of being able to choose a lifestyle, and reluctant to choose a more ecological one, soon we may not have that much of a choice. The evil of rationing will seem a lot lesser one, when basic survival is at stake.

I also appreciated how Lloyd weaves feminist issues into the novel (although they seem quite blatant at times). I'm sure that in the future our practical skills will count for a lot more than they do now, and there may indeed be a danger that the old sexist role models will be enforced. Lloyd's wonder women were a bit over the top, but perhaps there's a message to be considered as well. I know I'm trying to learn more practical skills, for example gardening, and I'm really doing it with the climate change and the impending societal changes in mind.

All in all, a rather gloomy read, and perhaps we will face nothing like this already on 2015, but I think it's not too early to start preparing. I do hope people will be responsible enough to vote for carbon rationing, or a similar scheme, before it's truly too late. Tax & share seems to me a more reasonable choice, though; let's wait and see what comes out of the Copenhagen meeting later on this year!

I feel like this book needs more readers, so perhaps I'll ask around and start a book ring.

Tästä tulee kirjarinki. Koska rinki kiertää ainakin aluksi pelkästään Suomessa, niin ohjeviestikin tulee nyt suomeksi. Kommentit voi kirjoittaa millä kielellä tykkää (no jaa, mielellään suomeksi, englanniksi tai ruotsiksi, jotta minäkin ymmärrän). Yrittäkää lukea parissa-kolmessa viikossa, mutta jos elämä yllättää, niin ei pidä ottaa kamalia paineita.

Osanottajat:

Tintti (Jyväskylä) -> on lukenut
Ametisti (Klaukkala) -> on lukenut
CandyDarling (Helsinki) -> on lukenut
Pellu (Lappeenranta) -> on lukenut
Louhi (Oulu) -> on lukenut
Heeleri (Raahe) -> kirja on nyt täällä
Niora (Joensuu)

The book arrived today. Thanks, harmaja!

Aivot ei sunnuntaiaamuna millään taivu englantiin, joten pakko kirjoittaa suomeksi. :)

En lue nykyisin juurikaan nuortenkirjoja, joten en osannut odottaa tältä kirjalta oikein mitään. Aihe kiinnosti kuitenkin, ja loppujen lopuksi tykkäsin kirjasta kokonaisuutena melko paljon. Hyvä että nuorille kirjoitetaan tällaisia aiheita käsitteleviä kirjoja. Tarinaan oli ympätty myös melko paljon tietoa ilmastonmuutoksesta ja siihen liittyvistä asioista, mutta ne oli esitetty niin sujuvasti etteivät haitanneet juonen kulkua.

Kirja lähtee seuraavaksi Ametistille.

Kiitos harmaja ja Tintti!

Luen kirjan ensi viikon alussa. Ensin 4 päivän reissu alta pois ja sitten lentomatkustamisen morkkiksessa lukemaan päästöpäiväkirjaa... huu.

Brilliant book! I don't usually like diary-books, but this was a fun and educative read.

I think Laura and her family and firends were very plausible characters. The story was scaringly realistic: I remember seeing a BBC documentary about the London flood walls and gates and all that. Surreal. The dysfunctional family was extremely well described. All in all a great book and if it ever makes to be translated into Finnish I'll buy it for my children to read. Oh, and looking forward to Carbon Diaries 2017 :)

I kept thinking how it would be great to read a book about such a case in Finland. What would happen in here? Where would the water flood and how hot it could get?

Thank you harmaja so much for sharing this book! I'll be sending it forward to CandyDarling at the end of this week.

This book is still en route from Ametisti to CandyDarling, but I just wanted to link here an article from today's Times.

Here's a quote from the article:

"[A]n influential think-tank says that the Government may need to introduce “carbon rationing” to cut pollution from everyday activities such as filling up the car, using electricity at home and flying abroad for holidays.

A report published today by the Institute for Public Policy Research says that personal quotas for carbon emissions — which could be traded between people with a high carbon footprint and those who live greener lifestyles — may be needed if present policies fail to cut greenhouse gases.

A scheme of personal carbon trading would give everybody in the country a free allocation of credits that would be needed to buy gas and electricity for powering homes, fuel for cars and plane tickets for holidays.

People who did not use all of their credits because they had a low carbon footprint could sell the excess to people who used more fossil fuels to power their cars or homes or to go on holiday. The quotas would shrink over time to reduce carbon emissions.

The think-tank acknowledges that the scheme could cost £1.4 billion a year and would be difficult to implement and likely to be unpopular. But the report says that if, at the end of the UK’s first carbon budget in 2012, emissions are not being reduced the Government might have to consider rationing as a “plan B”.

The five-year carbon budgets were brought in as part of attempts to meet legally binding targets to cut emissions by at least 34 per cent by 2020 and at least 80 per cent on 1990 levels by 2050 across the British economy as a whole.

The Government already has a number of policies in place that aim to reduce emissions from individuals, including the planned installation of smart meters in homes so that people are better able to control their energy use, vehicle excise duty and efficiency labelling on white goods such as fridges.

But if these policies do not produce the cuts needed, personal carbon trading may be an alternative that should be seriously considered, the institute says."

So, this is what is seriously been discussed in the UK!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Sent to CandyDarling via snail mail. Happy reading!

I just finished The Carbon Diaries. I started to read the book immediately when I got it, but my life's been so hectic it took me over a month to finish. I think the book suffered a bit from being read five minutes at a time, but I still liked it a lot, especially towards the end.

I thought the writing style was a bit annoying at times, and I'd loved to have gotten a deeper look into Laura's thoughts, but this was good too, I guess it felt more realistic this way. It's a scary thought that not only would we have to alter our lifestyles, but that we might actually suffer from natural disasters. It feels unthinkable that Finland would be hit by floods or hurricanes, but you never know... I'm glad I got the chance to read this book, it definitely gives some food for thought.

Thank you for sharing, harmaja! I'll send the book to Pellu asap.

Book arrived yesterday. Great timing, yesterday started Cop15 Copenhagen conference.

Most of the book just felt quite silly. Characters were acting stupidly (travelling with plane or cooling down with standing in front of the open fridge door). Also the decisions that politicians made seemed odd, like starting to limit people's water use when the real problem was in the pipe network.

Some of the problems seemed just too absurd to be real in year 2015. I had difficulties to believe that there could really be lack of heat. All kinds of heating systems are advancing all the time, new houses are built to be passive houses and old ones are renovated to be more energy effective. Maybe it is just the difference between Finland and UK. We have lots of district heating networks and they use "waste heat" from the industry and the produce of electric power. Even some pavements are warmed here so the lack of heat doesn't seem like real problem.

And the lack of water seems also too distant vision in "The Land of the Thousand Lakes", though there was this accident, Nokia water supply contamination, that reminded that clean water isn’t as self-evident fact as one could imagine.

Of course there was explanation why people didn't have those passive houses when the carbon rationing started in year 2015. The rationing seemed to start really quickly and people didn't have time to prepare, and it started quickly because nation was in shock after The Great Storm.

In the beginning of the book I was thinking "Oh! Stupid characters! Why didn't you buy heat pump in year 2014?", but I think in the real world people would be even stupider. Most of the people wouldn't probably try to be prepared even if they got notice years before. They would just try to wish it away or try to find a way to bend the rules.

This was really interesting and good book when the plot got grip of me after about one hundred pages. Best parts were probably those visions about how carbon rationing would affect even those things that aren't directly linked to climate chance, like how people will choose their education and occupation, who would be cool kids in school and who are hot in Carbon Dating.

This book came yesterday. Thank you! I have two other rings before this. I try to be quick.

Wow, what a book! I read it in time and definitely want to read the sequel! It was very hard to imagine dark and quiet London. I've been there 2003. I'm still stunned about this book and don't know what to say. This book gave me strenght to keep my decision not to buy new made in China things and goods. I had a little bit of wobbling in my decision Monday. It was easy to read because of big font and I understood nearly all the words.
Thank You so much for this ring.

Kirja tuli perille, kiitoksia kirjasta. Minulla on nyt kolme rinkikirjaa luettavana, yritän lukea nopsasti ne kaksi muuta niin saan tämän työn alle :)

The book came in the mail today, thank you! (My old address on the envelope, but the mail people had kindly figured things out.) I'll get into it soon. This is going back to the ring organizer next, I take it?

...OK, this book has been with me for WAY too long, particularly considering that I already read it a while ago. I've been really bad at journaling anything for a good long while - please bear with me.

This was a thought-provoking book, although several things struck me as not all that likely. What felt particularly fake was the "parent generation" being all helpless in every way about living without (some) modern comforts and the teenagers generally far more sensible. While I realize that if you write to young people about such a subject, you want to make them feel capable and empowered, in truth the parent generation very likely has actual experience of "roughing it" (from when they were young), particularly compared to the life of today's teenagers, and is pretty unlikely to be that clueless and desperate about it.

...right, and now in the mail with this book (as quick as I can get harmaja's new address).

The book is back with me - thank you all for this ring!