CAREERS TO PRESERVE OUR SHRINKING WORLD

by Robert V. Doyle ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 25, 1981

First, this is not a career guide. For most of the way, it's a whirlwind jumble of Appropriate Technology projects and organizations (the latter with names like New Alchemists, Tree People, and Arcology Circle). Among them are a self-sufficient New Village in western Pennsylvania, a windmill in Manhattan, a demonstration resource-saving Urban House in Berkeley, a Sacramento couple's solar home, a San Diego quail farm (less an example of AT than an ""exotic"" approach to alleviating world hunger), a citywide commitment to AT in Davis, California, and numerous other efforts, most in California where the author lives. As Doyle turns to large-scale power and transportation systems, he devotes more attention to summarizing the problems and citing more-or-less official responses (World Bank loans, a DOE Wind Machine--now axed, one assumes) and less to individual, human-scale experiments. We discover a few neat and ingenious devices along the way, but find no discrimination among the approaches, no analysis of the economics or politics of energy, no technical or human-interest detail in the reports--and no information except for two-line job lists at the end of each chapter. (""Sanitary engineer, chemist, aquatic biologist, seafood farmer, truck driver,"" reads the complete list of opportunities related to sewage reclamation.)

Pub Date: May 25, 1981

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Messner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1981

Categories: NONFICTION