Turtle talk: Voices for a sustainable future

First published in 1990, Turtle Talk was the first book in The New Catalyst's Bioregional Series, a series of books that are "designed not for those content with merely saving what's left, but those forward-looking folks with abundant energy for life, upon whom the future of Earth depends." Aside from the Forward by Kirkpatrick Sale and the Introduction by Christopher Plant, in which he describes the process by which The New Catalyst magazine came to fruition in the mid-1980s, the book consists of interviews conducted with a diverse group of people, all of whom provide meaningful and enlightening insight into the state of the Environment (in 1990), what initiatives should be taken in order to essentially save our planet, and the importance of adopting a bioregional worldview in order to do so. In order to provide you with a better sense of the contents of the Turtle Talk without going into a lengthy analysis, I will simply list the people interviewed and the title that the Plants bequeathed the respective interviews:Gary Snyder: "Regenerate Culture!"Peter Berg: "Bioregional and Wild! A New Cultural Image..."Starhawk: "Bending the Energy: Spirituality, Politics and Culture"George Woodcock: "Mutual Aid: The Seed of the Alternative"Susan Griffin: "Celebrating All of Life"Dave Foreman: "Becoming the Forest In Defence of Itself"John Seed: "Deep Ecology Down Under"Marie Wilson: "Wings of the Eagle"George Watts: "Working Together: Natives, Non-Natives and the Future"Caroline Estes: "Consensus and Community"Freeman House: "Salmon and Settler: Toward a Culture of Reinhabitation"Susan Meeker-Lowry: "Breaking free: Building Bioregional Economies"Murray Bookchin: "Cities, Councils and Confederations"It is interesting to read these interviews well over a decade after the book was first published. They present a vision and hope for the future that in all honesty our society has failed to work toward. I'm not at all looking forward to the consequences. Many environmentalists believed that the 1990s would be the defining period for the future of our planet, but it is clear that the momentum of the environmental movement in general has waned due in large part to political intransigence and, yes, a concerted effort by the business and corporate elites to discredit environmentalists and downplay environmental concerns. So we are no doubt worse off than we were when Turtle Talk was published, but it is not too late; therefore, the book's relevance is far from negligible. Those who are concerned with the state of our planet's environment, are not interested in just "saving what's left," and want some timeless inspiration, will no doubt find this a worthy addition to their library.