This morning I finished reading ‘As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial’ by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan. It’s basically a graphic novel being used to communicate the author’s views on environmental activism and ‘saving the planet’. The book centres around two little girls and their environmental debates as aliens bribe the US president into allowing them to consume the Earth. McMillan’s artwork is very cute and definitely made this at times quite heavy (for this kind of comic) text more appealing.

I’m pretty undecided about this book, even though I enjoyed it. It definitely had an air of bleeding-heart-lefty-liberal-hippy-greeny-and any other slur you can think of about it. I’m a vegetarian animal lover, doing research into sustainable product design and product reuse, and I found it a little irritating at times. Also, their solution to the problem seems to be that we cancel all industry, all materialism and return to living like wild animals. Your criticisms of modern society and environmental activism are very correct, but please offer a real solution! However, this option does make a better story.