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"Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find handcuffed in the city jail in Washington, D.C. But that's where he spent three days in the summer of 2011, after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. A few months later the protesters would see their efforts rewarded when President Obama agreed to put the project on hold. And yet McKibben realized that this small and temporary victory was at best a stepping-stone. With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Sandy scouring the Atlantic, the need for much deeper solutions was obvious. Some of those would come at the local level, and McKibben recounts a year he spends in the company of a beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil-fuel industry as a whole. Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight--from the absolute center of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small-scale local answers to the climate crisis. With characteristic empathy and passion, he reveals the imperative to work on both levels, telling the story of raising one year's honey crop and building a social movement that's still cresting"--… (more)
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With the story of a Vermont beekeeper McKibben gives us hope. While the rest of the
McKibben is a writer, a prolific one, and that is the work he enjoys most. However, he finds himself pulled into activism as he realizes the importance and immediacy of working to save the environment. As he chips away at different smaller pieces of this work, he comes to realize that the only way to win this is with immediate action as time is running out. He decides to use the model of divestment from the oil companies themselves as the only way to find success - striking at the core. He uses this model that was developed by others to help end apartheid in South Africa.
This is a quick, easy and enjoyable read. What we end up with is a solid working model for resisting climate change, along with a model for living that is more fulfilling as well as financially satisfying. Five stars.
It was also nice to read about his fondness for NYC. His interest in small towns, community, traditional farming methods, and local production, most of which doesn't work in the context of the huge city, sometimes makes me feel guilty for loving to live here. It's nice to know he loves it too.
I received an ARC of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.
He uses a beekeeper friend as his model for a saner life choice in a post-industrial world. I was moved by his statement that small scale farming is the best kept secret in America for realizing a happy and satisfying life experience. That said, he is quick to point out the hard work and limited financial return that is part of that choice.
I enjoyed this book a lot, would recommend it to anyone. The last few pages sums up the title, that what we need is a great deal more honey (small scale farming) and a lot less consumption of oil. I would agree.
In this book, he deals with the
I have read one other book by McKibben, Deep Economy, which really
I also felt McKibben spent far too much time trying to convince the reader that he really never wanted to become a global environmental activist. It ended up feeling like he "doth protest too much"!
Some parts of the book stood out as conveying a great deal of wisdom. A few quotes that spoke to me in particular are:
"When people ask me where they should move to be safe from climate change, I always tell them anyplace with a strong community."
"But in political debate, unlike academic debate, the actual facts matter not at all."
This is an extremely readable book that addresses critical environmental issues of our time, specifically climate change and a sustainable planet.
I appreciate that McKibben has struggled with his developing role as an environmental activist--a reluctant leader who would rather write and hike than organize people to get arrested. As he demonstrates, leaders are not necessarily those seeking to lead, but people who are "accidentally" thrust into the position because of their people skills, knowledge or some talent or ability that makes them "just right" for the job. McKibben juxtaposes his experiences as a fledgling activist with his contrasting role as a writer and advocate for small, organic farmers. He befriends a local beekeeper, Kirk, who has a passion for the simpler life--not owning or using computers or television and living in a Spartan one-room home. An unassuming man, Kirk's beehives thrived even as mite infestations wiped out nearly half of North America's honey bee population. He learned to raise queens throughout the year and keep small hives over the harsh winters. McKibben's journey's take the read back to Vermont, his home and Kirk's bees, becoming a refreshing pause to the hectic-ness that is political activism.
Both inspiring and frustrating, the tone and feel of this book reflects the same from McKibben's life's work. What I found most inspiring is that there is a movement to return to a simpler, more "organic" (cliche) lifestyle in many areas of the country, yet at the same time the "powers that be" and their masters, the oil companies, pursue ever-increasing profits as they continue to carbonize the planet and make it unlivable for all.
Read it- I hope it inspires you to take action.
McKibben is a voracious reader. Pretty much every book I pick up has a thoughtful review plastered across it of his penning. He's a phenomenally versed intellectual, who is aware of what's going on in such areas as the local agriculture and local economies movement, but has chosen to pursue a single-minded objective via his 350.org platform.
The book reads as a personal reflection on Bill's shift from author to activist. He's sacrificed a lot with his grueling compassion. Half of the book is spent on the road, delivering mean stump speeches. The other half is about his relationship with a beekeeper in Vermont, and his love of a simpler, more grounded lifestyle. Of course, he has his hallmark catalogs of recent climate disasters. Increasingly, they become a way to mark the passage of time—2011, oh yeah, that was the year of Irene.
I will not a bit of incongruity I find in the beekeeping practices described. Although the beekeeper is fully chemical-free in his treatment of his bees, he still uses sugar water to feed his bees sometimes. I find practices like these to represent a breakdown in the integrity of such enterprises. Is it local food if it's supplemented by cane sugar grown in the tropics? Also, how do the bees feel about their beloved nectar being replaced by a commodity?
Although I've read many an article by Bill over the years, and have some of his books up on my shelves [I'm especially looking forward to "Deep Economy"], this is the first time I've read one of his books. I was pleasantly surprised by the humanity within. Sometimes I feel as though Bill has been consumed by his work to fight climate change, coming to a nadir in his piece in the New Republic, "We Need to Literally Declare War on Climate Change."
If you too find yourself hesitant to step into a new role in our times of strife—nationalism, racism, and climate change, to name a few—you may find this book useful and reassuring. Changing how we engage with the world is never easy, but such a shift can be quite fulfilling.
But really what ties the oil and honey together are McKibben's experiences, from spending nights in jail as part of the 305.org rallies, recounting his near-death hornet bites that made beekeeping a scary experience, and his lecture circuit where he drummed up support for his anti-Keystone stance. The book is about McKibben's venture into advocacy from scholarship, from writing to action. This means the book depends more on storytelling than his previous books, and in this regard I didn't like it as much as titles like The End of Nature (one of my favorite environmental books by any author), but it's still an intelligent and enjoyable ride about topics everybody should be paying attention to.
(Review is part of LT Early Reviewers program.)