This evening I went along to the launch party for my friend (Chris) Turner's new book The Geography of Hope. It was a great event and most of my friends in Calgary were there so it was fun to see them. Unfortunately I'm in the midst of losing my voice so I couldn't chat as much as I wanted!


The centrepiece of the evening wasn't a reading but a slide presentation summarising the travels he recounts in the book. Turner also mentioned that a slide-show was a shortcut to a Nobel prize so he's living in hope of the call from Sweden. In a sense Turner's presentation is along the same lines as Al Gore's: the subject is climate change. But the powerful thing about Turner's presentation, and what's got me very excited about the book, is that his story isn't a doom and gloom jeremiad. It's about sustainable living and what's being done right now, TODAY, all around the world. As he points out, what already exists is possible. In his very thought provoking opening he talked about the fact that he didn't believe that fear, or guilt (the only messages we tend to get regarding climate change) were the best ways to tackle the problem. Hope is a much more powerful weapon and his book is about the fact that hope exists and there are things we can do and if we do it we aren't doomed after all! Pretty exciting stuff and I can't wait to read the book proper.

Even more importantly than any of this stuff is that fact that I realised a lifetime ambition today. I've always wanted to be thanked by an author in the acknowledgements in his or her book and now I have! It seems the luxurious accommodation of my Shepherds Bush futon on a couple of occasions (and a game of cricket) did the trick for Turner. God bless you guv'na, you've made an old man very happy!

Alas the good book is not available in the UK yet. I hope that the buzz that's being created in Canada at the moment (top 20 in the Amazon.ca charts) is going to change that. But I'm bringing back a couple of copies for a few lucky British readers.