Small World Big Ideas is an inspirational essay collection in which 14 eco activists share their stories and motivations. There is a great variety of voices: politicians, scientists, filmmaker, lawyer, writers, civil resistance organiser, youth activist, etc., and each article is interesting in their own way. My favourite are the three chapters below.

📖 Satish Kumar: “To be an activist one has to be an optimist.”

Kumar’s chapter talks about land justice in India and peace activism in the 1960s. There’s a wonderful story about his long walk from India to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington to talk to world leaders about nuclear disarmament. Travelling without money and provisions, he relied entirely on strangers’ goodwill. Though not explicitly about climate activism, this chapter shares stories about hope and seeing the best in people despite all the madness going on.

📖 Franny Armstrong: “…if you put yeast into a jar with some sugar, they will gobble up the energy as quickly as possible, reproduce wildly out of control and then wipe themselves out in their own waste products. So far, our collective response to climate change has been of the yeast variety.”

Upon realising that you can’t change the world one person at a time, Armstrong decided to use creative documentaries to reach a larger audience. Her films shed light on abuses in the food industry (McLibel), villages drowned due to dam construction (Drowned Out), and climate change (The Age of Stupid). I haven’t watched any of them yet but now I’m intrigued.

📖 Polly Higgins: During war there are global laws to stop mass destruction, but during peacetime you can do it all the time.

Lawyer Higgins founded the ecocide movement to recognise the Earth’s right to life and to see environmental destruction as an international crime. She was also the force behind a mock ecocide trial staged at the UK’s supreme court in 2011, in which two of the three fictional fossil fuel CEOs were found guilty. In addition to fines and imprisonment, Higgins also insisted on applying restorative justice to bring the guilty and injured parties together to discuss solutions. She passed away in 2019 but the Stop Ecocide campaign is still ongoing.

Thank you Quarto Books and White Lion Publishing for this inspiring ARC.

A nice variety of activists tell about some of their experiences. Readers are unlikely to connect with every essay, but there are some good ones. Some will find this inspiring, and it is written in an interesting and engaging way.

I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!