The Environmental Economist

Welcome to my first blog post of 2011 - wishing you the all the very best for a very prosperous and green year ahead. I’ve been using some of the festive break to catch up on some reading, curled up on the sofa with my new favourite book. Strangely enough, precisely at this freezing time of year, I’ve chosen Prashant Vaze’s
The Environmental Economist - My Attempt To Live A Low Carbon Life And What It Cost. It struck me that in many ways, perhaps I was subconsciously focusing on the winter heating bills during these cold dark nights!

Prashant is an economist and it might sound like a bit of a dry title but frankly, I found it extremely witty - an honest account of one man’s attempts to make his somewhat older north London home more environmentally friendly. Rather than being the sort of book that berates you for not habitually wearing hessian for warmth, it is instead a very honest, very funny account of the sort of everyday lifestyle ‘adjustments’ and ‘epiphanies’ many of us will recognise. It apparently took him 2 years to realise his open fireplace actually had fitted flaps to prevent heat loss through the flue, and he began to realise that many of his previous ‘home improvements’ had in fact simply left his house with even more ways to lose heat.

Another aspect I liked was Prashant’s real-life comparisons of different energy saving products and how they might work in different types of homes - which ones could save money and under which circumstances. As an economist, he seems well placed to offer rational advice rather than try an emotional appeal to save the planet. He focuses on trying to find what is likely to be the most economically viable solution to save the greatest amount of energy. All in all, its not often I thoroughly recommend a ‘green tome’ but this one I do without any hesitation.