Weekend reads

Yoko Ono, Jane Goodall, and Ricky Gervais are among the hundreds of activists, celebrities, scientists, comedians and others across the planet to have created stories for Rewriting Extinction, which is behind The Most Important Comic Book On Earth.

“One of the problems I have found a lot is that the average person can’t imagine what a good, green future looks like, they don’t understand, they cant visualise what rewilding looks like at scale, they can’t visualise what it might be like to go on a safari in a traditionally quite nature-depleted country,” says Paul Goodenough, Rewriting Extinction founder. “So what comics do is you can go anywhere, any point in time and if you can draw the thing, and imagine the thing, it can be true. You can make it in a comic. That’s why I chose comics.”

He added: “We have seven beneficiary charities, which are Greenpeace, The World Land Trust, Born Free, Rewild, The Wildlife Trust in the UK, Reserva and Rewilding Europe. And the reason those seven charities were chosen was specifically as each of them has their own speciality, their own thing they work in, that links up to a plan that actually restores not just the ecosystems and the biodiversity, but also helps with climate change too.”

Catch up with the full podcast for more from the pages of: The Most Important Comic Book On Earth.

In How To Be A Conscious Eater,  named one of Bon Appétit’s Favourite New Books for Climate-Friendly Cooking and Life, Sophie Egan asks three key questions about food: Is it good for me? Is it good for others? Is it good for the planet? And she explores these questions about the food we eat that ‘comes from the ground’, ‘from animals’, ‘from factories’, and from ‘kitchens’.

“Eat fruits and vegetables, it’s that simple,” she says “They don’t all have to be organic, they don’t all have to be super-fresh and perfect. There’s so much that complicates things that I was really trying to help almost re-invigorate our reliance on our own common sense, on what we feel is right and reasonable, but we’ve been told is wrong by a million conflicting sources – you can search the internet and get any answer. So part of this is really just saying, ‘here’s what the science actually tells us and therefore what you should do about it.”

Egan added: “It’s the stuff that comes from the ground that should make up the bulk of your diet. But there are a lot of people who think, that the only way to eat climate-friendly is to go full vegan. There’s such a narrative, especially in food, around ‘all or nothing’, ‘you’re in or you’re out’ and I really want to say – you can eat in ways that are good for your health, and that of the planet just by the ratios, the emphasis.”

Catch up with the full podcast for more from the pages of: How To Be A Conscious Eater.

Check out our book resources page for more recommendations.