There Is No Planet B is a storm warning for the impending environmental impacts certain to stagger our planet. The history and current state of greed-fuelled corporate and political hypocrisy which brought the world to a dire precipice is detailed in this cleverly-compiled volume of less than 200 pages, short on rhetoric but providing all the context necessary to understand the condition our condition is in, from a Canadian but nonetheless globally-aware perspective.

There Is No Planet B wastes no time laying out the breadcrumb trail of responsibility for accelerated climate change, never belabouring the point, presenting their case in 30 easy-to-read and understand subsections, a brilliant method of explaining a tsunami of data essential to understanding and appreciating the planet's prognosis. This is not arcane knowledge or long-winded bluster. These are critical issues we Stephen Harper, are facing right now: bitumen pipelines crisscrossing the country, the eerily draconian FIPA agreement with the Chinese government, the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects, the insane suggestion of using Kitimat as some sort of offloading port, or the condescending and antidemocratic behavior of the current administration in Ottawa. If you want to understand what's making you puzzled, irritated or angry, this book is an essential read, a survival guide for the concerned Canadian. Solid journalism and first-person storytelling create a compelling style. You'll find yourself up to speed and wanting to stay there.

Far from a pity party where the silly virgins sit and wait in the cellar for an axe to fall from a beam, the authors also provide a barometer of the exciting technology poised to turn back the clock. If these ideas find fair room to move in the marketplace, they are geared to usher in a new normal, to bolster and eventually replace the carbon-soaked fuel devastating our globe. These sustainable, common sense, economically-intelligent and often elegant solutions range from cold fusion to a desktop unit extracting oil from plastic to a mushroom that actually lives off evil plastic. A mushroom, folks.

There Is No Planet B deserves to be the first of a series, a publication continuing to examine the evolving nature of how citizens, industry and the environment coexist. The authors start from a humble position, self published and text-only, but this quality of research and writing deserves graphics and photos in subsequent editions, to take it to the proper level.

I have well-founded concerns about the environment. The Come by Chance oil refinery is a short car ride southeast of where I live, and there is tanker traffic steadily up and down Placentia Bay, an ecologically sensitive and totally irreplaceable pocket of breathtaking Atlantic Coast. On the other side of life, I grew up in Newfoundland when the unemployment rates were high and the self-esteem was low. Families who scraped and scravelled and starved for generations now have comfort and security because of the Alberta oil industry and the subsequent oil boom in the Atlantic East. There are longstanding concerns in this province about the self-determination of rural communities to harvest from the sea. We are nervous the ruralism baby will be thrown out with urban-directed sustainability bathwater.

I have a well-founded bias towards this book. Trevor Greene and I completed the Honours Journalism program together at King's College. A straightforward, no-nonsense, genuine guy all the way through, the fellow everybody likes for the right reasons. It isn't an urban myth: these people do exist. We attended a reunion together before he shipped off to Afghanistan.

When he says "not on my watch," you know it's serious business. For you and me and Trevor Greene and Mike Velemirovich: There Is No Planet B.