Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy

Customer Reviews

In my mind, this approach of telling stories and conducting forensic investigations into “stuff” should be embedded throughout education, because it is inherently interdisciplinary, combining math and science, but also social studies, history, psychology, business, sociology. It’s also timely and would contribute to “eco-school” and 100% green school goals that are currently being developed.

For business people, this book is a must. While the “greening” of business is nothing new and is all too often manifest as “green-washing,” there are signs that business is taking “cradle to grave” analysis of products and the supply chain seriously, in part because regulation of embedded greenhouse gases will require careful accounting, in part because of increased social responsibility, and in part because, when done correctly, it can save money, reduce waste, and provide a competitive advantage over the competition.

Goleman rightly points out that we can’t consume our way of the dire situation we are in, but we can reduce our consumption and buy smartly. While a few individuals by choice or circumstances leave little environmental footprint, for most of it the challenge is to become significantly more aware of the impacts or the products and services we choose, thereby minimizing not only our carbon footprint, but our overall influence on the planet.

Both the book and the CD version (spoken by the author) are well reasoned, well presented investigations into “stuff” in all its shapes and sizes, providing fresh insights into the complexities and hard choices that must be made at all levels of society in order to turn the tide of waste and social/environmental degradation and foster the new energy economy with resilient, sustainable communities.

This book needs an introduction to ecology. For example, Goleman could have introduced some of the work by Howard Odum, a classical ecologist who ushered in a new era of understanding in the ecological sciences and wrote about the unification of ecology, economics and energy. Perhaps a historical account of the ecological sciences going back to Linnaeus or even Haeckel who first coined the word ecology. This would give some perspective on what ecology really means. Goleman needs to introduce and then build upon actual ecological literature to make the correct linkages. There was lots of opportunity to visit some of the ideas of natural capitalism and ecosystem services as they relate to critically to ecological intelligence. He mentions these, but so briefly that the reader cannot leave with an understanding of what these subjects are really about. There is no mention of the research in environmental education looking at the psychological or affectual relations between learning and ecological immersion, which would have been a good place to start.

This book is nothing more than a consumers guide to green shopping behavior. It is questionable if the green guides advocated by the author have any real ecological benefits because Goleman is clearly out of his area of expertise. Biodiversity is mentioned briefly on page 36 and 63, which is shocking given that ecology and biodiversity go hand in hand. On page 63, for example, he talks about biodiversity in life cycle assessment, one of the few places where he reaches a bit beyond the margins and into the realm of ecology, yet he makes a terrible mistake: "Loss of biodiversity refers to the degree of species extinction caused by a given process or substance." This is false. Biodiversity is more than species, it includes the functional side to ecosystems such as migration plus the nested hierarchy of life including genes, organisms, species and all the way up to the biosphere. Goleman briefly mentions a few key ecological concepts, but he does not explain them properly or by trying to make the text simple to read the deeper meaning of the concepts is lost in translation.

If I buy a book on ecology and intelligence, it needs to be intelligently written and I want to learn something about ecosystems. If the title of a book is about ecology and intelligence these two subject areas need to be clearly defined and addressed. This book fails on all of these accounts.This book presents a mainstream view on what ecology might mean. The unfortunate side to this is that Goleman is a popular author. Many people will read this book and will leave with little understanding of ecology, they will spread further myths about ‘ecology’ and what it means, and the same holds for the meaning of intelligence as it relates to this important topic. It is as though Goleman is thinking too narrowly about human ecology, but even if he is geared solely on the human dimension he misses the holistic side to the debate. This is surprising because ecology is a holistic scientific discipline, whereas Goleman reduces it down to consumer behavior and how this might change things on the periphery. I have no idea where he is going with this and it certainly isn’t ecological. Goleman needs to read up on the ecological sciences if he is going to write about this subject. I hope that Goleman writes another version of this book, because he can do much better than this and needs to fix his mistakes.

Rating: Three-star (Recommended)