AS THE WORLD BURNS

This Graphic Novel's full title "As The World Burns, 50 simple things you can do to stay in denial" would seem to be a direct dig at the famous book "50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save the Earth" first published in 1995. As The World Burns is coauthored by American activists Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan who also illustrates the novel.

Derrick is well known as an activist and philosopher through his previous "Endgame, A Language Older Than Words" and "The Culture Of Make Believe" writing about certain futures for the planet both bleak as well as bright. Stephanie McMillan is a cartoonist/illustrator who has been producing political comic strips since the late 90's and having them published in 2005. As The World Burns sees Derrick and Stephanie team together and produce in 2007 a story, telling of a dark world built on naivety and greed in hope of changing the readers attitude towards the severity of today’s environmental situation.

The story takes you through a series of situations and how we are or could be dealing with them, not least is illustrated when aliens land on our planet intent on sucking it dry of any life only to discover that we’d already set the systems in place for them. It’s through the often unheard voice of a dark haired little girl the book tries to argue against our ignorant when it comes to global issues and attempts to wake the reader up to a complete change of attitude and perception, posing this as the only viable starting point to achieving a sustainable planet.

Although the book states a fair bit of the obvious it's overall take on the subject matter is completely engaging. There are points where it feels as though you're being told there's no point in trying to do your (small) bit but if you can read the dry humor you'll see its sarcasm points to the wider issues we often ignore.

This book is accessible and can be enjoyed by anyone around their early teens upwards, children any younger might find some of the subject matter hard to deal with. As The World Burns aims to trump other environmental books that paint your recycling bin as the answer, instead it offers a gritty perspective with grimmer predictions in that hope of igniting change in societies attitude.

This book unfortunately reinforced my opinion on the way our leaders and most of the societies they govern approach these issues. It's take something epic and many more books like this to change the perspectives of the next generation. As for ours who knows, maybe the aliens will land one day and all our petty squabbles over climate, starvation and war will be rendered pointless. Either way this novel is definitely worth the time and for Earth's sake spread the word!