Pat Kane's new book: RADICAL ANIMAL: Innovation, Sustainability and Human Nature.

[Michel Bauwens]

RADICAL ANIMAL

We love new stuff - but we're killing the planet...What's to be done?

PRE-ORDER the new book by Pat Kane (author of "The Play Ethic")

Humans are restlessly innovative creatures - it's what gave us our evolutionary advantage. But that creativity - in the form of a wasteful consumer culture - has pushed our planet to the limits of its carrying capacity. How do we find a new, less toxic balance between innovation, sustainabilty and human nature?

Hi, I'm PAT KANE, and I'm inviting you to pre-order a copy of my forthcoming book, RADICAL ANIMAL: Innovation, Sustainability and Human Nature. 

If you want to know the central argument, my recent lead op-ed for The Guardian newspaper is a good place to start. I've also started a community website at www.radicalanimal.net. 

But I'm also trying to bring out the book in a new, sustainable way. I'm asking my networks to directly support the project, rather than going to a traditional publisher. And I'm going to use all the new distribution techniques - like print-on-demand, and e-books (Kindle, iBook et al) - to reduce its impact on the planet.

Our crowdfunding site at Indiegogo gives you a number of ways to express your support.

• The main option is through a pre-order package - including e-copy, hard-copy and a mention in the "honor-roll" at the back - costing $35.
• Double that price, and $70 will bring you a unique customised version of the book (paper and digital) with five of your questions about Radical Animal answered by me, and incorporated as an afterword to your book. There's other support options that I also invite you to explore. 

I'm writing the book as you read this mail, and I hope to bring it out before the end of 2011. But if you're interested in my exploration into one of the thorniest problems of our times - how to express our natural creativity as "radical animals", without the results of this innovation bringing climactic disaster to this planet - then I'd really welcome your support, at whatever level you can manage. 

Best wishes, Pat Kane, www.radicalanimal.net

 

 

From my Guardian article:

 

"We radical animals face the barriers of the planet's carrying capacity. How to confine our illimitability – our creative and destructive capacity to reframe reality – within the toughest of natural limits?

"My studies of the power and potential of play over the last decade have shown that humans truly thrive when they are able to act freely, to master skills they choose to master, and can take non-fatal risks under conditions of ultimate security.

"A green politics has to be thinking passionately about zones of creativity and innovation for human beings, as well as the constraints and duties of low-carbon living. Otherwise the transformative dimension of our own nature will end up repressed and frustrated".