Sunday, October 30, 2011

Prepariamoci! Luca Mercalli's new book


by Roberto Cavallo

Get ready!
With the exclamation mark.
My mother used to tell me this word, when we were waiting for a trip on the mountains.
Luca Mercalli’s invitation, which become an exhortation, doesn’t refer to that kind of mountain-trip feelings, rather to dark days which are waiting for us if we don’t exit the thick cultural fog that enshroud us.

Luca starts his book with ten commandments for the 21st century.The author has not became a mythomaniac but, like a kind of modern Spinoza, tries to be the nature’s spokesman. That nature we should obey to avoid our self-destruction.

Mercalli’s book is composed by two parts and an appendix. The first one is “What we should know”, in which author introduces us some concepts of sustainability, because, actually, “we should know”.

There are biographical references, at least fifty, for readers who are interested in deepening the concepts of intelligent mobility, good waste management and energy saving.

First part paves the way to the second one, Mercalli’s plan B, in which, reminding Lester Brown, accompanies us to choose daily-based behaviors that will help us to survive. Surviving does not mean relying on good luck but, Mercalli tries to convince us, means using the great knowledge potential got together in thousands of years of human history to change the course of our future.

The big surplus value of this book is that Mercalli’s plan B is not a theoretical formula or an academic research, rather an effective report about author’s deeply consistent way of life. He tells us how he installed solar panel for heating water and photovoltaic ones for electric energy, how he built up a big tank to collect raining water or how he got to optimize the energetic consumption of his old house.

His style is light and reading goes on like a pleasant chat in front of the fireplace. Personally I prefer a less-diplomatic Mercalli, like in that chapter in which he tells, with pleasure, how he destroyed with a big beetle his just-bought new house’s flower box. In the same time I can understand that he doesn’t want to receive libel actions as it happened in the past.

The book is fine and Mercalli is a rare consistent and careful man. Enjoy your reading and, quoting the author: let’s wake up and prepare!

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