The revolutionary follow-up to Chris Turner's Governor General's Literary Award and National Business Book Award nominee, The Geography of Hope.
The most vital project of the twenty-first century is a shift from our unsustainable way of life to a sustainable one-a great lateral leap from a track headed for economic and ecological disaster to one bound for renewed prosperity. In The Leap, Chris Turner presents a field guide to making that jump, drawing on recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art renewable energy, cleantech and urban design. From the solar towers of sunny Spain to the bike paths and pedestrianized avenues of the world's most livable city-Copenhagen, Denmark-to the nascent "green-collar" economies rejuvenating the former East Germany and the American Rust Belt, he paints a vivid portrait of a new, sustainable world order already up and running.
In his 2007 book, The Geography of Hope, Chris Turner wrote about an emerging world of cleantech possibility. This led to a two-year stint as sustainability columnist for the Globe and Mail, during which many of the fringe developments covered in his book became vital. By the time those two years were up his reporting tracks were being retraced by mainstream outlets like the New York Times. In The Leap, he once again charts the world's near-future course.
THE PRECIPICE & THE FALL OF 2008
On Monday morning, September 15, 2008, Wall Street traders awoke to the startling news of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, one of New York's oldest and most respected investment firms. Merrill Lynch had avoided the same fate only by selling itself off to Bank of America at a deep discount the night before. More than $20 billion in investment capital vanished from Morgan Stanley's books over the ensuing forty-eight hours of financial chaos, forcing that venerable firm to issue a warning on Wednesday that it might well run right out of cash before the weekend. General Electric, meanwhile, worried publicly that it was in danger of having to cease operations for lack of credit to pay its employees and its bills, and insurance giant AIG's midweek plummet toward insolvency was slowed only after the Federal Reserve strung out a multibillion-dollar safety net beneath it.
US Treasury notes were soon trading at less than 1 percent interest-a guaranteed investment in the future of the world's largest economy valued essentially the same as cash, an alarmingly clear sign of the wholesale flight of confidence from the American financial system.
