My name is Gaia. I have a kiss as gentle as butterfly eyelashes and a bite as deep as the jaws of a lioness in the soft neck of a young impala. When you feel your feet each time they touch the earth, and you walk across plains and mountains until sweat pours down your limbs, making small rivers run through the dust on your body, and your eye takes in the millions of singing blades of grass, and your fingers stroke them gently, changing the way that the light paints each soft blade, then you are tracing the surface of my body, touching lightly the patterns of my hair.'

So starts the foreword by Sally Andrew in her book The Fire Dogs of Climate Change €“ An Inspirational Call to Action.

I am surrounded by environmental books, inundated by hard facts ... daily saturated with stats, figures and projections. The left brain boggles €“ sometimes the blood boils. The responsibility for this planet and the extent to which we've lost the plot can be seriously jarring to the nerves. At this point I know my remedy of choice. A total surrender to the medicine of the right brain. Creativity, imagination, metaphors and stories drissle my parched brain like a welcome summer shower. Ah, the respite of balance. To chill out and dream. Hence I was so chuffed to find Sally Andrew's book starting off in creative writing. I

thoroughly enjoyed her personal story chapters, interspersed with 'fact sheets.' This would be the hard scientific facts. Also the balance we strive to strike in the GREEN TIMES. Too much of anything is no longer good for you, even of facts we need to know. So Sally prepares the reader for the hard data by sharing her personal life story of growing up in South Africa, passionate about justice, animals and the earth. Struggling with the effects of capitalism on the poor and the earth, she sets out to find her personal path. In the Chinese Year of the Fire Dog, she plots her life and commitment to helping the earth. Dogs symbolise those who look after the needs of the community €“ they are the watchdogs and guardians of the earth, drawing attention to injustices. At one point she receives the instruction from the Earth that she needs to 'open the collective heart of the people.'

All of us who are concerned about the Earth are of course fire dogs, and so she sets out to open the reader's heart. This book tells the story of the earth's need in a human and accessible way, in clear language that everyone can understand. So it's a great book for senior schools and educators, universities, also ordinary folk who know that things have gone wrong, but need to understand the details. Whilst she explains the problem carefully, she also provides the hope of inspiring solutions and examples of what's being done already. Not only do you end up feeling informed, but you also know what you can do.

COMPETITION!

Answer the following question and stand a chance to win a free copy of The Fire Dogs of Climate Change: How do you suggest the publishers could go about organising bulk orders of this book to educational institutions? Send your suggestions to the GREEN TIMES, together with your name and postal address. So bark up those creative juices and share your inspiration with us.