Environmental Justice
Showing 33–49 of 49 results
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Fuel on the Fire
Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq$28.95The departure of the last U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and a host of unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis, Britons, and Americans desperately wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave?
Now, in a gripping account of the war that dominated U.S. foreign policy over the last decade, investigative journalist Greg Muttitt takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveals the heretofore-untold story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Drawing upon hundreds of unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with senior American, British, and Iraqi officials, Muttitt exposes the plans and preparations that were in place to shape policies in favor of American and British energy interests. We follow him through a labyrinth of clandestine meetings, reneged promises, and abuses of power; we also see how Iraqis struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of their dysfunctional government and rising levels of violence. Through their stories, we begin to see a very different Iraq from the one our politicians have told us about.
In light of the Arab revolutions, the war in Libya, and renewed threats against Iran, Fuel on the Fire provides a vital guide to the lessons from Iraq and of the global consequences of America’s persistent oil addiction. -
The World According to Monsanto
$19.99 – $26.95Published to stellar praise worldwide, The World According to Monsanto charts award-winning journalist and documentary filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin’s three-year journey across four continents to uncover the disturbing practices of multinational agribusiness corporation Monsanto.
The book exposes the shocking story of how the new “green” face of the world’s leading producer of GMOs (genetically modified organisms) is no less malign than its PCB—and Agent Orange—soaked past. Monsanto currently controls the majority of the yield of the world’s genetically modified corn and soy—ingredients found in more than 95 percent of American households—and its alarming legal and political tactics to maintain this monopoly are the subject of worldwide concern, with baleful consequences for the world’s small-scale farmers.
Selected as a finalist for the New York Public Library’s 2011 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, The World According to Monsanto is positioned to increase awareness of a serious threat to our food supply. -
Losing Our Cool
Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)$17.95 – $24.95One of the Mother Nature Network’s ten “must-read environmental books” of the year, Losing Our Cool is the first book to examine how indoor climate control is helping send our outdoor climate reeling out of control. With summers growing hotter and energy demand heavier, Stan Cox shows how air-conditioning transforms human experience in surprising ways, by altering our bodies’ sensitivity to heat; our rates of infection, allergy, asthma, and obesity; and even our sex lives. It has also enabled an irrational commuter economy, triggered a migration toward the American South and West, and created the kind of workplace in which employers wear sweaters in July. But, as Cox shows us, by combining traditional cooling methods with newer technologies, we can make ourselves comfortable and keep the planet comfortable as well. -
Gristle
From Factory Farms to Food Safety (Thinking Twice About the Meat We Eat)$14.95The musician and activist offers “a collection of compelling, well-researched essays . . . shining light on the world of agribusiness” and Big Meat (Publishers Weekly).
For everyone from omnivores to vegans, this eye-opening guide offers food for thought on today’s meat industry. Moby, renowned musician and passionate vegan, and Miyun Park, leading food policy activist, bring together experts from diverse backgrounds including: farming, workers’ rights activism, professional athletics, science, environmental sustainability, food business, and animal welfare advocacy. Together, they eloquently lay out how industrial animal agriculture unnecessarily harms workers, communities, the environment, our health, our wallets, and animals.
In the tradition of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Gristle combines hard-hitting facts with a light touch and includes informative charts and illustrations depicting the stark realities of America’s industrial food system.
Contributors include:
- Brendan Brazier
- Lauren Bush
- Christine Chavez and Julie Chavez Rodriguez
- Michael Greger, MD
- Sara Kubersky and Tom O’Hagan
- Frances Moore Lappé and Anna Lappé
- John Mackey
- Danielle Nierenberg and Meredith Niles
- Wayne Pacelle
- Paul and Phyllis Willis
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Blue Covenant
The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water$16.95 – $24.95A cautionary account of climate change and the global water supply. “You will not turn on the tap in the same way after reading this book.” —Robert Redford
In a book hailed by Publishers Weekly as a “passionate plea for access-to-water activism,” Blue Covenant addresses an environmental crisis that—together with global warming—poses one of the gravest threats to our survival.
How did the world’s most vital resource become imperiled? And what must we do to pull back from the brink? In “stark and nearly devastating prose”, world-renowned activist and bestselling author Maude Barlow—who is featured in the acclaimed documentary Flow—discusses the state of the world’s water. Barlow examines how water companies are reaping vast profits from declining supplies, and how ordinary people from around the world have banded together to reclaim the public’s right to clean water, creating a grassroots global water justice movement. While tracing the history of international battles for the right to water, she documents the life-and-death stakes involved in the fight and lays out the actions that we as global citizens must take to secure a water-just world for all (Booklist).
“Sounds the water alarm with conviction and authority.” —Kirkus Reviews
“This book proves that water deserves another destiny.” —Eduardo Galeano
“Blue Covenant will inspire civil society movements around the world.” —Vandana Shiva -
Evil Paradises
Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism$18.95 – $26.95Evil Paradises, edited by Mike Davis and Daniel Bertrand Monk, is a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places—alternate realities being constructed as “utopias” in a capitalist era unfettered by unions and state regulation. These developments—in cities, deserts, and in the middle of the sea—are worlds where consumption and inequality surpass our worst nightmares.
Although they read like science fiction, the case studies are shockingly real. In Dubai, where child slavery existed until very recently, a gilded archipelago of private islands known as “The World” is literally being added to the ocean. In Medellín and Kabul, drug lords—in many ways textbook capitalists—are redefining conspicuous consumption in fortified palaces. In Hong Kong, Cairo, and even the Iranian desert, burgeoning communities of nouveaux riches have taken shelter in fantasy Californias, complete with Mickey Mouse statues, while their maids sleep in rooftop chicken coops. Meanwhile, Ted Turner rides herd over his bison in 2 million acres of private parkland.
Davis and Monk have assembled an extraordinary group of urbanists, architects, historians, and visionary thinkers to reflect upon the trajectory of a civilization whose deepest ethos seems to be to consume all the resources of the earth within a single lifetime.
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Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer
$16.95 – $23.95The world-renowned antinuclear activist’s “expertly argued” (The Guardian) case against nuclear energy
In a world torn apart by wars over oil, politicians have increasingly begun to look for alternative energy sources—and their leading choice is nuclear energy. Among the myths that have been spread over the years about nuclear-powered electricity are that it does not cause global warming or pollution, that it is inexpensive, and that it is safe.
Helen Caldicott’s look at the actual costs and environmental consequences of nuclear energy belies the incessant barrage of nuclear industry propaganda. Caldicott “reveals truths,” Martin Sheen has said, “that confirm we must take positive action now if we are to make a difference.” In fact, nuclear power contributes to global warming; the true cost of nuclear power is prohibitive, with taxpayers picking up most of the tab; there’s simply not enough uranium in the world to sustain nuclear power over the long term; and the potential for a catastrophic accident or a terrorist attack far outweighs any benefits. Concluding chapters detail alternative sustainable energy sources that are the key to a clean, green future.
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The End of the Line
How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat$41.00Gourmands and health-conscious consumers alike have fallen for fish; last year per capita consumption in the United States hit an all-time high. Packed with nutrients and naturally low in fat, fish is the last animal we can still eat in good conscience. Or can we?
In this vivid, eye-opening book—first published in the UK to wide acclaim and now extensively revised for an American audience—environmental journalist Charles Clover argues that our passion for fish is unsustainable. Seventy-five percent of the world’s fish stocks are now fully exploited or overfished; the most popular varieties risk extinction within the next few decades.
Clover trawls the globe for answers, from Tokyo’s sumptuous fish market to the heart of New England’s fishing industry. He joins hardy sailors on high-tech boats, interviews top chefs whose menu selections can influence the fate of entire species, and examines the ineffective organizations charged with regulating the world’s fisheries. Along the way he argues that governments as well as consumers can take steps to reverse this disturbing trend before it’s too late. The price of a mouthwatering fillet of Chilean sea bass may seem outrageous, but The End of the Line shows its real cost to the ecosystem is far greater.
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Gone Tomorrow
The Hidden Life of Garbage$16.95 – $23.95“A galvanizing exposé” of America’s trash problem from plastic in the ocean to “wasteful packaging, bogus recycling, and flawed landfills and incinerators” (Booklist, starred review).
Eat a take-out meal, buy a pair of shoes, or read a newspaper, and you’re soon faced with a bewildering amount of garbage. The United States is the planet’s number-one producer of trash. Each American throws out 4.5 pounds daily. But garbage is also a global problem. Today, the Pacific Ocean contains six times more plastic waste than zooplankton. How did we end up with this much rubbish, and where does it all go? Journalist and filmmaker Heather Rogers answers these questions by taking readers on a grisly and fascinating tour through the underworld of garbage.
Gone Tomorrow excavates the history of rubbish handling from the nineteenth century to the present, pinpointing the roots of today’s waste-addicted society. With a “lively authorial voice,” Rogers draws connections between modern industrial production, consumer culture, and our throwaway lifestyle (New York Press). She also investigates the politics of recycling and the export of trash to poor countries, while offering a potent argument for change.
“A clear-thinking and peppery writer, Rogers presents a galvanizing exposé of how we became the planet’s trash monsters. . . . [Gone Tomorrow] details everything that is wrong with today’s wasteful packaging, bogus recycling, and flawed landfills and incinerators. . . . Rogers exhibits black-belt precision.” —Booklist, starred review
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Diet for a Dead Planet
Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis$17.95 – $24.95If we are what we eat, then, as Christopher D. Cook contends in this powerful look at the food industry, we are not in good shape. The facts speak for themselves: more than 75 million Americans suffered from food poisoning last year, and 5,000 of them died; 67 percent of American males are overweight, obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States and supersizing is just the tip of the iceberg: the way we make and eat food today is putting our environment and the very future of food at risk.
Diet for a Dead Planet takes us beyond Fast Food Nation to show how our entire food system is in crisis. Corporate control of farms and supermarkets, unsustainable drives to increase agribusiness productivity and profits, misplaced subsidies for exports, and anemic regulation have all combined to produce a grim harvest. Food, our most basic necessity, has become a force behind a staggering array of social, economic, and environmental epidemics.
Yet there is another way. Cook argues cogently for a whole new way of looking at what we eat—one that places healthy, sustainably produced food at the top of the menu for change. In the words of Jim Hightower, “If you eat, read this important book!”
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Blue Gold
The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water$18.95 – $25.95“Probably the most eloquent call to arms we’re likely to hear about the politics of water” (The Globe and Mail, Toronto).
In this “chilling, in-depth examination of a rapidly emerging global crisis,” Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, two of the most active opponents to the privatization of water show how, contrary to received wisdom, water mainly flows uphill to the wealthy (In These Times). Our most basic resource may one day be limited: Our consumption doubles every twenty years—twice the rate of population increase. At the same time, increasingly transnational corporations are plotting to control the world’s dwindling water supply. In England and France, where water has already been privatized, rates have soared, and water shortages have been severe. The major bottled-water producers—Perrier, Evian, Naya, and now Coca-Cola and PepsiCo—are part of one of the fastest-growing and least-regulated industries, buying up freshwater rights and drying up crucial supplies.
A truly shocking exposé, Blue Gold shows in frightening detail why, as the vice president of the World Bank has pronounced, “The wars of the next century will be about water.”
“Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke combine visionary intellect with muckraking research and a concrete plan for action.” —Naomi Klein, author of The Battle for Paradise
“A sobering, in-depth look at the growing scarcity of fresh water and the increasing privatization and corporate control of this nonrenewable resource.” —Library Journal
“An angry and persuasive account.” —Bloomberg Businessweek
“The dire scenarios laid out in this comprehensive book are truly frightening.” —The San Diego Union-Tribune -
The Conquest of Bread
150 Years of Agribusiness in California$28.95For over a century, California has been the world’s most advanced agricultural zone, an agrarian juggernaut that not only outproduces every state in America, but also most countries. California’s success, however, has come at significant costs. Never a family-farm region like the Midwest, California’s landscape and Mediterranean climate have been manipulated and exploited to serve modern business interests. Home to gargantuan accomplishments such as the world’s largest water storage and transfer network, California also relies on an army of Mexican farm laborers who live and work under dismal conditions.
In The Conquest of Bread, acclaimed historian Richard A. Walker offers a wide-angle overview of the agro-industrial system of production in California from farm to table. He lays bare the long evolution of each link in the food chain, showing how a persistent emphasis on productivity and growth allowed California to outpace agriculture elsewhere in the United States. Full of thunder and surprises, The Conquest of Bread allows the reader to weigh the claims of both boosters and critics in the debate over the most extraordinary agricultural profusion in the modern world.
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The New Nuclear Danger
George W. Bush's Military-Industrial Complex$16.95 – $17.99A global leader of the antinuclear movement delivers “a meticulous, urgent, and shocking report” on US weapons policy and the imminent dangers it poses (Booklist).
First published in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, The New Nuclear Danger sounded the alarm against a neoconservative foreign policy dictated by weapons manufacturers. This revised and updated edition includes a new introduction that outlines the costs of Operation Iraqi Freedom, details the companies profiting from the war and subsequent reconstruction, and chronicles the rampant conflicts of interest among members of the Bush administration who also had a financial stake in weapons manufacturing.
Named one of the Most Influential Women of the 20th Century by the Smithsonian and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for her antinuclear activism, Dr. Helen Caldicott’s expert assessment of US nuclear and military policy is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the precarious state of the world. After eight printings in the original edition, The New Nuclear Danger remains a singularly persuasive argument for a new approach to foreign policy and a new path toward arms reduction.
“A timely warning, at a critical moment in world history, of the horrible consequences of nuclear warfare.” —Walter Cronkite
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Fallout
The Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Collapse$13.95 – $20.00Within days of the September 11th attack in New York City, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman, together with Time Man of the Year Rudy Giuliani, reassured New Yorkers that air “contaminants are either not detectable or are below the Agency’s concern levels.”
In fact, EPA tests taken at the time showed high concentrations of toxic materials in the air downtown, including asbestos, dioxins, and heavy metals. Con Edison and the Port Authority revealed—two months after the attack—that nearly 200,000 gallons of diesel fuel and transformer oils, much of it contaminated with low-level PCBs, had escaped beneath Ground Zero. And independent measurements of indoor air, widespread because the agency declined to test private buildings, showed astronomically higher readings.
Prizewinning journalist Juan Gonzalez argues that public officials misled New Yorkers about the real dangers of toxic contamination after September 11. Their failure may have profound effects on the long-term health of New Yorkers and the reputation of the ex-mayor.
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Greening International Law
$30.00Environmental problems do not respect international boundaries, and as a consequence, environmental issues are increasingly a matter for negotiation in which the role of international law is crucial. However, the law itself and the accompanying institutions are only beginning to recognize the full implications of the issues.
Greening International Law is a collection of essays by leading legal scholars and lawyers, who asses the extent to which the law and legal institutions have been “greened” and discuss the ways in which these laws will have to adapt to deal effectively with the issues now arising. These essays reflect the excitement of watching a new system being formed—just as if one were able to witness again the early days of American federal decision making. Cases such as the Mexican tuna case and the Danish bottle-deposit return case will have enormous significance in deciding the degree to which individual countries will be able to maintain their own environmental policies in the face of economic pressure from other, and at times larger, neighbors.
The battles over the future of the oceans and the arctic territories are fraught with enormous portent for future economic development, much as were our early political and legal battles over the open lands of the American frontier. With essays by distinguished American experts such as Christopher Stone, Richard Stewart, and Daniel Bodansky, and an extensive historical introduction on the evolution of the field by Philippe Sands, Greening International Law is a book of importance not only for lawyers and environmentalists, but for all concerned with our economic and political future.
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Failed Transitions
The Eastern European Economy and Environment Since the Fall of Communism$22.95One of the most pressing questions facing us today is the degree to which the formerly Communist countries of Eastern Europe can bring about true change. While profound economic upheavals have definitely taken place, it remains far from clear whether the basic administrative structures have been overthrown. Indeed, there is a frightening continuity in personnel, as we now see in the many former Communist bureaucrats controlling a rapidly growing number of Eastern European businesses. Failed Transitions is one of the first books to examine the economic and environmental consequences of the overthrow of communism. It is a tale of wasted opportunities, mixed-up priorities, and myopic environmental policies. Roger Manser, a seasoned environmental critic, reveals how, behind the official optimism, governments and administrative agencies are grappling with the unforeseen pressures of the free market with tools more suited to nineteenth-century laissez-faire capitalism.
Manser argues that while the reintroduction of the free market in Eastern and Central Europe has curbed certain excesses of communism’s polluting economies, it has yet to make any fundamental changes. Indeed, in many cases it has made some matters even worse. Environmentalists are now battling against dangerous nuclear reactors, a dramatic increase in household waste, and perhaps most damaging, Western investors attracted by lax environmental laws. Failed Transitions raises many crucial issues that have been neglected by the unquestioning coverage in our daily press.
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Making Peace With the Planet
$16.95In his monumental bestsellers, The Closing Circle and Science and Survival, Barry Commoner was one of the first scientists to alert us to the hideous environmental costs of our technological development. Now, twenty years later, Commoner reviews the vast efforts made in the public and private spheres to address and control the damage done and shows us why, despite billions of dollars spent to save the environment, we now find ourselves in an even deeper crisis. It is a book of hard facts and figures whose conclusion—that environmental pollution can be prevented only through fundamental redesign of the way we produce goods—demands basic changes all across America, from the highest offices in Washington, D.C., to your own kitchen garbage can.
If, in the sixties and seventies, an eco-revolution seemed afoot, Commoner now documents how short we have fallen. Attempts to reshape consumer patterns have been halfhearted, there have been terrible miscalculations in government policy (and in environmental organization strategies), and we still face the deliberate resistance of private industry to change.
Despite these problems, Commoner argues convincingly for the key role still to be played by community organizations in scrutinizing and directing environmental action.
Translating technical information into digestible form, Commoner takes us step by step through an EPA “environmental impact” review, breaks down the arguments for and against incineration, explains dioxin, Bhopal, auto emission controls, mercury poisoning, the greenhouse effect, and the Byzantine calculation of “acceptable risk”—in ways that show how each of these factors affects all of us.
With a new introduction by the author, Making Peace with the Planet makes a clear and impassioned plea for us to stop wasting money and precious nonrenewable resources, including time.
Showing 33–49 of 49 results
