Tracing the roots of the environmental movement and primary influences throughout American history, the author proves that the movement has permanently altered the national consciousness.

A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement

Science & Math

Shabecoff, Philip

Biological Sciences

Hill & Wang Pub

Building on the foundation of his critically acclaimed A Fierce Green Fire (1993), which provided a sweeping overview of the American environmental movement, Philip Shabecoff now moves to a thoughtful survey of international environmentalism. The annals of international cooperation to preserve the environment and ensure sustainable economic development are recent and brief. Only within the last 30 years, as the effects of human overconsumption have become apparent, have international organizations, national governments, and environmental groups begun focusing on the economic and ecological ramifications of plundering the Earth's resources. Shabecoff, former chief environmental correspondent for the New York Times, provides a detailed history of international environmentalism from the beginnings of a global environmental ethic to an inside view of diplomatic negotiations behind the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. He analyzes Rio's successes and failures and examines both worldwide and local proposals that address environmental and economic challenges not discussed at Rio. Only by facing and overcoming all these challenges, he says, can the global community establish "a peace built on mutual care for the planet and responsibility for the well-being of others with whom we share it."

A New Name for Peace: International Environmentalism, Sustainable Development, and Democracy

Business & Money

Economics

UPNE

In this shocking and sobering book, two fearless journalists directly and definitively link industrial toxins to the current rise in childhood disease and death. In the tradition of Silent Spring, Poisoned Profits is a landmark investigation, an eye-opening account of a country that prizes money over children’s health. With indisputable data, Philip Shabecoff and Alice Shabecoff reveal that the children of baby boomers–the first to be raised in a truly “toxified” world–have higher rates of birth defects, asthma, cancer, autism, and other serious illnesses than previous generations. In piercing case histories, the authors identify the culprit as corporate pollution. Here are the stories of such places as Dickson, Tennessee, where babies were born with cleft lips and palates after landfill chemicals seeped into the water, and Port Neches, Texas, where so many graduates of a high school near synthetic rubber and chemical plants contracted cancer that the school was nicknamed “Leukemia High.” The danger to our children isn’t just in the outside world, though. The Shabecoffs provide evidence that our homes are now infested with everything from dangerous flame retardants in crib mattresses to harmful plastic softeners in teething rings to antibiotics and arsenic in chicken–additives that are absorbed by growing and physically vulnerable kids as well as by pregnant women. Compounding the problem are chemical corporations that sabotage investigations and regulations, a government that refuses to police these companies, and corporate-hired scientists who keep pertinent secrets massaged with skewed data of their own. Poisoned Profits also demonstrates how people are fighting back, whether through grassroots parents’ groups putting pressure on politicians, the rise of “ecotheology” in the pulpits of formerly indifferent churches, or the new “green chemistry” being practiced in labs to replace bad elements with good. The Shabecoffs also include helpful tips on reducing risks to children in how they eat and play, and in how parents clean and maintain their homes. Powerful, unflinching, and eminently readable, Poisoned Profits is a wake-up call that is bound to inspire talk and force change.

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children

Shabecoff, Alice

Random House]

In A Fierce Green Fire, renowned environmental journalist Philip Shabecoff presents the definitive history of American environmentalism from the earliest days of the republic to the present. He offers a sweeping overview of the contemporary environmental movement and the political, economic, social and ethical forces that have shaped it. More importantly, he considers what today's environmental movement needs to do if it is to fight off the powerful forces that oppose it and succeed in its mission of protecting the American people, their habitat, and their future.Shabecoff traces the ecological transformation of North America as a result of the mass migration of Europeans to the New World, showing how the environmental impulse slowly formed among a growing number of Americans until, by the last third of the 20th Century, environmentalism emerged as a major social and cultural movement. The efforts of key environmental figures -- among them Henry David Thoreau, George Perkins Marsh, Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, David Brower, Barry Commoner, and Rachel Carson -- are examined. So, too, are the activities of non-governmental environmental groups as well as government agencies such as the EPA and Interior Department, along with grassroots efforts of Americans in communities across the country. The author also describes the economic and ideological forces aligned against environmentalism and their increasing successes in recent decades. Originally published in 1993, this new edition brings the story up to date with an analysis of how the administration of George W. Bush is seeking to dismantle a half-century of progress in protecting the land and its people, and a consideration of the growing international effort to protect Earth's life-support systems and the obstacles that the United States government is placing before that effort. In a forward-looking final chapter, Shabecoff casts a cold eye on just what the environmental movement must do to address the challenges it faces.Now, at this time when environmental law, institutions, and values are under increased attack -- and opponents of environmentalism are enjoying overwhelming political and economic power -- A Fierce Green Fire is a vital reminder of how far we have come in protecting our environment and how much we have to lose.

History

Americas

Island Press

"The mission of environmentalism is to mobilize society at all levels to confront the danger and disorder into which human activity has propelled us and guide us to a safer, saner way of living on the planet.... Environmentalism has never been about catastrophe. It is about alternatives, about changing course, about transforming the future." --Philip Shabecoff, from Earth Rising Philip Shabecoff, America's preeminent environmental journalist, has spent more than two decades thinking and writing about the environment and related subjects, as a reporter for The New York Times, as publisher of Greenwire, and as the author of two books, including the critically acclaimed A Fierce Green Fire. In Earth Rising, he draws on that experience to offer a pointed and thought-provoking critique of the current state and future prospects of the American environmental movement.Based on extensive interviews with a wide range of individuals both within and outside of the movement, Shabecoff elucidates the issues and problems confronting today's environmentalists and analyzes the movement's strengths and weaknesses. Viewing environmental threats as symptoms of flaws in our society and its systems, he considers the urgent need for a broader, more inclusive environmentalism, and examines the role environmentalists can -- and must -- play in: reforming the education system taming the global economy and making it an instrument of human needs working for political reform, including reducing the influence of corporate spending on the electoral process directing the course of the scientific enterprise as well as making use of its results helping develop a new moral center for people throughout the nation and the world Throughout, Shabecoff emphasizes the need for national organizations to link together with grassroots groups and to become more responsive to local concerns, and argues that the environmental movement has not yet adequately prepared itself to meet current and coming challenges. He makes a compelling case that another wave of environmentalism is needed -- more powerful, diverse and sophisticated, visionary and flexible. Earth Rising offers a detailed road map that can guide environmentalists toward that new and reenergized place in society.

Earth Rising: American Environmentalism In The 21St Century

In a landmark investigation that's been compared to Silent Spring, two veteran journalists definitively show how, why, and where industrial toxins are causing rates of birth defects, asthma, cancer, and other serious illnesses to soar in children. Philip and Alice Shabecoff reveal that the children of baby boomers-the first to be raised in a truly toxified world-are the first generation to be sicker and have shorter life expectancies than their parents. The culprits, they say, are the companies that profit from producing, using, and selling toxics. In piercing case histories, the authors bring readers to places like Dickson, Tennessee, where babies were born with cleft lips and palates after landfill chemicals seeped into the water, and Port Neches, Texas, where so many graduates of a high school near synthetic rubber and chemical plants contracted cancer that the school was nicknamed "Leukemia High." And they ask a razor-sharp question: Just why are we letting corporations commit these crimes against our children, sabotage investigations and regulations, hire scientists to skew data on toxic impacts, and fend off government controls with powerful lobbying groups? It's time, they say, for families and the health and environmental communities to fight back, and their painstakingly researched book shows how people are taking action across the country-from pressuring politicians and investigating sickness clusters in their regions to ridding their own homes of countless toxic products like crib mattresses infused with dangerous flame retardants or teething rings steeped in harmful chemicals. Powerful, unflinching, and eminently readable, Poisoned for Profit is a wake-up call that is bound to inspire talk and force change.

Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill

Reference

Chelsea Green Publishing

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Books by Shabecoff, Philip

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Shabecoff, Philip. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement

A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement

A New Name for Peace: International Environmentalism, Sustainable Development, and Democracy

Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children

A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement

Earth Rising: American Environmentalism In The 21St Century

Earth Rising: American Environmentalism In The 21St Century

Poisoned for Profit: How Toxins Are Making Our Children Chronically Ill