[PEN-L:3804] Book blurb: DIVIDED PLANET: THE ECOLOGY OF RICH AND POOR

[blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx (Blair Sandler)]

Hey folks, thought some of you might be interested in this. Disclaimer: Tom
is friend and colleague.

Blair Sandler
blairs@xxxxxxxxxxx

****************************

This is a blurb for my book.  You might be interested.  On
the other hand, you might not be.  But please don't get too
irritated at this shamelessly forward use of the internet.
I mean, what the hell, I don't own a newspaper...

This, by the way, is marketing copy.  It's true though.

-- toma


DIVIDED PLANET: THE ECOLOGY OF RICH AND POOR, Tom Athanasiou

        (New York: Little Brown, $24.95, April 1996)


Most people in America today see themselves  as  environmen-
talists.   They  recycle  their trash, drive a bit less, and
shop for energy efficient products.  They think they're mak-
ing a big difference, but they're wrong.

The real threats to our environment,  according  to  DIVIDED
PLANET: THE ECOLOGY OF RICH AND POOR  --  can't be halted or
even appreciably slowed by the feel-good environmentalism of
the  industrialized world.  Global warming, soil loss, over-
consumption, ozone depletion,  overpopulation,  and  habitat
and  biodiversity  losses  are  a simmering catastrophe that
will engulf the world all too soon.  And though it may be  a
terrifying  and  inconvenient  prospect, only radical social
and economic changes can possibly forestall disaster.

"History,"  says  Athanasiou,  "will  judge  the  greens  by
whether  they  stand with the world's poor."  It is a simple
claim, yet as he demonstrates with both power and  elegance,
its implications promise to redefine the environmental move-
ment.   DIVIDED  PLANET  reveals,  with  rare  clarity,  the
economic  factors  at play in the ongoing destruction of the
planet.  In this election year, in  which  worldwide  issues
like  trade  agreements  and the future of the post Cold War
world can no longer be ignored, and yet both mainstream par-
ties seek to do just that, such an approach is as compelling
as it is overdue.

DIVIDED PLANET takes up where other environmental and polit-
ical books have stopped short.

***

     "DIVIDED PLANET asks the hard questions and  challenges
     the  easy  answers.   With original style and analysis,
     Athanasiou calls on environmentalists to  question  the
     social  and  economic priorities of the New World Order
     with it's ever-widening  gap  between  rich  and  poor,
     North  and  South.  From "free trade" to the World Bank
     to the cowboy capitalism of  the  former  Soviet  bloc,
     Athanasiou exposes how unequal power relations underlie
     ecological crisis.  This is an honest book which offers
     no false hopes -- it is an urgent call for action."

                 -- Betsy Hartmann, Committee on Women, Population
                        and the Environment, author of REPRODUCTIVE
                        RIGHTS AND WRONGS


     Divided Planet is like a dream version of the Clean Air
     Act.   It  clears  away  the fuzzy-minded haze that has
     enveloped environmentalism, and allows us an unobscured
     view  of  the  social  and  economic  conditions--past,
     present, and future--of the ecological crises.

                 -- Andrew Ross, Director, Graduate Program in
                        American Studies, New York University.  Author
                        of STRANGE WEATHER: CULTURE, SCIENCE, AND
                        TECHNOLOGY IN THE AGE OF LIMITS


     "DIVIDED PLANET  is  a  challenging  and  sophisticated
     analysis  of  the environmental movement and the global
     issues it  addresses.   It  takes  us  far  beyond  the
     fashionable sort of 'feel good' commentary on the state
     of the planet that swamped Earth  Day's  25th  anniver-
     sary."

                 -- Barbara Dudley, Executive Director, GREENPEACE
                        USA


     "Athanasiou says 'History  will  judge  the  greens  by
     whether  they  stand  with  the world's poor,' and then
     shows us that we can't have sustainability without jus-
     tice.   DIVIDED  PLANET  is  an  articulate, researched
     letter from the barricades."

                 -- Carl Anthony, Executive Director, Urban Habitat
                        Program, Earth Island Institute


     In one of the most important books to be  written  this
     decade,  Tom  Athanasiou carefully explodes some of the
     environmental movement's most cherished myths.  Want to
     imagine  a  new  and  better green politics?  This is a
     good place to start.

                 -- Mike Roselle, co-founder of Earth First!,
                        grassroots forest campaigner.

***

Tom Athanasiou has been active in environmental and technol-
ogy  politics  for over two decades.  He has written for THE
NATION, TECHNOLOGY  REVIEW,  WORLDWATCH  MAGAZINE,  THE  SAN
FRANCISCO  CHRONICLE,  and scores of other publications.  As
his day job he is a member of the  technical  staff  of  Sun
Microsystems.  He lives in San Francisco, California.