"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.

A nuanced analysis takes a California oil spill as its point of departure to show how affluent homeowners pushed for an environmentalism that would protect not only the earth but also property and community norms.
 
A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? As Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city’s past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends.

This is an auto-narrated audiobook version of this book.

A nuanced analysis takes a California oil spill as its point of departure to show how affluent homeowners pushed for an environmentalism that would protect not only the earth but also property and community norms.
 
A massive oil spill in the Pacific Ocean near Santa Barbara, California, in 1969 quickly became a landmark in the history of American environmentalism, helping to inspire the creation of both the Environmental Protection Agency and Earth Day. But what role did the history of Santa Barbara itself play in this? As Pollyanna Rhee shows, the city’s past and demographics were essential to the portrayal of the oil spill as momentous. Moreover, well-off and influential Santa Barbarans were positioned to “domesticate” the larger environmental movement by embodying the argument that individual homes and families—not society as a whole—needed protection from environmental abuses. This soon would put environmental rhetoric and power to fundamentally conservative—not radical—ends.