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BRIGHT GREEN LIES

Name: BRIGHT GREEN LIES
Author: Derrick Jensen
ISBN: 978-1-948626-39-2

HOW THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT LOST ITS WAY AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT

by Derrick Jensen & Lierre Keith & Max Wilbert ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 16, 2021

A dour assessment of the current state of green technology.

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A critical look at the modern environmental movement and the promises of green, renewable technology.

All technologies come laden with costs that are never factored in, including damage to the environment in producing the workings of machines and commodities. “No technology is neutral,” write the authors. From that inarguable first tenet, they go on the attack. Even so-called environmentalists, they argue, are human-centered, and building things such as solar energy cells and wind towers are ineffective stopgaps meant to maintain wealthy lifestyles with minimum inconvenience. The real object of saving the world should be…saving the world—the spotted owls, the fish, the “last scrap of forest,” etc. As long as the emphasis is on humankind and trying to salvage what remains of civilization, the environmental movement will be thwarted in its stated task of healing the planet of the wounds industrial civilization has inflicted. Many of the authors’ points are cogent and well taken: Renewable energy sources have yet to do much to power the world, and producing solar cells and wind towers requires numerous rare metals—lithium, cerium, neodymium, yttrium, and the like—that are environmentally destructive to secure and do not easily lend themselves to recycling. The authors dismiss the longing of futurists and engineers for “technologies that haven’t been invented yet”—though by other accounts, there is hope that such things as capturing the energy from tidal flows and deep-sea thermal vents may bear sustainable fruit. Unfortunately, the hectoring tone will likely repel more readers than draw them in. The authors are knowledgeable on many of the most significant issues we face, and there’s useful information here, especially for diligent activists. However, the authors’ tendency to yell at the choir and curtly dismiss any arguments advanced by “mainstream environmentalism” may dampen the appeal to general readers.

A dour assessment of the current state of green technology.

Pub Date: March 16, 2021

ISBN: 978-1-948626-39-2

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Monkfish

Review Posted Online: Dec. 24, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2021

Categories:

CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | NATURE | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | U.S. GOVERNMENT | PUBLIC POLICY

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

by Howard Zinn ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1979

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For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

Categories:

- BOOK REVIEW
A YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
by Howard Zinn ; adapted by Rebecca Stefoff with by Ed Morales

- BOOK REVIEW
TRUTH HAS A POWER OF ITS OWN
by Howard Zinn with Ray Suarez

- BOOK REVIEW
THE HISTORIC UNFULFILLED PROMISE
by Howard Zinn

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THE BACKYARD BIRD CHRONICLES

by Amy Tan ; illustrated by Amy Tan ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 23, 2024

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.

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A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.

In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”

An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.