Frackopoly

Frackopoly

Author: Wenonah Hauter

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2014-10-14

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1620970171

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“The definitive story on how big oil and gas corporations captured our political system . . . and the growing grassroots movement to retake our democracy” (Mark Ruffalo). Over the past decade a new and controversial energy extraction method known as hydraulic fracturing, commonly referred to as fracking, has rocketed to the forefront of US energy production. With fracking, millions of gallons of water, dangerous chemicals, and sand are injected under high pressure deep into the earth, fracturing hard rock to release oil and gas. Wenonah Hauter, one of the nation’s leading public interest advocates, argues that the rush to fracking is dangerous to the environment and treacherous to human health. Frackopoly describes how the fracking industry began; the technologies that make it possible; and the destruction and poisoning of clean water sources with the release of harmful radiation from deep inside shale deposits, creating what the author calls “sacrifice zones” across the American landscape. The book also examines the powerful interests that have supported fracking, including leading environmental groups, and offers a thorough debunking of its supposed economic benefits. With a wealth of new data, Frackopoly is an essential and riveting read for anyone interested in protecting the environment and ensuring a healthy and sustainable future for all Americans. “A passionate history and critique of the energy industry, from Standard Oil to Enron . . . . [A] journalistic exposé of fracking outrages in which aggressive entrepreneurs in pursuit of profits wreak havoc on the land and poison the water.” —Kirkus Reviews “A truly powerful manifesto about one of the greatest environmental fights on our planet today—from one of its greatest champions!” —Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of Oil and Honey


Foodopoly

Foodopoly

Author: Wenonah Hauter

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 1595587942

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“A meticulously researched tour de force” on politics, big agriculture, and the need to go beyond farmers’ markets to find fixes (Publishers Weekly). Wenonah Hauter owns an organic family farm that provides healthy vegetables to hundreds of families as part of the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement. Yet, as a leading healthy-food advocate, Hauter believes that the local food movement is not enough to solve America’s food crisis and the public health debacle it has created. In Foodopoly, she takes aim at the real culprit: the control of food production by a handful of large corporations—backed by political clout—that prevents farmers from raising healthy crops and limits the choices people can make in the grocery store. Blending history, reporting, and a deep understanding of farming and food production, Foodopoly is a shocking, revealing account of the business behind the meat, vegetables, grains, and milk most Americans eat every day, including some of our favorite and most respected organic and health-conscious brands. Hauter also pulls the curtain back from the little-understood but vital realm of agricultural policy, showing how it has been hijacked by lobbyists, driving out independent farmers and food processors in favor of the likes of Cargill, Tyson, Kraft, and ConAgra. Foodopoly shows how the impacts ripple far and wide, from economic stagnation in rural communities to famines overseas, and argues that solving this crisis will require a complete structural shift—a change that is about politics, not just personal choice.


A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas

A Field Philosopher's Guide to Fracking: How One Texas Town Stood Up to Big Oil and Gas

Author: Adam Briggle

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2015-10-19

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1631490087

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Winner of the Writers' League of Texas Book Awards Finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize From the front lines of the fracking debate, a “field philosopher” explores one of our most divisive technologies. When philosophy professor Adam Briggle moved to Denton, Texas, he had never heard of fracking. Only five years later he would successfully lead a citizens' initiative to ban hydraulic fracturing in Denton—the first Texas town to challenge the oil and gas industry. On his journey to learn about fracking and its effects, he leaped from the ivory tower into the fray. In beautifully narrated chapters, Briggle brings us to town hall debates and neighborhood meetings where citizens wrestle with issues few fully understand. Is fracking safe? How does it affect the local economy? Why are bakeries prohibited in neighborhoods while gas wells are permitted next to playgrounds? In his quest for answers Briggle meets people like Cathy McMullen. Her neighbors’ cows asphyxiated after drinking fracking fluids, and her orchard was razed to make way for a pipeline. Cathy did not consent to drilling, but those who profited lived far out of harm’s way. Briggle's first instinct was to think about fracking—deeply. Drawing on philosophers from Socrates to Kant, but also on conversations with engineers, legislators, and industry representatives, he develops a simple theory to evaluate fracking: we should give those at risk to harm a stake in the decisions we make, and we should monitor for and correct any problems that arise. Finding this regulatory process short-circuited, with government and industry alike turning a blind eye to symptoms like earthquakes and nosebleeds, Briggle decides to take action. Though our field philosopher is initially out of his element—joining fierce activists like "Texas Sharon," once called the "worst enemy" of the oil and gas industry—his story culminates in an underdog victory for Denton, now nationally recognized as a beacon for citizens' rights at the epicenter of the fracking revolution.


Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East

Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East

Author: Olgun Akbulut

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-07-08

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 9004405453

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This volume, Minority Self-Government in Europe and the Middle East: From Theory to Practice, is novel from several perspectives. It combines theory with facts on the ground, going beyond legal perspectives without neglecting existing laws and their implementation. Theoretical discussions transcend examining existing autonomy models in certain regions. It offers new models in the field, discussing such critical themes as environmentalism. Traditional concepts such as self-determination and well-known successful autonomy examples, including the Åland Islands, Basque and Catalonian models, are examined from different perspectives. Some chapters in this volume focus on certain regions (including Turkey, Syria, and Iraq) which have only recently received scholarly attention. Chapters complement one another in terms of their theoretical inputs and outputs from the field.


Encyclopedia of Technological Hazards and Disasters in the Social Sciences

Encyclopedia of Technological Hazards and Disasters in the Social Sciences

Author: Duane A. Gill

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2024-11-08

Total Pages: 769

ISBN-13: 1800882203

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The Encyclopedia of Technological Hazards and Disasters in the Social Sciences brings together an array of global experts to investigate, explore and analyse human-caused disaster events. Providing insights into both the origins and aftermaths of disaster events, it offers advanced understanding of a broad range of disaster events facing society during the Anthropocene.


Gristle

Gristle

Author: Miyun Park

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2011-02-14

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1458731634

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Where's the beef? In the news, that's where. More than ever, meat is making the headlines and growing numbers of people are becoming more informed and passionate about what they eat. The facts are compelling: contamination cases are on the rise, o...


Baptized in PCBs

Baptized in PCBs

Author: Ellen Griffith Spears

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 466

ISBN-13: 1469611716

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Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town


Fuel on the Fire

Fuel on the Fire

Author: Greg Muttitt

Publisher: New Press, The

Published: 2012-06-12

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 1595588221

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The 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 Monster at Our Door

The Monster at Our Door

Author: Mike Davis

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2006-08-22

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9780805081916

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In this first book to sound the alarm on a possible pandemic, Davis tracks the avian flu crisis as the virus moves west and the world remains woefully unprepared to contain it.


The Climate Swerve

The Climate Swerve

Author: Robert Jay Lifton

Publisher: The New Press

Published: 2017-10-10

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1620973480

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Longlisted for the PEN America/E.O. Wilson Prize for Literary Science Writing "Well worth the read. . . . [A] prescient handoff to the next generation of scholars." —The Washington Post From "one of the world’s foremost thinkers" (Bill Moyers), a profound, hopeful, and timely call for an emerging new collective consciousness to combat climate change Over his long career as witness to an extreme twentieth century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, "presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind," what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity. Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that "with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama," a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015 where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble. Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind—"our greatest evolutionary asset"—to translate a growing species awareness—or "climate swerve"—into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.