The Big Heat

Description

The world as we know it is undergoing a violent transformation, unlike anything the planet has experienced since the Cretaceous Extinction. The evidence is everywhere: vast droughts that last decades, super-storms and floods that destroy cities, dwindling aquifers, vanishing glaciers, toxic water supplies, raging wildfires, obscure new diseases, vanishing species and indigenous communities. The forces driving this radical transformation are not natural. The earth has been brought to the brink by a greed-based predatory economic system that chews up anything in its path and spits it out to the bitter end. The Big Heat charts the battle lines for the future of the planet, from corporate villains to corrupt politicians and the fearless environmentalists who are standing up against the pillaging. This is an unflinching chronicle of the last fight that really matters.

“The toughest book yet on global warming and its perpetrators.” — Ralph Nader

“TheBig Heat: Earth on the Brink is left environmental writing at its eloquent, state-of-the-art best. It is also a stirring call to meaningfully militant action.” — Paul Street, author of They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy

“Here’s the real story of our privatization of free-living animals. Of the federal malpractice of forestry. Of every bit of pious and charitable pandering that got us the weird EPA leadership and toxic militarism controlling our lives today. Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank tell all that unfolds when political parties share ‘the same lethal ideology’ of infinite consumption. In this important folio of essays, these two legendary investigative writers tell the urgent story of vast open lands, of mighty waters yearning to flow free again, of elk and grizzlies.” — Lee Hall, environmental attorney and author of On Their Own Terms

“If Hunter S. Thompson had been a backpacker, this is the book he would have written. But don’t let the fear and loathing fool you: this book is a love letter to the American West—that is, what’s left of the West in the wake of fracking, toxic waste, the gunning down of grizzlies and wolves, the hypocrisy of Democrats, and the venality of Republicans. There are passages here that will break your heart.” — Ted Nace, author of Climate Hope: On the Frontlines of the Fight Against Coal

“Many thanks to Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, who have elegantly highlighted the lives and actions that matter most in the 21st-Century struggle to keep it real. In a culture of artifice and “unreality” where everything’s for sale, stories like these exemplify how persistence and focused resistance inspire a new generation of radical dissent. Ask any oligarch, CEO, opposing bureaucrat, or government attorney what “melts their glacier,” and they will all tell you about that unique artist, poet or grassroots activist that can’t be bought, won’t cave in and never gives up. — Steve Kelly, co-founder Alliance for the Wild Rockies

“Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank connect the dots between environmental destruction and Big Oil, Big Timber, Big Meat, “Hydro- Imperialists” and other greedy expropriators of our land and water. The Big Heat: Earth of the Brink names names, names policies and give readers an essential overview of the culprits in our environmental crisis and what can be done about it.” — Martha Rosenberg, author of Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health

Jeffrey St. Clair co-edits CounterPunch. His books include: Bernie and the Sandernistas, Born Under a Bad Sky, and Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me. He lives in Oregon. 

Joshua Frank is managing editor of CounterPunch. His most recent book is Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, co-edited with Jeffrey St. Clair.