From the Tokyo timber terminal, where Japanese conglomerates process rain-forest logs from around the world, to India, China, and Brazil, where global chemical and automobile concerns are rapidly setting up shop, transnationals have made their presence felt in nearly every nation on Earth.

Joshua Karliner brilliantly exposes how transnationals, aided by free trade agreements and World Bank policies, are leading protagonists in the world's most pressing environmental dramas. He takes the reader behind the scenes of the global public-relations companies that launch elaborate campaigns to encourage rampant consumerism as well as to create green images for major polluters.

With lively case histories of Chevron, the company that the late Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa identified, with Shell, as the most serious environmental threat to the Niger River Delta, and the Mitsubishi Group, which continues to clear-cut vast swaths through aspen forests to produce 8 million pairs of disposable chopsticks every day, The Corporate Planet offers frightening documentation of the central role transnationals play in environmental destruction.

Arguing that transnational misdeeds can be overcome, Karliner recounts empowering stories of communities confronting the ill effects of corporate colonialism to create their own grassroots globalization movements. This important and timely book is a significant contribution to the battle against irresponsible corporate behavior.

The Corporate Planet brilliantly exposes the elaborate efforts of the giant corporations to "greenwash" themselves, and it demonstrates how they are using free trade agreements and World Bank loans to build a world order where they are accountable only to themselves. From Tokyo, where Mitsubishi processes rain forest logs from around the world, to a polluting Chevron oil refinery in California, to India, China, and Brazil, where global chemical companies are setting up shop, Joshua Karliner takes us on a stunning world tour. Here is a fascinating account of corporate greed and the unexpected powers of local activist to combat.

"The intensity and importance of The Corporate Planet comes from the passion and the skill with which it opens us to a vision of how dangerous to the future of our globe is global capitalism itself."--Norman Mailer

Includes bibliographical references (p. [225]-282) and index.