Synopses & Reviews
In Green Gone Wrong environmental writer Heather Rogers blasts through the marketing buzz of big corporations and asks a simple question: Do today's much-touted green products--carbon offsets, organic food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homes--really work? Implicit in efforts to go green is the promise that global warming can be stopped by swapping out dirty goods for clean ones. But can earth-friendly products really save the planet? This far-reaching, riveting narrative explores how the most readily available solutions to environmental crisis may be disastrously off the mark. Rogers travels the world tracking how the conversion from a petro to a green society affects the most fundamental aspects of life--food, shelter, and transportation. Reporting from some of the most remote places on earth, Rogers uncovers shocking results that include massive clear-cutting, destruction of native ecosystems, and grinding poverty. Relying simply on market forces, people with good intentions wanting to just do something to help the planet are left feeling confused and powerless.
Green Gone Wrong reveals a fuller story, taking the reader into forests, fields, factories, and boardrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, and successes of eco-friendly consumption. What do the labels USDA Certified Organic and Fair Trade really mean on a vast South American export-driven organic farm? A superlow-energy eco-village in Germany's Black Forest demonstrates that green homes dramatically shrink energy use, so why aren't we using this technology in America? The decisions made in Detroit's executive suites have kept Americans driving gas-guzzling automobiles for decades, even as U.S. automakers have European models that clock twice the mpg. Why won't they sell these cars domestically? And what does carbon offsetting really mean when projects can so easily fail? In one case thousands of trees planted in drought-plagued Southern India withered and died, releasing any CO2 they were meant to neutralize.
Expertly reported, this gripping expose pieces together a global picture of what's happening in the name of today's environmentalism. Green Gone Wrong speaks to anyone interested in climate change and the future of the natural world, as well as those who want to act but are caught not knowing who, or what, to believe to protect the planet. Rogers casts a sober eye on what's working and what's not, fearlessly pushing ahead the debate over how to protect the planet.
Review
"Excellent anatomy of greenwashing in corporate culture and personal life." Guardian
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"Carefully researched, deeply human, and eminently sensible." Naomi Klein
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"Well-written and exhaustively reported." New York Times
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"The climate crisis is far too urgent to squander another decade on false solutions. This carefully researched, deeply human, and eminently sensible investigation arrives just in the nick of time. Let’s hope it inspires a radical course correction." Naomi Klein
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"Heather Rogers reminds us with vivid examples that there’s no way we can just subcontract our environmental conscience to the new breed of green marketers. We have a very narrow window to preserve some version of our planet, and we can't afford the kind of egregious mistakes this volume identifies with such precision. If it's too good to be true, it’s not true—even if it comes with a shiny green wrapper." Bill McKibben, author of < i=""> Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet <>
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"Green Gone Wrong doesn’t just go after easy targets like big corporations … Rogers offers plenty of evidence that consumers who load up their shopping carts with organic food, for instance, may be unwittingly subsidizing big farm companies that are eradicating forests and defiling the soil in some developing countries." New York Times
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"With deft and adventuresome reporting from around the world, Heather Rogers looks beneath the surface of today’s market-based solutions to our environmental challenges and skillfully distinguishes between reality and illusion. Business as usual won't do, Rogers tells us, no matter how much we green it." Annie Leonard, author of < i=""> The Story of Stuff <>
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"Heather Rogers offers a compelling commentary on the state of our contemporary civilization." David Harvey
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"Readers will be troubled by the laundry list of fallacies at the heart of ‘green business,’ but the book’s final chapter, which discusses developing and very positive alternatives, will keep them from despairing." Harper's
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"Self-proclaimed environmentalists should read Heather Rogers’s stories and weep." New Scientist
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"Heather Rogers ... makes a convincing argument that, as most of us have probably already suspected, we can’t simply buy our way out of the crisis that our planet is experiencing." Forbes
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"By going beyond exposé to analysis, Rogers gives a deeper assessment of environmental problems and solutions than the usual global-warming investigative book." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Argues that environmental problems can't be solved by ethical consumerism.
Synopsis
Faced with climate change, many counsel “going green,” encouraging us to buy organic food or a “clean” car, for example. But can we rely on consumerism to provide a solution to the very problems it has helped cause? Heather Rogers travels from Paraguay to Indonesia, via the Hudson Valley, Detroit, and Germany’s Black Forest, to investigate green capitalism, and argues for solutions that are not mere palliatives or distractions, but ways of engaging with how we live and the kind of world we want to live in.
A new afterword considers various ways in which national development might be freed from its dependence on economic growth, allowing for a decent standard of living without exhausting the planet’s resources.
Synopsis
Faced with climate change, many counsel “going green” by buying organic food or a “clean” car. But can we rely on consumerism as a solution to the very problems it has helped cause? Heather Rogers travels from Paraguay to Indonesia, via the Hudson Valley, Detroit and London, to investigate green capitalism, and argues for solutions that are not mere palliatives or distractions, but ways of engaging with how we live and the kind of world we want to live in.
Synopsis
Trenchant exposé of the myths of “green capitalism”
About the Author
Heather Rogers is a journalist and filmmaker. Her documentary film Gone Tomorrow (2002) screened in festivals around the globe. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, Utne Reader, Z Magazine, the Brooklyn Rail, Punk Planet, and Art and Design. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.