Launching a book in a busy news cycle isn't easy. And the understatement to this news cycle — with the "will they or won't they" debate, the winking vice presidential debate, the financial crisis on Wall Street, and the congressional bailout — would be to say that it's busy.
Nonetheless, You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does to Our Planet, my new book, is garnering some attention — largely because it lays out so many surprising links between what we do in our everyday lives and how that affects people, places, and things far, far away.
I was fortunate enough to get some quality airtime on the Today Show to showcase some of the issues in the book: the secret water crisis, our contribution to China's pollution, the floating patch of trash in the Pacific Ocean known as the Eastern Garbage Patch that is at least twice the size of Texas and is made up of man-made waste, the Amazon's deforestation issue, etc. Signings and talks at some great independent stores such as Vroman's in Pasadena, the Tattered Cover in Denver, and Boulder Books, have been heartening, too. People are truly curious about the environmental problems we are facing today and genuinely want to know how to fix them.
In my mind it is going to take three things: change by us, change by businesses, and a change in political leadership. We need to create the demand to give businesses incentives to make more sustainable products. The government, in turn, must provide incentives to businesses to look for alternatives products (and yes, energy). It is going to take all three constituencies to defend all of our natural resources. And note that I say all of our natural resources. I would like to extend the proposition that there are other natural resource inefficiencies beyond energy. Sure, it's easy to get wrapped up in the global warming/alternative energy debate. But let's remember that we have a water crisis on our hands, a food crisis, ocean crises, and huge amounts of waste to deal with.
In fact, the strain on our natural resources is past the breaking point. It would now take the equivalent of five planet Earths to provide enough natural resources to keep the entire world's population at the U.S. standard of living. Yet, we tarnish and ravage much of what we have. Ninety cities still dump sewage, for example, into the Great Lakes, arguably one of the world's most precious natural resources, equaling 20% of all surface fresh water. The farming of palm oil, which we use in our toothpastes, pastries, potato chips, and soaps (look at the label of some brands: it stares right at you), is ravaging the lowland forests of Borneo, forcing species to become extinct and contributing massively to deforestation. Deforestation is the second biggest man-made cause of climate change. Palm oil? Who knew?
Then there is the really scary stuff: what we do to the planet and how that comes back to haunt. I wrote a column recently about the prospect of our furniture being radioactive. Here's the first few graphs:
Fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 settled into the ground and on to the trees in major timber-exporting countries, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Finland, and Sweden. Those countries export wood to furniture retailers around the world. While logging in many areas affected by Chernobyl fallout is against the law, the region is prone to illegal logging. It is especially rampant in the Russian-Ukrainian region where fallout was heavy, the World Wildlife Fund said in a report released in July.
WWF says as much as 40% of global wood production comes from illegal timber operations, and Russia likely produces the largest quantity of illegal timber. Illegal timber, you can bet, is not held to high environmental testing standards, if any...
I'll be speaking about these issues and more this week (I get lots of queries about how to deal with population growth, the source of much plight, but to which there is no easy answer) to various media in Los Angeles and San Francisco as I continue my book tour. I'm interested in feedback because I believe the missing link to environmental responsibility is useful information. If we have the right information, we can make the right choices.
Tomorrow I talk fish. Ninety percent of the big fish on Earth are gone. Stay tuned...