Act Now Apologize Later

Adam Werbach is the youngest and most visible general in the battle for America's environment. His youthful energy and boundless enthusiasm have mobilized the slumbering Sierra Club, fired the imaginations of the media and fueled a grassroots environmental movement among Gen Xers that most people would have thought impossible.

He began his activist career 15 years ago, when he organized a petition drive at school that called for the dismissal of then Secretary of the Interior James Watt. He was only eight years old. At 13, he founded the Sierra Student Coalition, a student-run adjunct to the Sierra Club that now boasts 30,000 members. Today, he is the youngest president the Sierra Club has ever had.

Act First, Apologize Later? shares Werbach's thoughts on a wide array of subjects in such chapters as Ferns and Cougars: Why We Need Nature; The California Desert Protection Act: The Anatomy of a Victory; Eco-Thugs: Profiles of Members of Congress Who Are in the Pockets of Polluters; and Solutions: Beyond "Band-Aid" Environmentalism. Written with the passion and zeal that has already inspired hundreds of thousands of people, it is an important call to arms in a war America must not lose.

Adam Werbach is the 24-year-old president of the Sierra Club, North America's oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization, with more than 500,000 members, chapters in every sate and province, and a history that began with the protection of Yosemite National Park.He lives in San Francisco, California.