Nightwatch over Nature: Peoples, Natures, Politics

by Alexander Cockburn

From clear-cutting in the rain forests of Brazil and the Pacific Northwest to the recent outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain, radical environmentalist Alexander Cockburn draws together for the first time a collection of essays culled from both his popular “Beat the Devil” columns in The Nation as well as other sources.These pieces draw together two essential themes of Cockburn’s work: the relationships between the First and Third worlds in terms of crops such as timber, tobacco, silver, opium and indigenous Third World struggles, and the First World’s mainstream environmental organizations, with their very different and often contradictory programs. Analyzing the conceptions of nature that underlie these contrasting visions, Cockburn in these essays addresses the ugly Malthusian strain that runs through much of environmental thinking, and discusses the social relations of such “natural” disasters such as the Loma Prieta earthquake and the Oakland, California, fire.Cockburn has written on environmental issues over the past 20 years, on topics as diverse as the decay of the national Green organizations in the United States to the consequences of the recent outbreak of mad cow disease. As a counterpoint to his explorations of true enviromentalism, Cockburn in one essay provides a tragi-comic, detailed chronicle of the relationship between the environmental movement—national and grassroots—with the Clinton administration. This wide-ranging and erudite book concludes with an original essay on meat consumption, in which Cockburn traces from the Book of Genesis to the crisis of mad cow disease.

275 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Alexander Claud Cockburn was an American political journalist. Cockburn was brought up in Ireland but has lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the political newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn also writes the "Beat the Devil" column for The Nation and a weekly syndicated column for the Los Angeles Times as well as for The First Post, which is syndicated by Creators Syndicate.