Been Brown so Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature

by Jeffrey St. Clair

From the co-founder of CounterPunch , "America’s best political newsletter" ( Out of Bounds Magazine ) comes a comprehensive seven-part reader on environmental politics. Covering everything from toxics to electric power plays, St. Clair gives you a shocking view of how money and power determine the state of our environment. St. Clair names the culprits and exposes the deeds. The book opens with Oregon as a metaphor for the nation. Now becoming "Californicated," Oregon’s mythological beauty is transforming into just more myth every day. In Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me you’ll Bill Clinton, "saving" Yellowstone National Park from the miners. This turned out to be a thinly disguised a payoff of Noranda who was given leases on other federal lands.
Not to be outdone is Chainsaw George. Bush II is out to stop forest fires by stopping forests.
But St. Clair also profiles the heroes like David Chain who gave his life fighting for the forest, and founder of Friends of the Earth David Brower railing against the -increasing conformity of the environmental movement.
From the struggle over the lobo wolf in New Mexico to the fight to save the Grizzly (in Idaho), from the shooting of wild Bison in Montana to how the Sierra Club provided the cover for a federal program that shoveled federal lands into the hands of private investors, St. Clair gives a well-rounded account of where the environment stands -today—and what to do about it. Praise for Jeffrey St. Clair’s White The CIA, Drugs and the "A history of hypocrisy and political interference the like of which only Frederick Forsyth in a dangerous caffeine frenzy could make up."— The Guardian

Genres: Nonfiction, Environment, Politics, Ecology

350 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Jeffrey St. Clair is co-editor with Alexander Cockburn of the political magazine and website CounterPunch. Raised in Indiana, he attended American University in Washington, DC, majoring in Literature and History. He is the author of 13 books, including the best-sellers Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press and Al Gore: a User's Manual. He has written for the Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, The Nation, the Village Voice, New Left Review, Anderson Valley Advertiser and The Progressive. HIs newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth, will be published in May by AK Press. He lives in Oregon with his wife Kimberly, a librarian, and their dog Boomer.

Reviews

[Joshua Frank · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply the best, most radical, take on environmental politics written in the last decade. St. Clair is the Seymour Hersh of environmental journalism.

Many so-called environmentalists believe it is only the Republicans that scourge our natural resources. Mainstream groups like the Sierra Club seldom reward Republicans with high marks -- so the Democrats must be more apt at protecting nature they contend.

St. Clair debunks this myth with a style that makes me think that perhaps Ed Abbey has been reincarnated as a journalist.

But this book is not only for enviros: it is a must read for anybody who has ever been on a hike or driven a car past a clear cut and wondered "how and why the hell did this happen!?"

[Jerry Peace · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, let the quotes speak for themselves: "The headstone on the grave of the Wobblies' great martyr Frank Little reads:'Slain by capitalist interests.' It's a fitting epitaph for Butte as well." For the rest of the United States too. "Of course, in hindsight handing over the electrical power system to companies that have the moral sensibility of telemarketers and derivatives traders and then freeing them from most government oversight doesn't seem like the brightest idea." But this is capitalism, after all; to freely plunder for present profit everything- mineral, vegetable, and animal, including humans, particularly children, the poor, black, and Hispanic. No surprise there. But what some would call hyperbolic I call understated- how American business interests pimp out all forms of government. All government sucks the corporate teat, moans about leaving a deficit for future generations while gleefully marginalizing, diminishing and destroying all the planet's resources, including life. Thanks, I guess, Mr. St. Clair. Oh, read chapter 55-"High and Dry in the Mojave." Really a fun chapter.

[MJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m lazy, I read books hoping the author will sift through facts on a particular subject, and draw conclusions giving the most represented facts they’ve found to back up their thesis. So although this book is chuck full of interesting and important data, I’m just not committed enough to wade through raw data, this book is tedious.

[David Orr · Rating 5 out of 5]

The truth shall set us free from the political tyranny of the pseudo-philanthropic puppeteers who pull the strings and pad the payrolls of their Washington, DC, marionettes.

[skye]

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