“Uncle Sam and Mother Earth” illuminates six decades of the environmental movement with intimate behind-the-scenes reporting. Lively storytelling brings the issues to life, identifying the common threads and delivering a colorful depiction of where we are and what lies ahead.
The book examines our national environmental laws and their implementation. The author relies on 30 years of federal environmental experience to offer fresh insights into how imperfect people and government agencies administer the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Park noise regulations. The federal story is balanced with firsthand accounts of local environmental activism surrounding renewable energy and opposition to nuclear power and tar sands production.
The story’s synthesis of issues and events offers a work that is unique in both content and outlook. At the heart of the story are people. The book traces the leadership of the modern environment movement from Rachel Carson in the 1960s to leaders such as Stewart Brand, Gaylord Nelson, Bill Ruckelshaus, Tierra Curry, Al Gore, and Bill McKibben. As these individuals show, people can be effective whether they work inside or outside of government. But they also show that effective environmental advocacy is synonymous with knowing more about the environmental process and how the government works.
Unusual, entertaining, revealing, and forward-looking, Uncle Sam and Mother Earth speaks to what people can do to protect the environment and turn things around. We can no longer afford to be bystanders. To be effective, we must understand the process of government and the available opportunities to strengthen environmental laws that will provide a safe, healthy, and more livable world.”