The Big Heat

Earth on the Brink

Jeffrey St. Clair, Joshua Frank

• Publisher: AK Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781849353373
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The world as we know it is undergoing a sudden and violent transformation, unlike anything the planet has experienced since the Cretaceous Extinction. The evidence is all around us: vast droughts that last decades, super-storms and floods that destroy cities, dwindling aquifers, vanishing glaciers, toxic water supplies, raging wildfires, obscure new diseases, vanishing species and indigenous communities. Our planet is changing faster than evolution can keep up. The forces driving this radical transformation are not natural. The earth has been brought to the brink by a greed-based predatory economic system that chews up anything in its path and spits it out to the bitter end. Environmental journalists Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank take you on a sobering field trip through the danger zones; from the strip mines of Appalachia to last refuge of the grizzly, from the dirty fracking fields to the world's most dangerous place, the Hanford Nuclear Site in the Pacific Northwest. The Big Heat charts the battle lines for the future of the planet, from corporate villains to corrupt politicians and the fearless environmentalists who are standing up against the pillaging. This is an unflinching chronicle of the last fight that really matters.

Table of contents

• Advance Praise for The Big Heat
• Also by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank
• Sitting Sun
• Acknowledgments
• Forward: It’s Getting Hot Up in Here
• SECTION 1 Landscapes
• The Wolf at Trout Creek
• Burn a Tree to Save the Planet? The Crazy Logic Behind Biomass
• Glacier National Park May Need a Name Change Soon
• The Privatization of Wildlife: How Ted Turner Scored Yellowstone’s Bison Herd
• The New Western Travesty: Climate Change and Wildfires
• Illegal Marijuana Operations Are Destroying Public Lands: Could Legalization Help?
• Sacrificial Wolves
• Get Your Wings
• Long Time Coming, Long Time Gone
• Mountain of Tears: Oregon’s Vanishing Glaciers
• Of Grizzly Bears and Bureaucrats: The Quest for Survival
• The Fires This Time
• SECTION 2 Waterscapes
• Let Them Eat Oil: the Politics of Deepwater Horizon
• Embracing the Urban-Nature Ethic
• The Blood-Stained Shores of Taiji
• Oceans Without Fish
• Field Notes From a Mirage
• Chronicle of a Flood Foretold
• A Crisis With No End: Why Flint is Still the Issue
• Maria’s Missing Dead
• Down the River with Vladimir Putin
• SECTION 3 Politiscapes
• Paper Trails: Big Timber, the Clintons and the Origins of the Whitewater Scandal
• How Much Has Changed? Obama Administration Deals Series of Anti-Environmental Blows
• Obama’s Nuclear Dreams: Resurrecting a Noxious Industry
• BP’s Inside Game
• A Paler Shade of Green: Obama and the Environment
• Death By Pollution: How the Obama Administration Just Put Thousands of Lives at Risk
• How Obama Defanged the EPA
• Pesticides, Neoliberalism and the Politics of Acceptable Death
• The Porter Ranch Gas Leak: Blame Gov. Jerry Brown
• The Man in the Soundproof Booth
• SECTION 4 Warscapes
• The War on Iraq is also a War on the Environment
• Hanford’s Nuclear Option
• A Short History of Zyklon B on the US-Mexican Border (Please Don’t Share With Donald Trump)
• Afghanistan: Bombing the Land of the Snow Leopard
• Fukushima Mon Amour: the Hucksters of the Green Atom
• The Atomic River
• SECTION 5 Frontlines
• Targeting Earth First!
• How Tre Arrow Became America’s Most Wanted Environmental “Terrorist”
• On the Front Lines of the Climate Change Movement: Mike Roselle Draws a Line
• The FBI’s “Operation Backfire” and the Case of Briana Waters
• Designer Protests and Vanity Arrests in DC
• Why One Community’s Cries for Help Against Cancer and Other Diseases Are Going Unanswered
• Hanford’s Toxic Avengers
• Defender of the Big Wild
• The Rachel Carson of the Rockies
• Snipers and Infiltrators at Standing Rock: Quashing Protests at Taxpayer Expense
• Epilogue: The End of Illusion