America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? [Hardcover]

Harvey Blatt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 28, 2004

Americans today are increasingly concerned about the state of the environment. Polls show that a remarkable 63 percent would roll back recent tax cuts to finance environmental protection and that fully 95 percent want environmental education included in the public school curriculum. America's Environmental Report Card offers answers to some of our most pressing environmental questions, providing a timely reminder of what we need to accomplish to achieve a sustainable environment. It lays out the scientific facts about water and air pollution, energy, global warming, and the ozone layer in a lively, conversational style, enhanced by illustrations, and charts a course of action for protecting the environment.America's Environmental Report Card focuses on the environmental issues that polls show are most important to Americans today. It looks at water pollution and the safety of the water supply (20 percent of Americans refuse to drink tap water, at least partly because they doubt its safety), the dangers of floods (increased by the clearing of forests for farms and timber), the leaching of garbage buried in landfills, and pesticide runoff in irrigation waters from agriculture. It examines the ways we generate energy and the resulting global warming, air pollution (much of the 2,500 gallons of air we inhale each day contains exhaust fumes, lead, and asbestos), and ozone depletion and its relationship to skin cancer, and offers a detailed account of nuclear energy production and the radioactive waste it generates. Most important, it outlines ways to deal with these problems -- workable and reasonable solutions that individuals, industry, and government can effect without unreasonable hardship, solutions that map the course to a sustainable future.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Nostalgia for a lost natural world and/or ire at industry waste and government failures inform many a book about the environment, but Blatt examines the world's most pressing environmental problems in a balanced, learned tone. A longtime geology professor currently teaching in Israel, Blatt breaks down environmental issues into their components, describing different aspects of the problem, offering solutions and suggesting a prognosis. When it comes to America's attempts to decrease air pollution and protect the ozone layer, Blatt gives surprisingly good grades (A and A-). The world's rapid response to the ozone problem, he says, "is a fine example of what can be accomplished when cooperation prevails among nations." But from failing to ratify the Kyoto Treaty to failing to discourage suburban sprawl (which means, among other things, longer drive times and larger, more energy-inefficient houses), Americans aren't doing enough to stop global warning, he says. We should practice better private conservation—e.g., use shower heads that save water—but what's required is systemic change. Frank but hopeful, serious but readable, this is an excellent environmental science primer.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Professor of geology Blatt has compiled an accessible primer of environmental topics of concern to most Americans. Covering everything from water pollution to energy, global warming, and the ozone layer, Blatt offers hard data and possible solutions for each subject. His honesty is refreshing. A chapter on energy extols solar power while noting its expense and the technology's current limitations (it would take an array of solar panels the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined to supply America's current electrical demand). Wind power is also honestly considered; one of the least expensive nonpolluting ways to generate electricity, wind power could provide 20 percent of our nation's needs but, as the author notes, wind is intermittent and difficult to harness, and better fuel-cell technology needs to be developed. Odd facts enliven the book (who knew that worms living within a few miles of contaminated Chernobyl have switched from asexual to sexual reproduction?) and compensate for Blatt's sometimes simplistic prose. A good overview for the novice environmentalist. Rebecca Maksel
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262025728
• ISBN-13: 978-0262025720
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,052,218 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine overview of the major environmental issues we face, February 24, 2005

By 

Paul Tognetti "The real world is so much more... (Cranston, RI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? (Hardcover)

Deep down you know we are in trouble. But up until now you figured "what I don't know won't hurt me." That is human nature I suppose but the fact of the matter is that there is an ever increasing body of evidence that the world in which we live is in peril. Perhaps the bizarre weather events that have occured in the past year have convinced you. Or maybe global warming or a nearby toxic waste dump has gotten your attention. "America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making The Grade?" is an excellent way to get up to speed on the major environmental issues of our day. While this book should appeal to just about anyone concerned with these matters, author Harvey Blatt appears to have targeted those readers with no ax to grind who simply want to find out just what is going on. "America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making The Grade? " is a straightforward, matter of fact book that resists the sensationalism that is found in most other books on this subject. Author Harvey Blatt, a geologist by trade, discusses the topics that are important to all of us like clean water, clean air, climate, solid waste, fossil fuels, nuclear energy and more. But beyond just enumerating the myriad problems we face, Blatt also suggests possible solutions. And he goes one step further. Blatt encourages each of us to hold up a mirror and ask ourselves what we can do to make our world a better and safer place to live. To quote one Edward H. Hale from the beginning of Chapter 10: "I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do".

"America's Environmental Report Card" is presented in clear and easy to understand language and is supplemented by a great number of excellent graphs and illustrations throughout the book. Highly recommended.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An uncommonly readable, entertaining environmental reader, September 26, 2005

By 

Fred Schroyer (Waynesburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? (Hardcover)

This book is a real surprise! Dr. Harvey Blatt's "America's Environmental Report Card" (AERC) sounds heavy, but it is crisply written, entertaining, and loaded with quotable facts. It is well-researched and I was repeatedly startled by its revelations. Blatt is a fine storyteller who cannot resist humor and puns (from good to groaners).
Blatt presents his distillation of America's environmental performance as a report card: we get a lackluster "C" average overall, from a healthy "A" in ozone mitigation to a "D" for energy conservation and a "D" for global warming. AERC bristles with hundreds of facts, such as:
> Half of Americans distrust tap water and thus drink bottled water (even though 25% of bottled water IS tap water that costs 120 to 7500 times more, suckers!)
> 16% of Washington, DC's water pipes are toxic lead metal (explains Congressional behavior?)
> Oil supplies about 40% of U.S. energy, but our declining production means we import 60% of it, and drilling in Alaska would make a difference for only 6 months.
> To create your 16-ounce sirloin, a cow donated not only its life but 53 pounds of manure-urine blend that polluted a stream.
> A few inches of dirt is all the separates us from mass starvation, and our agricultural soil is fast-eroding.
> America produces 25% of Earth's food, but consumes so much of it that a casket maker now offers a triple-wide coffin.
> If all the planet's ice sheets melt, FL, LA, NJ, DE, CT, RI, and MA will be completely submerged, and half of the Carolinas, and most major coastal cities.
> Enjoying second-hand smoke indoors, with its 4,000 chemicals and 40 carcinogens, increases your risk of heart disease 20-70%.
> Remember Chernobyl? Now-bankrupt Belarus, which received 70% of the radiation, has over 50,000 children with thyroid cancers, & spends 25% of its budget alleviating Chernobyl's after effects.
We are wired to confront immediate threats like spilled gasoline, snarling dogs, and armed robbers. But we respond sluggishly to abstract, remote-seeming hazards like hurricanes & earthquakes, toxic waste & landfills, pollution & erosion, global warming & energy shortage, floods & droughts. It's tough for scientists to make voters and politicians listen, or for teachers to educate students about our fragile environment, or for Americans to change our lifestyles. But among Blatt's many nifty quotes is the insightful Lakota Sioux proverb: "We didn't inherit this land from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children."
Blatt takes no side, liberal or conservative; he simply presents the facts, colorfully. AERC's many graphics, maps, and pithy quotes make great slides and handouts for teaching and meetings. AERC is so accessibly written that it forms a broadly versatile primer for everyone: teachers and students (AERC is an engaging reader for an environment or ecology course), leaders, businesspeople, attorneys, politicians, naturalists, activists, health & safety people, scientists, academics.
It's a great read and reference. You'll leave America's Environmental Report Card with a solid perspective and new appreciation for our planet and what we are doing to it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The only enjoyable read on environmental disasters???, January 30, 2006

By 

Bette (East Coast USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? (Hardcover)

While the information presented here may not be "new news," plenty of interesting facts are made available, including the breakdown of water usage in the U.S. An astounding 41.2% of all water usage is attributed to toilet flushing!!! Also included in the water chapter is a list of synthetic chemicals in our water supply, and from which industries they come.

Some very interesting facts are supplied which are new news, at least to me; did you know that hazardous waste can be legally injected into the ground???

Easy to read, easily understandable, with pie charts, a guaranteed visual aid!