Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement [Paperback]

Andrew Rowell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0415128285 | ISBN-13: 978-0415128285 | Publication Date: September 26, 1996

The tide is turning against environmentalism as the political right, industry and governments fight back.
Green Backlash is a controversial expose of the anti-environmental movement. Tracing the rise of the backlash from the Wise Use movement in the USA, the author reveals its rapid spread worldwide: the anti-roads movement in the UK, forestry debates in Canada and Australia, marine resource issues in Europe, South-East Asia, and controversies such as the Brent Spar.
The backlash is set to get worse as the resource wars intensify. This book offers a greater understanding of the challenges and threats facing global environmentalism, concluding that the environmental movement now has a chance to re-evaluate and change for the better to beat the backlash - a chance that must not be missed.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Like Paul and Anne Ehrlich in Betrayal of Science and Reason (LJ 10/15/96), Rowell attempts to show that the environmental movement is under attack around the world. In many of the cases documented by Rowell, a freelance environmental consultant for Greenpeace, those working to protect the environment are subject to physical danger and mental abuse. Unfortunately, this book fails to convince. Rowell's wooden prose is too often written in the passive voice, and his anecdotes suffer from a dull sameness. He believes that all corporations are bad and that those who disagree with environmentalists' goals must be intent on the destruction of the natural world, hyperbole that undercuts his thesis. This is unfortunate because Rowell raises several important issues, including questions about the impact of corporate campaign money on political decisions affecting the environment and the heavy price many environmentalists in developing countries pay for their activism. For libraries that must choose, the Ehrlichs' book is a more balanced account. Rowell's book is for comprehensive collections only.?Randy Dykhuis, Michigan Lib. Consortium, Lansing
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

Overall, Green Backlash is a highly readable, disturbing account of the growing anti-environmental (ist) movement. The book reveals the harsher realities of environmental life at the tail end of the 20th century.
–CNS, March, 1997

...it is well-written, draws upon varied facets of the world environmental opposition, and provides a wake-up-call for those who are not well aware of global environmental affairs.
–Environmental History

... [the] environmental agenda is clear throughout.
–Skeptic

... disturbing ... In Green Backlash--which I heartily recommend to anyone concerned about the environment--Rowell concludes that the environmental movement must start to put forward positive solutions, not just call attention to problems.
–Alain Dessaint, Healthy and Natural Journal

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (September 26, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415128285
• ISBN-13: 978-0415128285
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,005,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stunning. Frightening, Very complete, November 3, 1997

By 

Natasha Gerson "Natasha Gerson" (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Green Backlash: Global Subversion of the Environment Movement (Paperback)

Apart from a slight blur in Rowells vision where Greenpeace is concerned and the fact that he consideres the world, global examples notwithstanding, still to be mostly America, a frightening, stunning and utterly mesmerising book. Halfway through the reader has to take all the implications into account and then apply them to similar cases in one's own surrounding. Very accurately, it illustrates that obviously old tactics of repression do not work anymore, having been recognised to often for what they are, so new strategies are called for to hold us down where the enviroment is concerned. This book is a must for anyone interested in enviromentalism. For me, environmental journalist in the Netherlands,a small, very regulated country with a sickening economic drive, an oasis of recognition. compliments.