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A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys: And a Few Ideas on How to Stop Them

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In the dominant celebrity culture, explanations of societal phenomena that focus on institutions, laws and processes tend not to resonate with the public.

Increasingly, it seems, events and trends are understood and reported as the products of individuals: Bill Gates creates the computer revolution, Boris Yeltsin leads Russia to a purported democracy, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, flanked by Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan and Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers guide the world economy through turbulent times to a prosperous future.

Well, say reporters James Ridgeway and Jeffrey St. Clair, let's apply the personification-of-social-developments approach even-handedly. In A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press), Ridgeway and St. Clair name names of the worst polluters, deforesters and despoilers of the wild, and the top lobbyists they employ to pass laws, gut regulations, broker deals and win tax breaks to legitimize their poisoning and destruction of the environment.

"You can focus on institutions and laws until you're blue in the face," Ridgeway says, but no one will pay attention.

"While there has been a plethora of books on how the environment is getting better," he says, in fact things are getting worse. And the way to grab people's attention is not by waving statistical trends on deforestation or global warming or any of a myriad of other environmental ills. People respond when they can put a human face on problems.

There's another reason to identify the "bad guys," Ridgeway says. "You need to know your enemy," Ridgeway explains. "How they operate, what they eat, what their styles" of doing business are. So who do Ridgeway and St. Clair identify as the bad guys? Here's a smattering:

* John Bryson, CEO of Edison International. Ridgeway and St. Clair list Bryson's "most imaginative sideline" as co-founding the Natural Resources Defense Council. Edison's subsidiary Mission Energy is building dirty coal-fired plants in Indonesia.

* Charles Hurwitz, CEO of Maxxam, who just managed to ransom the Headwaters redwood grove in northern California for nearlyn half a billion dollars. Faced with threats that Maxxam saws would chew the entire forest, the Clinton administration agreed to pay $480 million to acquire Headwaters -- even though the government estimated the market value at less than $100 million and even though companies owned by Hurwitz owe the government nearly $2 billion for the collapse of a savings and loan.

* Jim Bob Moffett, head of Freeport McMoran, the mining giant that operates the world's largest gold and copper mine in Indonesia. Local indigenous communities charge the company has polluted local rivers, killing fish and forests, and that the Indonesian military has committed brutal human rights abuses to crush anti-Freeport protests. Moffett's "quotable quote," according to Environmental Bad Guys, refers to Freeport pollution at the Indonesian mine: "[It's] equivalent to me pissing in the Arafura Sea."

* Ira Rennert, who is now building the largest residence in the United States, on Long Island, and controls 95 percent of Renco Group, which in turn owns Magnesium Corp. of America, "the largest source of air pollution in America."

* Donald Pearlman, a former high official in the Reagan Energy and Interior Departments, who "is by far the energy industry's most effective lobbyist in fighting climate control rules."

Identifying the bad guys is Ridgeway and St. Clair's entry point, but it is not the entirety of their handy Pocket Guide. In addition to peeling away corporate greenwashing to reveal how dirty Big Business really is, they highlight the critical work being done by thousands of grassroots groups in the United States to put the bad guys in their place.

Ridgeway and St. Clair have subtitled Environmental Bad Guys "(and a Few Ideas on How to Stop Them)." The most important of these ideas, Ridgeway explains, is that hope for saving the environment lies not with "the large environmental groups which sit in Washington, and don't represent anybody or anything," but with the smaller groups that have maintained their edge, practice a combative politics and are directly confronting corporate power.

It turns out that while highlighting individual bad guys may be a key to focusing the public on environmental degradation, the key to blocking them is not to rely on individual celebrities, but garnering public support. Prominent environmental good guys -- people like David Brower, founder of the Earth Island Institute and Friends of the Earth, and Lois Gibbs, made famous at Love Canal and now heading the Center for Health, Environment and Justice -- have made their mark not as backroom lobbyists, but as effective organizers and crusaders for environmental justice.

Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor.

A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys is a sharply-written profile of how American liberty & justice and our planet is being killed off. Written by two top-notch investigative reporters, James Ridgeway of the Village Voice and Jeffrey St. Clair of CounterPunch, the book is filled with horrifying tales of eco-pillage and disturbing photos and graphics, including Dewer's profiles of corporate pirates such as Charles Hurwitz, butcher of American jobs and ancient redwoods, and Jim Bob Moffett, whose mining company, Freeport McMoRan, has been linked to human rights abuses in Indonesia.

Unlike most books on liberty or the environment, this one goes right for the throat, exposing the people and their chemical, nuclear, and extractive industries gouging the Earth and poisoning and killing our people. And how these robber barons manage to exercise their malignant corporate power through legions of lobbyists, lawyers, public relations hacks and corrupting political handouts.

St. Clair and Ridgeway not only rip the mask off of the corporations taking away liberty and justice, plunder the Earth, but their book is one of the first to expose the lame response of so many of the establishment's lapdog environmental groups. With Clinton and Gore's rise to power, big green groups, such as The Wilderness Society and the Sierra Club, went along for the ride, allowing the administration to get away with (or actually aiding and abetting) one shameful deal after another in exchange for coffee with Al Gore and a pat on the head.

But the story is not all doom and gloom. Ridgeway and St. Clair's guide also charts how innovative grassroots citizens creative campaigns from around the country have waged successful battles against the nuclear industry, hazardous waste dumpers and even rapacious timber companies. Citizens have demonstrated they can take back their constitutional rights to liberty and justice, their country, their flag, and their future.

All Americans, concerned about our survival as a species, the survival of our country, its democracy and people should read this book and take heed.

Forever Wild and Free Tim Hermach

Here in northern Nevada we live in an ecological ruin, courtesy of the big mining companies, which have gouged out the mountains and poisoned what pass for rivers in these parts. But who owns these companies? And how do they keep getting away with it? This book will tell you. I was surprised to learn that one of the biggest mining companies in Nevada, American Barrick, was actually a Canadian company and the former President George Bush served on its board. And it's not just mining firms. This little book gives you the lowdown on big timber, the chemical firms and the oil giants. It names names, telling you who their lawyers and lobbyists are, how much money they sluice into the pockets of their favorite politicians and how many times they've been caught violating the law. An incredible bargain.

"A Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys" (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press) by James Ridgeway and Jeffrey St. Clair

A Review by Michael Donnelly

The Earth isn't dying. It's being killed and the people doing the killing have names, faces and corporations they hide behind and we intend to tell you who they are and how they do it.

That about sums up the premise and promise of the new book, "Environmental Bad Guys" by James Ridgeway and Jeffrey St. Clair. And, in an easy to read format, the authors deliver.

Ridgeway and St. Clair dispense with the usual focus on political institutions and laws that define the nation's anemic Big Green cartel. Instead, they opt for direct exposure of the "loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires" and the lobbyists and "environmental" groups they handsomely pay to further their polluting, deforesting and otherwise despoiling of the Commons for private profit.

The corporate practice of Greenwashing comes in for some well needed exposure, as well. And, also exposed - the shameless efforts of Teflon Green groups who haul in millions of corporate dollars to ensure that the sludge sticks anywhere but to its creators.

The book doesn't just trot out the facts and the bad actors. It offers hope, as well. A major part of the book is highlighting the grass roots, responsible greens who are making a difference against huge odds. The book is subtitled, "and a Few Ideas on How to Stop Them."

Expect the roaches unaccustomed to the light of such a book to run for cover. They'll surely break out the counter attack with assaults on the authors from the Wise Use loonies on one hand to the house-broken "Greens" on the other. It behooves the average air-breathing, water-drinking citizen to read this book and further their own self-defense.

Although it lacks scholarly citation and in-depth analysis, this book sizzles. Sometimes a small, compact, hard-hitting, concisely-worded book is exactly what the doctor ordered. If you are sick of theoretical softies telling you the environment is this or that, look no farther. This book takes dead aim at actual polluters and the stinky cloud of facts that surround them. Bull's Eye!!!

At $ 10.95, this is the perfect atop the coffeetable, hiding in your jacket pocket/purse, or as gift to a friend. Though short, the book is wide-ranging. You'll learn about the companies that pilfer the earth resources, as well as those then add to the earth's toxic burden through their reckless use of these resources. Reading about the leakage of radioactivity into the heavily fished Bering Sea--covered up by the government and later exposed by Greenpeace--will make one think twice about ordering a McFishstick sandwich. You'll also gain insight into the lobbyists defending the toxic interests and find out about the environmental movement, parts of which also serve to protect the polluters. One deficit of the book is the lack of coverage of global warming matters; yet there is a thorough review of the petroleum industry that has brought us the problem as well as the nuclear industry now trying to revive itself as the antidote for a warming planet. Reading Ridgeway and St. Clair's review of atomic industry's sorry record will make you think twice about giving the Nuke Huggers a second chance. Pocket Guide to Environmental Bad Guys is unique amongst environmental books for offering a springboard of worthy alternative eco-groups complete with addresses as an antidote to the mainstream miasma. The brief exposes and chapters chock full of startling information make this a perfect introduction into environmental issues; highly recommended for the budding environmentalist--but don't expect to see this book offered in any schools -- it would be too controversial. Punctuated with photos, illustrations, and Bad Guy Profiles, the multimedia MTV generation should take well to it as well as the more serious reader.

Global warming is junk science, and the idiot that wrote this book knew it even back in the 1990s. Don't waste your time reading this strongly biased alarmist garbage.

When will these environmental wackos decide to actually examine the science before jumping to conclusions. Environmental releases such as TRI emissions do not equate to public exposure hazards. Dioxin hazards are a myth, as are Global Warming claims. These claims are merely spread by environmental groups to try to blindfold society into providing them financial and political support. There are real environmental and health hazards, and there are bad environmental actors. But those who paint all industry this way are a waste of time, forever trapped in a left-wing, anti-American "Captain Planet" episode.