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Jeffrey St. Clair

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Been Brown so Long, It Looked Like Green to Me: The Politics of Nature Paperback – October 1, 2003

by Jeffrey St. Clair (Author)

3.6 13 ratings

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From the co-founder of CounterPunch, "America’s best political newsletter" (Out of Bounds Magazine) comes a comprehensive seven-part reader on environmental politics. Covering everything from toxics to electric power plays, St. Clair gives you a shocking view of how money and power determine the state of our environment.

St. Clair names the culprits and exposes the deeds. The book opens with Oregon as a metaphor for the nation. Now becoming "Californicated," Oregon’s mythological beauty is transforming into just that: more myth every day.

In Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green to Me you’ll meet:

Bill Clinton, "saving" Yellowstone National Park from the miners. This turned out to be a thinly disguised a payoff of Noranda who was given leases on other federal lands.
Not to be outdone is Chainsaw George. Bush II is out to stop forest fires by stopping forests.
But St. Clair also profiles the heroes like David Chain who gave his life fighting for the forest, and founder of Friends of the Earth David Brower railing against the -increasing conformity of the environmental movement.

From the struggle over the lobo wolf in New Mexico to the fight to save the Grizzly (in Idaho), from the shooting of wild Bison in Montana to how the Sierra Club provided the cover for a federal program that shoveled federal lands into the hands of private investors, St. Clair gives a well-rounded account of where the environment stands -today—and what to do about it.

Praise for Jeffrey St. Clair’s White Out: The CIA, Drugs and the Press:

"A history of hypocrisy and political interference the like of which only Frederick Forsyth in a dangerous caffeine frenzy could make up."—The Guardian

About the Author

Jeffrey St. Clair is an award-winning investigative journalist, co-editor of political newsletter CounterPunch and author of nine books, including Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia.

Print length

350 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Common Courage Press
Publication date

October 1, 2003
Dimensions

6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
ISBN-10

1567512585
ISBN-13

978-1567512588
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Common Courage Press; First Edition (October 1, 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 350 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1567512585
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1567512588
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,492,568 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #198,436 in United States History (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.6 13 ratings

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Jeffrey St. Clair

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Jeffrey St. Clair (born 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana) is an investigative journalist, writer and editor. He is the co-editor, with Joshua Frank, of the political magazine and website CounterPunch, and a contributing editor to the monthly magazine In These Times. He has also written for The Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, The Nation, The New Statesman and The Progressive.

St. Clair attended the American University in Washington, D.C., majoring in English and history. In 1990, he moved to Oregon to edit the influential environmental magazine Forest Watch, later renamed Wild Forest Review. In 1994, he joined journalists Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein on CounterPunch. He now co-edits the newsletter and the popular website.

In 1998, he published his first book, with Cockburn, Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, a history of the CIA's ties to drug gangs from World War II to the Mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras. This was followed by A Field Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (with James Ridgeway), Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond, Al Gore: a User's Manual, The Politics of Antisemitism, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature, Imperial Crusades, Grand Theft Pentagon, A Dime’s Worth of Difference, End Times: the Death of the Fourth Estate, Red State Rebels, Born Under a Bad Sky, Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, Killing Trayvons: an Anthology of American Violence, Bernie and the Sandernistas, The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink, and An Orgy of Thieves: Neoliberalism and Its Discontents.

He was the recepient of the Anti-Censorship prize at the 2022 American Book Awards.

Jeffrey St. Clair lives in Oregon City with his wife Kimberly Willson, a librarian.

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BrickBurner

St. Clair is the Seymour Hersh of Environmental Journalism

Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2003

Verified Purchase

This is simply the best, most radical, take on environmental politics written in the last decade.

Many so-called environmentalists believe it is only the Republicans that rape our natural resources. Mainstream environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters seldom reward Republicans with high marks -- so the Democrats must be more apt at protecting nature they contend.

St. Clair debunks this myth with a lucid style that makes me think that perhaps Ed Abbey has been reincarnated as a radical journalist.

However, this book is not only for environmentalists: it is a must read for anybody who has ever been on a hike or driven a car past a clear cut and wondered "how and why did this happen?"

This collection should be for the environment, what Fast Food Nation has been for our food culture. It is a smart well researched collection of essays. St. Clair knows his stuff and we are all so lucky to have him share it with us.

33 people found this helpful

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Michael C

Torn on this book...

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2020

Verified Purchase

First off, let me start by saying I love St. Clair, and if you're into environmental politics and great analysis you should check out his website, CounterPunch. This book is very consistent with the content on that site, in that it provides really in-depth reporting and great analysis. St. Clair has a knack for gaming out the intricacies of environmental deal making and the politics behind the various deals reported.

That being said, I had a couple complaints with this book. First, the book itself is more a collection of articles. Because of this, the book doesn't really have a flow, or an overarching theme. It really just dives into pieces of legislation, political actors, and deals being made (usually to open public land for extractive industries). Secondly, it could sometimes feel a little ranty. I love St. Clair's writing, and generally find him funny and charming. That said, he can really go off on long tangents and next thing you know a page of a 3 page article was devoted to a bit of a tangent.

Overall, if you're looking for a good primer on environmental politics, this is a good place to start. It may feel outdated, but the depressing part of this book is that it's still fairly up to date. Sure, the faces have changed, but the politics have remained the same.

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Michael Donnelly

It's the Life Suppoort System, Stupid

Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2004

It's the Life Support System, Stupid.
BY
MICHAEL DONNELLY
"They say we can't win without the Big Greens and the funders. Yet, that's the only way we've ever won."
Mike Roselle, co-founder Earth First!
Jeffrey St. Clair's book, "Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green To Me" (Common Courage Press, 2004) is a 400-page verification of Roselle's statement.
After a brilliant "Opening Statement," the book starts out with an edited version of Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein's summary of the events that led to the modern environmental movement and giving credit where due, surprisingly for many, to our "greatest environmental president" Richard M. Nixon, and, not so unexpectedly to the great Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and his allies.
The summary goes on to chart the rise and fall of the Big Greens as they tepidly challenged Republican-led depredations and then completely collapsed in a spasm of Clinton sycophancy -- illustrated perfectly by their surrender of the grassroots' Ancient Forest victory.
From there, it's the same thing over and over again in campaign after campaign. St. Clair charts how local activists rise up to challenge corporate assaults on nature only to see the Groundhog Day-like script repeat -- the Big Greens and their foundation masters come in, take credit for the grassroots' hard work, use the issue to raise funds and then cut a Democrat and corporate-friendly "compromise."
There are so many issues covered here, it could very well be the definitive history of every ecological issue since the first Earth Day.
Wilderness issues appear first, as they did for the early environmental movement's heroes like the arch-druid, David Brower. Contrast Brower's life-long dedication to all things wild with the sorry tale of Eastern millionaire G. Jon Roush, then president of the Wilderness Society, who clearcuts ancient forests on his own hobby ranch in Montana's Bitterroot Valley - an act called "roughly akin to the head of Human Rights Watch being caught torturing a domestic servant."
The slaughter of Yellowstone's bison, the strip-mining of the oceans, the suffocating of salmon streams and the murder of activist David Chain all come under much needed scrutiny.
The toxic nature of Big Ag is dissected early on, as are the predations of Big Oil, King Coal and the conscienceless Nuclear industry.
Excellent uncovering of the continued assault on America's indigenous people, their remaining lands and barely hanging on culture is perhaps the books most necessary section. These stories have been all but ignored in the mainstream press. That the spineless Democratic Party Senate "leader," Tom Daschle (D)-SD is able to get Big Green support for yet another raid on Paha Sapa (the Black Hills), the sacred lands of the Sioux is just about all one needs to know about the rot that permeates the Democrats and the DC-based environmental establishment. That the sorry deal on the Black Hills is being used by the Bush administration as the template for "post-fire" logging assaults all over the West shows exactly where the bankrupt pro-Democrat leanings have led.
Stories about military pollution and the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and what's happened to the good people of Fallon, Nevada are the creepiest in the book. It's enough to make one throw up one's hands and run for a cave in the hills.
But, in the end, hope is all over the place. As St. Clair notes time and again, real activists are valiantly working to hold off the predators and their political and nonprofit enablers. Reading their stories and realizing that there are hundreds of folks out there who are fighting for the fate of Gaia, is the antidote to the despair one easily could get locked into.
This is an important tome. Unlike so many other cautious tomes written about environmental issues, it names names and has the facts to back it all up. It also names places - places that deserve better. And, hopefully, with this fine compilation out there, we'll see more support for these special places and an even greater vision motivate generations to come.

52 people found this helpful

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Theodore Chu

Been Brown So Long, It Looked Like Green To Me: The Politics of Nature

Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2013

Unfortunately this book is laced with inaccuracies and unsubstantiated accusations. The documentation for many of the author's claims consists of "according to some people", or "it is felt by some", or "some people report" type statements with no supporting evidence. This book does the movement a disservice and panders to excitable but uninformed readers.

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CW

a number of individual truths

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2008

To steal a line from another reviewer "Crusading environmental journalist Jeffrey St. Clair has written a devastating tale of corporate plunder, political hypocrisy and ecological loss." Too bad my copy was printed on virgin not recycled paper. This is a great book for paranoid earth first types who ignore the good and focus on the bad. It tells one side of the story very well. A side that needs to be brought to the fore but I personally am put off by the unwillingness to look at all aspects of the environmental movement. While the focus on a number of individual truths is not necessarily a 'lie' it most likely is also not the 'truth'. Books like this are written for the already indoctrinated not those looking for enlightenment. I suspect dollars had more to do with St. Clair's motivation than concern for the environment.

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