America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? (Mit Press)

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!

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!) <br />> 16% of Washington, DC's water pipes are toxic lead metal (explains Congressional behavior?) <br />> 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. <br />> To create your 16-ounce sirloin, a cow donated not only its life but 53 pounds of manure-urine blend that polluted a stream. <br />> A few inches of dirt is all the separates us from mass starvation, and our agricultural soil is fast-eroding. <br />> America produces 25% of Earth's food, but consumes so much of it that a casket maker now offers a triple-wide coffin. <br />> 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. <br />> Enjoying second-hand smoke indoors, with its 4,000 chemicals and 40 carcinogens, increases your risk of heart disease 20-70%. <br />> 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. <br />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." <br />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, a

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" is a straight forward, 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. Recommended.