Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182521 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-31
• Released on: 2006-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive overview of our impact on the environment
Al Gore has compiled a comprehensive overview of our impact on the environment. You may not agree with everything he says, but it is clear that he has thought broadly and deeply about the subject. He makes a good overview of the science and where we are today, and provide a broad plan get us to sustainability.

An Olympic-level Reality Check
This work sets an incredible standard for what the overprivileged and uninitiated might call "alarmist" environmental literature. It is a definitive work that comprehensively addresses the state of the environment, tracing its historical aspects and examining its societal dynamics, even to the level of modern psychotherapeutic psychology. He is meticulous in presenting the facts and images without veering into untenable predictions of non-essential disasters, as plagued Paul Ehrlich's early books. He refers carefully to scientific information, and the unavoidable consequences of foreseeable conditions. Global climate change, for example, will likely make some areas uninhabitable. Gore makes a profound analogy by incively comparing the tragic environmental situation with the unprecedented nature of the nuclear arms race, citing how it has changed from a "fight- to a process of destruction." Industrial civilization and world ecology have reached a similar stage, he indicates.
His solutions are strong given his level of perception and analysis as a government policymaker. They are not much good for rapid change, however, or for grassroots action. While health food stores already existed back in 1992, it is amazing to witness how many efforts have lead to more sustainable products since then. Unfortunately, the green business trend is new, and, perhaps protectively, he appears to leave out any significant mention of environmentalists and entrepreneurial efforts, especially the initiating of Greenpeace by its Sierra Club founders, health food stores and food cooperatives, Anita Roddick and the Body Shop, and Greenpeace's promotion of non-chlorine bleaching techniques. Since then, of course, have come windpower, hybrid cars, organic clothing, Hawken's and Lovins' Natural Capitalism, Interface and CEO Ray Anderson, Greider's Soul of Capitalism about the ownership crisis in capitalism and the need for employee and cooperative reform, and so on. In conjunction with these grassroots constructive efforts, Gore's work continues to provide an excellent source to remember exactly what is occurring, what is at stake and why learning to take multiple consumer, entrepreneurial, technological, educational, protest, and legislative action are all the more crucial all the time.

This is not a book about environmentalism
Don't get me wrong, it features a well referenced, lucid, healthy treatment of environmental trouble. However, the scope of the book is far broader; it wonders about the potential of the human species. Climate crisis is not a disease of the earth, but a symptom of our still novice ability to control power which develops faster than we can understand it.

Mr. Gore explores these challenges with shocking clarity and objectivism (impressive for a then-Senator!) and proposes solutions that not only preserve our economic and technological position but open opportunity to advance the state of the art.

The bibliography, a veritable gold mine of fascinating stuff to explore is worth the cover price alone.