Earth Odyssey - Softcover

MARK HERTSGAARD

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349111812 ISBN 13: 9780349111810

Publisher: ABACUS, 1999

Synopsis

Like many of us, Mark Hertsgaard has long worried about the declining health of our environment. But in 1991, he decided to act on his concern and investigate the escalating crisis for himself. Traveling on his own dime, he embarked on an odyssey lasting most of the decade and spanning nineteen countries. Now, in Earth Odyssey , he reports on our environmental predicament through the eyes of the people who live it.

From the gilded boardrooms of Paris to the traffic-clogged streets of Bangkok, we travel from the deep human past to our still unfolding future. Much of the story revolves around people like Zhenbing, Hertsgaard's charismatic interpreter in China, whose desire to escape poverty leaves him indifferent to his country's horrific air and water pollution. We also meet Garang, a proud Dinka tribesman whose response to Sudan's famine shows the difficulty of building an environmentally sustainable future without bridging the gap between rich and poor. Drawing on interviews with Václav Havel, Al Gore, Jacques Cousteau, and numerous other prominent figures, Hertsgaard offers fresh insight into such complex issues as humanity's growing addiction to the automobile, the insidious spread of nuclear technology, and the inevitable tension between unfettered capitalism and the health of the biosphere.

Earth Odyssey is a vivid, passionate narrative about one man's journey around the world in search of the answer to the most important question of our Is the future of the human species at risk? Combining first-rate reportage with irresistible storytelling, Mark Hertsgaard has written an essential--and ultimately hopeful--book about the uncertain fate of humankind.

About this title

Review

Paying his own way, Mark Hertsgaard set out on a world tour in 1991 wondering what people thought of environmental problems. Earth Odyssey is his result, a sweeping and provocative work of travel and serious reporting that covers 19 countries and reveals, with often stark reality and vision, the legacy and prospects for our global environment.

Hertsgaard focuses on and reveals much of his story through the people who guide him and whom he meets along the way. After touring a state-owned paper factory in Chongqing, China, and seeing billowing clouds of chlorine and foaming rivers, Hertsgaard hears his guide and interpreter Zhenbing mourning for his country. In Sudan, Hertsgaard visits areas of extreme famine and poverty, where "the environment is no abstraction" to the people who live there. Through interviews with Vaclav Havel, Jacques Cousteau, and Al Gore, as well as research and philosophy about the roles of industry and technology, the global environmental picture is etched skillfully chapter by chapter. When at Africa's Lake Turkana, Hertsgaard delineates in clarity and detail the evolution of our species and the history of technology to build perspective on our current lifestyles, values, and environmental problems.

Earth Odyssey is not only a good book, but an important one--even essential--grasping the true human predicament as we face a worldwide environmental breakdown.--Byron Ricks

From Kirkus Reviews

Freelance journalist Hertsgaard (A Day in the Life: The Music and Artistry of the Beatles, 1995, etc.) circles the earth to gauge the extent of environmental destruction and local peoples' attitude toward itand, by extension, whether the species will survive the 21st century. His travels have revealed to Hertsgaard that Earths in miserable health. From the Dinka in Ethiopia and Sudan, who suffer from the twin ravages of drought and famine, to Bohemian schoolchildren who wear gas masks to class as a result of coal burning, to the unpleasantly tactile quality of the auto-fouled air in Bangkok (and any other urban area without decent public transportation), these are dark days on the environmental front. Unsurprisingly, one culprit Hertsgaard identifies incessantly is capitalism, ``predicated on continual growth, and traditionally growth has meant ecological destruction and decline.'' His case is made, his point taken. The other culprit is the continuing division between haves and have-nots: ``It is easy for outsiders to warn against the long-term costs of damming Africa's rivers . . . but it is akin to a glutton admonishing a beggar on the evil of carbohydrates.'' Guilt keeps the big consumers at bay (and their politicians are stymied by conflicting interests). Meanwhile, hopes for a better future, though tinged with fatalism, keep developing countries hard at developing (I am used to it becomes a mantra whenever he questions folks on their revolting environment). The result: stasis. Hertsgaard advises us to cut back on consumption, promote environmentally sound industry, and shift the surplus wealth from the rich, where it languishes, to the poor, by whom he believes it will be spent. However barmy, however wishful Hertsgaard's prescriptions, he's got one thing right: when it comes to the environment, we remain the sorcerer's apprentice, and the mess only gets bigger. ($40,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: ABACUS
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0349111812
• ISBN 13: 9780349111810
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372