| Contents Notes |
Water: no cholesterol, fat free, zero sugar -- Infrastructure: pipes, wires, roads, bridges, railroads, dams, airports, and levees -- Floods: when the levees break -- Garbage: trash talk -- Soil, crops, and food: dirt and nutrition -- Fossil fuels: energy from the past -- Alternative energy sources: energy for the future -- The nuclear energy controversy: radiation for everyone -- Climate change: what have we done? -- Air pollution: lung disease -- Conclusion: is there hope? Americans are concerned about the state of the environment, and yet polls show that many have lost faith in the ability of both scientists and politicians to solve environmental problems. In this book the author sorts through the deluge of conflicting information about the environment and offers an accessible overview of the environmental issues that are most important to Americans today. He has updated this second edition, revising and adding new material. He looks at water supplies and new concerns about water purity ; the dangers of floods (increased by widespread logging and abetted by glacial melting) ; infrastructure problems (in a new chapter devoted entirely to this subject) ; the leaching of garbage buried in landfills ; soil, contaminated crops, and organic food; fossil fuels ; alternative energy sources (in another new chapter) ; controversies over nuclear energy ; the increasing pace of climate change ; and air pollution. Along the way, he outlines ways to deal with these problems through workable and reasonable solutions that map the course to a sustainable future. America can lead the way to a better environment, he argues. We are the richest nation in the world, and we can afford it, in fact, we cannot afford not to. |
