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Title: Science Under Siege: The Politicians' War on Nature and Truth by Todd Wilkinson ISBN: 1-55566-211-0 Publisher: Johnson Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.55 (22 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "An extremely good book" ---Bear News
Comment: From a review that appeared in Bear News, the journal of the Great Bear Foundation: Calling science "a moral compass for making the right decisions," Science Under Siege argues convincingly thatpublic agencies have lost sight of true north. This book is very hard on bureaucrats--many of them professional scientists who have lost their way--and on political manipulations by elected officials and corporate lobbyists who care not one whit for the bears or habitat! This is an extremely good book; it hits hard but it cleverly lets the bad guys hang themselves with their own words while promoting the good science, the good scientists and government officials. It also makes one sad to realize how the concepts of civil service and specialized agencies have been so destroyed by politicians and Big Money. President Nixon started the trend of replacing professional agency heads with politicial cronies--a problem that is still growing today. Dave Mattson, "the hero of the bears," who studied grizzlies in Yellowstone National Park and others deserve all the credit this book gives them.
Rating: 5
Summary: a courageous, relentlessly readable book
Comment: His subject is the fate of scientists whose research brings them into conflict with the policies of the agencies they work for, especially the Forest Service, The Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Wilkinson's profiles of responsible scientists dislodged because of political pressure create a portrait of environmental irresponsibility-comtempt, even-within the bureaucracies whose ostensible mission is to serve the public interest on federally owned lands.
Rating: 5
Summary: A must read for everyone on the Planet...
Comment: Scientists, working for the US Government, are assigned a task regarding an endangered species or an endangered habitat. They report their finding honestly, and make recommendations based on their data. The private industry hears about these reports and the recommendations are not welcome: private logging companies, who use roads built with US tax dollars, don't want to hear about how their logging activities are driving the bull trout to extinction. The all-terrain vehicle industries don't want to hear about how ORV enthusiasts are tearing up desert lands, driving the desert tortoise to extinction. In spite of literally hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific articles published in main stream journals, the private industry claims the data gathered by the US Government scientists are weak at best, and do not prove anything. Politicians, who received huge campaign contributions from private industry, hear complaints from the loggers, ORV enthusiasts, and so forth, and start a cycle that will destroy the biologist that was only doing his or her job. They attempt to silence the scientist by reassigning them to a desk job, or cut the funding for their research back enough to cripple the entire research process.
The book angered me. I felt so helpless in the sea of bureaucracy that is allowing the last of our natural lands to being 'sold down the river' to special interest. The deserts are 'meant' to be play boxes for ORVs, the forests are 'meant' to be clear cut and sold to Japan, the caves are 'meant' to be exploited by mineral and oil companies. It's such a shame that these mindsets exist, at the expense of the environment. Scientists are trying to figure out what the actions of humankind are doing to the environment, but the forces that be do everything in their power to put a stop to it. Science is indeed, under attack by the status quo and our political state. This book documents the rape of Mother Earth for quick, Capitalistic gain. With philosophies like 'Manifest Destiny' and Capitalism, we are sure to eventually suffer the fate of extinction like so many hundreds of other plants and animals we made march down that dreary road. We actually believe that we are 100% separated from nature, and we rationalize why we should even allow species to exist that don't have utilitarian 'value'. Those that simply don't understand often say 'Why keep the kit fox [or any of the other endangered species] around, they are worthless animals'. We are cutting the threads of a complex web, several species at a time. Sure, the web can stand some change and does adjust, but too much change will bring the web down in the form of environmental catastrophe.
Before you toss that beer can out the car window, or pour that motor oil down the drain, please consider your actions. There is absolutely no guesswork here; we are cutting our own throats every time we do something along these lines that we naively consider insignificant. And, on the other side of the coin, huge activities like clear-cutting, are obviously detrimental to the environment; just look at the fish and the frogs, they are telling us what's happening loud and clear. They are the ones are actually speaking for Mother Earth. One day, humankind may actually listen to them.
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Title: Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West by Chip Ward ISBN: 1859843212 Publisher: Verso Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Tour of Duty : John Kerry and the Vietnam War by Douglas Brinkley ISBN: 0060565233 Publisher: William Morrow Pub. Date: 06 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken ISBN: 0525947647 Publisher: Dutton Books Pub. Date: 29 August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Our Limits Transgressed: Environmental Political Thought in America by Bob Pepperman Taylor ISBN: 0700607471 Publisher: University Press of Kansas Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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