Fighting
for Love in the Century of Extinction: How
Passion and Politics Can Change the Future
by Eban Goodstein
Here's what one reviewer said
(comparing this book with Blessed Unrest,
by Paul Hawkins):
Next we come to Goodstein,
an economics professor at Lewis & Clark
College in Portland, Ore. His Fighting for
Love is a passionate assertion of the power
of the interconnection of the natural world.
Blending science, economics and personal
reflections—he urges us to consider
our very love of the natural world as a
key weapon in our fight to save it.
But the book is more than
lofty notions about love and the linking
of things. Goodstein’s practical
side shines throughout, too, especially
in his exhortation that we must stabilize
emissions and invest tens of billions
in clean-energy technologies sooner than
later. It’s too late to avoid “lower
end” warming, he writes, so the
cause now is to avoid catastrophic warming.
Indeed, he believes avoiding this is the
key challenge for those living at this
point in history.
Goodstein’s optimism
is not as divorced from reality as Hawken’s
sometimes seems; he understands that victory
will require political leadership, global
catch-up, governmental structures and
nonstop citizen involvement in the political
process.
What’s most refreshing
about Fighting for Love is the fact that
the author has responded to his own call
for action and is now serving as project
director for Focus the Nation, an educational
initiative with the goal of holding a
“nationwide discussion” on
January 31, 2008 about global warming
solutions. Goodstein has been traveling
the country, coordinating colleges and
high schools, generally getting people
geared up for a fight to save the future.
In a funny way, Goodstein
and Focus the Nation’s planned January
31 happenings may provide one of many signs
that Hawken is right. Wouldn’t it
be cool if an unexpected movement has actually
been birthed, if Earth’s human inhabitants
were really readying to save their threatened
planet?
source:
www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=594040 |
