| The Really Inconvenient Truths: Seven Environmental Catastrophes Liberals Don't Want You to Know About--Because They Helped Cause Them |  | Author: Iain Murray
Publisher: Regnery Press
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Seller: HPB-Outlet Ohio
Rating:  35 reviews
Sales Rank: 101,071
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Printing
Pages: 354
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 1596980540
Dewey Decimal Number: 363.7
EAN: 9781596980549
ASIN: 1596980540
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
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Product Description
Iain Murray's rollicking exposé reveals how environmental blowhards waste more energy, endanger more species, and actually kill more people than the environmental villains they finger.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 35
 Well Researched and Balanced Environmentalism June 13, 2008
S. Peek (Rocky Mountains, USA)
52 out of 58 found this review helpful
As anyone who pays any attention to current events knows, energy and food prices are spiralling upward. Many do not know the reasons for that.
In this scholarly review of the subject, Iain Murray explores those issues and several others. He not only provides the reasons for many of our current predicaments, he also supplies solutions.
As the subtitle states, this book deals with 'seven environmental catastrophes that liberals don't want you to know about - because they helped cause them.' Although many environmentalists likely have good motives, the unintended consequences of the policies that they push have been and continue to be disastrous for our planet and the human race.
One example is the ban on the 'dreaded DDT'. Mr. Murray does a great job of showing how that ban has resulted in the deaths of a countless number of children in Africa due to malaria.
Another is ethanol. Murray makes the case that the ethanol mandates enacted by the U.S. Congress have led to much higher food prices and shortages. Additionally, it is ineffective in battling the 'problem'. Ethanol may produce 1/3 less greenhouse gas than gasoline, but it uses more gasoline to produce it than it replaces.
The Yellowstone Fire of 1988 is another great environmental tragedy brought about by the policies of so-called environmentalists. The war against logging and the anti controlled burn crusades created a powder keg. The fuel buildup was so huge that a massive fire was inevitable.
In the case of The Endangered Species Act, Mr. Murray shows how it has created disincentives to protect some of the species it claims to champion while at the same time wreaking havoc on our economy.
There are several other disasters that leftist environmentalist policies have caused. As Murray says, 'Liberal environmentalism, with its focus on box-checking rules, preference for word over substance, and its obsession with punishment of the guilty, has on too many occasions failed to prevent environmental damage, and in the meantime has harmed the economy and the humans whose well-being the economy represents.'
This is an important and timely book. From skyrocketing energy prices to high priced food and shortages of the same, the policies of the radical environmentalist movement are greatly damaging the world food supply, economy, and the environment. This book should be read by all voters and policymakers.
Outstanding April 23, 2008
Griswel (Rochester, NY)
143 out of 174 found this review helpful
There are some issues which the press doesn't present in a one-sided fashion: the ones they refuse to mention at all.
If you want to learn about problems which you won't hear about otherwise, this book is the place to start. If you read only the section on malaria you'll never look at environmentalism the same way again.
Plus, this is the perfect Earth Day gift!
The Best Recent Book About the Environment. Period. April 24, 2008
Dr3rdEye (Oak Hill, VA)
97 out of 119 found this review helpful
I'll make it simple: this is the best book written about the environment in the past five years. It's a well-researched, well-written, never boring look at the way that the liberal passion for central planning has damaged just about every aspect of the natural environment. Although the subject mater may seem dry at first glance, this book actually makes it fun. It's a must-read.
The end of the world is not the only option May 17, 2008
Lene Johansen (Columbia, MO USA)
45 out of 55 found this review helpful
Iain Murray's book tells a dismal tale of the issues that the environmental movement failed. Patrick Moore (Greenpeace founder) has often talked about the reasons he left the movement he founded. He has mentioned the dismal view of humans, the radicalization of the movement, the lack of science-based policy pursuit. Iain Murray does not tell you that it is so, he shows you the issues that the movement abandoned and disregarded because it was convenient.
The people involved in either side of this debate are often angry and defensive. The debate has been dirty for a long time. What struck me with Murray's book is his gentle voice, his descriptive, evidence based narrative. I grew up in the green movement; my first political engagement was in the Norwegian version of Friends of the Earth's youth group. I soon got disillusioned, and had I known the seven truths that Murray tells, I might have left sooner than I did.
If you are serious about your desire do conservation work, if you are serious about your dedication to make the human footprint on earth smaller, read this book. There are other alternatives out there, where you can contribute to a greener, wealthier world. A world where humans flourish and the environment is protected. Don't by into the dismal view of the Malthusian totalitarians. As Murray shows in this book, their policies kills people and hurts the environment.
A Little Strident, But Factual December 11, 2008
David M. Dougherty (Arkansas)
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Although the tone of the writing sometimes put me off, I found the six of the seven examples well documented and argued. The author's conclusions were fully supportable from the evidence. However, the equating of "Liberals" to "Environmentalists" is not as exact as the author would like us to believe. But his analysis of environmentalism as a new and powerful secular religion (based in Mother Earth as God) is directly on target. To look at the seven (actually eight) cases:
(1) Global Warming & Al Gore. Although Gore and the media claim there is general scientific consensus on global warming and that the warming is due to man's intervention, that statement is false. At the time of this review (12/08), there is evidence that the aveage world temperature has been increasing about a degree per century, but there is no irrefutable evidence that this is coming from any actions of man. (See Solomon, "The Deniers") Al Gore is making millions with his propaganda efforts to panic the American population with a doomsday scenerio that cannot be supported by scientific evidence. Sounds like a scurrilious politician to me.
(2) The banning of DDT based on the propaganda work by Rachel Carson reversed the control of malaria and other diseases that had been achieved by the 1960s, and tens of millions of humans have died as a result. This is well-trodden ground, fully supportable by scientific evidence, but has not been reversed due to the environmental lobby. Even worse, Carol Browder, Clinton's head of the EPA, even banned Diazinon, the most effective controller of ticks and other pests since DDT, and now Lyme disease and Rocky Mountain Fever are exploding in the US. One can argue that environmentalists are abject racists in seeking to ban the effective control of malaria in Africa, not caring about the people there because they are black, but I invite them to come to my ranch and spend a week outside. They will be bitten from one to five times by ticks, and I would like to see their lily-white, elitist reaction when they realize the possibility that they contracted Lyme disease.
(3) Ethanol. The problem of burning food for energy instead of eating it for survival is covered extremely well. As a cattle rancher (horrors, I raise animals for FOOD!), I see the rise in the price of corn due to its diversion into a source for ethanol. Using ethanol in place of gasoline will cause widespread hunger throughout the Third World, but again, environmentalists are not concerned since they are all yellow, brown or black anyway and we need to start lowering the population. (When will the 3rd World wake up and see what is going on?)
(4) Contraception pollutants: Estrogen released into the water is drastically altering animal reproduction. Again, this is based on solid evidence, but totally ignored by environmentalists who see this as a by-product of the wonman's right to control her own body and enjoy sex whenever she desires. OK, I understand the issue, but why can't we talk about it? Oh, I forgot, one doesn't point out the "unintended consequences."
(5) Yellowstone & Forest Fire Control. We have gone back and forth on the issue of fighting fires or allowing nature to take its course. However, allowing the forests to build up extensive amounts of underbrush and then attempting a "controlled burn" is a recipe for disaster. And so it has proved. Particularly when the Government bans logging or the cutting of fire control roads and the like. The moral: government management is worse than private ownership and management. Again, the evidence is irrefutable.
(6) The Cuyahoga River on fire. This is the weakest of the cases, but the fire happened because the State of Ohio issued permits for dumping into the river over the objections of the local Clevelanders. Cleveland had already taken steps to clean up the river (and Lake Erie), but higher government intervention brought about the debacle. The moral here is that the more remote a government is from the scene, the less effective it is (for example, FEMA.) So why are we attempting to interject the Federal Government into everything?
(7)Endangered Species. Yep, this Act has had a host of unintended consequences, all bad, and the entire idea is probably so badly flawed as to be unworkable. In many cases, the Government's right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, and ecologically insignificant insects and animals are considered much more important than human beings. Have you ever noticed how animal rights activitists love animals but hate people? (Other people, of course.)
(8) State Planning (Communism) At Work. The case is about the disappearance of the vast majority of the Aral Sea on the altar of state planning. Once again, the actions of a powerful government, unstoppable by local individuals, wreaked an ecological disaster.
So the answer? Return the land to the people through local control and private ownership. Oh, I forgot (& here's where the liberals come in), liberals and environmentalists always know what is best for us, and their answer is always another federal agency or government regulation. Welcome to fuddle, muddle, and catastrophy.
This is an excellent book and should be required reading in all American high schools.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 35
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