The World We Create: A Message of Hope for a Planet in Peril

by Frances Beinecke, Bob Deans (Editor), Sigourney Weaver (Foreword by)

Overview

Since the dawn of the modern environmental movement, Frances Beinecke has been on its front lines, leading the charge for clean air, fresh water, healthy wildlife and fertile lands. As she prepares to retire as president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, The World We Create captures the story of her remarkable tenure as head of America’s leading environmental advocacy organization and lays out her vision for the future of the movement and the environmental challenges in the years ahead. This is the personal story of one of the few women ever to lead a national environmental organization in this country. It is a forward-leaning story that puts Beinecke at the table and on the ground with the emerging voices shaping the next generation of environmental stewardship and with the challenges they will inherit to confront issues such as climate change, fracking, nuclear power, the Keystone pipeline, and many others. Most important, The World We Create is a story of solutions, lighting the path forward to the kind of country, and the kind of world, we must leave to our children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442236370
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/09/2014
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Frances Beinecke is the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, a national environmental advocacy group guided by its commitment to sound science, the rule of law, and the public interest. In 2007 she received the prestigious Rachel Carson Award, a premier award which honors distinguished female leaders impacting the environmental world.

Bob Deans, NRDC's Federal Communications Director, is a long-time Washington, D.C. journalist, the author of The River Where America Began: A Journey along the James, and Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment.

Table of Contents

Foreword Sigourney Weaver ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xvii

1 Our Moment 1

2 The World As It Is 17

3 To the Ends of the Earth 25

4 Oil Patch America 49

5 A Widening Scourge 77

6 Containing Carbon 91

7 Power Forward 111

8 Standing Vigil, Running Strong 127

Epilogue: CO₂ Zero: Carbon Neutral USA In Our Lifetime 137

Index 141

About the Authors 149

Editorial Reviews

10/13/2014
Beinecke (Clean Energy Common Sense), the outgoing president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, calls for significant changes in how the country approaches global warming issues. She cautions against a dependence on fossil fuels, championing alternative resources such as wind and solar power. With collaborator Deans (Reckless: The Political Assault on the American Environment), Beinecke lays out in fairly straightforward terms "the price we are paying and the risks we are facing to support our... catastrophic addiction to oil, gas and coal." For example, Beinecke bemoans the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, which dumped "170 million gallons of toxic crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico," affecting scores of marine animals and miles of natural shoreline, while essentially shutting down the area's three primary industries for months. She also offers a primer on the Keystone XL pipeline, remarking upon how it would pass "through states that together host more than 250,000 ranches and farms" and countless waterways, "from the Yellowstone River in Montana to Pine Island Bayou in Texas." The threats to our land and wildlife, Beinecke contends, are far too great and her work puts into sobering perspective our modern lifestyle's costs to the planet. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Our politics may be divided over the issue of climate change, but our people are not. Increasingly, Americans are united around the need to address this gathering threat and the urgency to act. In this book, Frances Beinecke, one of the nation's most effective environmental leaders, shows us how to do that in a way that can help make Americans more prosperous, more competitive, and more secure. That's an approach people of all political perspectives can surely get behind.

William K. Reilly

Frances Beinecke has long been a leader in solutions-based environmentalism, working across the political spectrum to turn common sense into common ground. In this book, she trains that approach on the greatest environmental challenge of our time: climate change. She maps out a course of action, and she shows how it can prepare generations of Americans for success in the fast-growing global market for the clean energy solutions of tomorrow.

Carol M. Browner

Frances Beinecke is not just our great environmental leader, she's also a remarkable thinker and writer. This book comes at a crucial moment in the environmental fight, and it will make a powerful difference!

Bill McKibben