America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade?

by Harvey Blatt

Americans today are increasingly concerned about the state of the environment. Polls show that a remarkable 63 percent would roll back recent tax cuts to finance environmental protection and that fully 95 percent want environmental education included in the public school curriculum. America's Environmental Report Card offers answers to some of our most pressing environmental questions, providing a timely reminder of what we need to accomplish to achieve a sustainable environment. It lays out the scientific facts about water and air pollution, energy, global warming, and the ozone layer in a lively, conversational style, enhanced by illustrations, and charts a course of action for protecting the environment. America's Environmental Report Card focuses on the environmental issues that polls show are most important to Americans today. It looks at water pollution and the safety of the water supply (20 percent of Americans refuse to drink tap water, at least partly because they doubt its safety), the dangers of floods (increased by the clearing of forests for farms and timber), the leaching of garbage buried in landfills, and pesticide runoff in irrigation waters from agriculture. It examines the ways we generate energy and the resulting global warming, air pollution (much of the 2,500 gallons of air we inhale each day contains exhaust fumes, lead, and asbestos), and ozone depletion and its relationship to skin cancer, and offers a detailed account of nuclear energy production and the radioactive waste it generates. Most important, it outlines ways to deal with these problems -- workable and reasonable solutions that individuals, industry, and government can effect without unreasonable hardship, solutions that map the course to a sustainable future.

Genres: Nonfiction

277 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Hiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book 'America's Environmental Report Card' by Harvey Blatt gives an easy-to-read overview of environmental issues confronting current US society. It deals primarily with describing the environmental issues and the causes rather than focusing on potential solutions to these problems, but offers some solutions which each one of us can implement in our daily lives to make the environment better for everybody, including ourselves. Some of the issues include water resources, air quality, and soil quality; all of which are essential to our well-being. The book sheds light on many aspects of the environment which we take for granted, but which may be seriously in danger if we do not act responsibly.

The book provides many interesting and sometimes surprising statements, but in many parts references to back up the claims are lacking. Furthermore, although the book is relatively even-handed in many of the issues, addressing both the pros and cons of the technologies causing the environmental problems, on the matter of nuclear energy the author has a clear bias against it, without discussing hardly any of the benefits of nuclear energy. The author also offers no potential solutions to the issue of nuclear waste in the United States, which is no doubt a difficult issue with no obvious solution, at least politically.

Overall, this book gives a very good and readable overview of the environmental problems that the US is currently facing, and offers a few ways to address these problems. The book gives an even-handed discussion of the technologies causing the environmental problems and the potential solutions to these problems, but is unfairly critical of nuclear energy, failing to discuss the benefits of nuclear energy.