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      Streams of Consciousness This Moment on Earth
      Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future
      by John Kerry and Teresa Heinz Kerry

      PublicAffairs, 2007.

      The profiles of activists collected in this book illustrate not only the breadth and diversity of the "new environmentalism" that the authors champion, but also the fragmented nature of the environmental movement and its lack of political leadership. 
       

      Senator John Kerry

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      The Kerrys introduce us to individuals and groups who are making a difference, from an apple grower in Washington State to an environmental justice activist in the South Bronx as well as prominent figures like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Deirdre Imus, who are making a difference locally and in specific ways.

      This book also highlights the many grassroots organizations and campaigns being waged across the U.S., which they became acquainted with during the 2004 presidential campaign. Appendixes in the back of the book list many of these, along with suggestions and strategies for individual action.
        
      This Moment on Earth is a relfection of our sense that this moment is special. It is compelling  and urgent, and we need to understand the full measure of its urgency, and not just with respect to global climate change, but to a whole set of choices that affect you every single day in so many different ways.
      -- John Kerry
      But there is clearly no national or international figure or organization that represents environmentalism the way George Bush embodies arrogant American hegemony. Even Al Gore is compartmentalized under "global warming" and cannot address other critical issues like toxins, pollution, land use and resource conservation. Many of the problems outlined in these pages are so large and global in scale that small-scale local actions are simply dwarfed and marginalized by their enormity, and overwhelmed by the financial resources of those in opposition to their solution. The situation cries out for a kind of leadership that's sorely missing.  
      The important thing about that date, 1992, is that we' 're strill fighting over what was accepted back then by 154-plus countries, by presidents and prime ministers and finance ministers and environment ministers and trade ministers.and governments who put themselves on the line and took the risk of action even as the United States of America and went its own separate way and avoided any genuine action  to respond to the facts as they were presented at that moment in time.
      -- John Kerry
      The environment is not something outside of ourselves. The environment is our homes, our bodies, and ultimately, our health and the choices we make..
      -- Teresa Heinz Kerry





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