Been brown so long

November 17, 1993
Issue 

Been brown so long

Been Brown So Long it Looked Green to Me: The Politics of Nature
By Jeffrey St Clair
Common Courage Press, Monroe, 2004
410 pages, US$13
Order from <http://www.commoncouragepress.com>.

REVIEW BY OWEN RICHARDS

Investigative journalism that actually gets to the heart of the issue? Uncompromising journalism that consistently stands up to destructive corporations and their governments? It's possible.

Been Brown So Long it Looked Green to Me: The Politics of Nature, by award-winning investigative journalist Jeffrey St Clair, was released early in 2004. It is a collection of St Clair's articles written from 1995-2003. Some of the articles are co-authored by Alexander Cockburn and other writers. St Clair and Cockburn are joint editors of the investigative newsletter and website CounterPunch <http://www.counterpunch.org>.

St Clair's 410-page environmental opus is an attempt to "come to terms with the way the West really works: the corporate mercenaries, corrosive politics and neutered environmentalism that have contributed to [the] dissolving landscape". He attempts this by assembling 56 CounterPunch articles under seven broad categories that take up different angles on the environmental crisis — what St Clair calls "the war on the home front".

Part one, "The Politics of Expediency and Exploitation", sets the whole work in perspective and takes the reader on a tour through the twists and turns of recent US governments' environmental policies and the response of the mainstream environment organisations.

It begins in the 1970s, when then-president Richard Nixon was forced by a strong environment movement to implement some green reforms — those days when "Congress was well-stocked with conservationists" and "millions participated in demonstrations, clean-ups and rallies" across the US on the first Earth Day. Then to the backlash under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s against anything that even looked green; through to the George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton-led administrations; and finally to the early days of President George Bush Jnr's assault on the environment.

Having set the political backdrop, The Politics of Nature then proceeds to do what it does best — provide short, detailed investigations into an extremely broad array of environmental travesties.

These include the connection between flooding in coastal Oregon and the logging of Oregon's old-growth forests; the ravages of mining in Yellowstone Park; "factory fishing" and the depletion of the fish population of the Bering Sea; the corporate extermination of Yellowstone bison, Mexican wolves and grizzly bears; and the vampiric practices of Californian agribusiness along the Colorado River delta.

All this is described against a background of government-funded corporate welfare, and the bankrupt and sold-out politics of the big environment organisations — who St Clair refers to as the "Big Greens" — such as the Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society.

"Toxic Nation", the third part of The Politics of Nature, brings everything closer to home with a look at the more direct effects on human health and welfare of the environmental recklessness of contemporary capitalism.

St Clair explores the creeping threat of toxins in our foods, the cruel and unhygienic results of factory speed-ups in meat processing, and the 500-times "acceptable risk" level of dioxins in the bloodstreams' of US residents.

St Clair then briefly broadens the scope of his investigations, looking at the US government's use of "Agent Green" in the "drug war" in Colombia. An interesting article on Monsanto looks at the agrichemical giant's sinister attempt to control much of the world's food supply by the introduction of its infamous "terminator" seeds.

He analyses the fossil-fuel giants and their monopolistic and destructive practices in part four, "Power Plays". We see the merger of the energy giants Shell and Texaco in "oily wedlock" and their subsequent price-fixing measures. We are also treated to a couple of revealing essays on everyone's favourite corporate scumbag, Enron.

"On Native Ground" explores the environmental consequences of the corporate theft and degradation of lands owned by American natives. In one article, St Clair argues that Black Hill National Forest in South Dakota, severely degraded by logging, "must be returned to the Lakota Sioux for its own survival".

"The Military Menace", part six of St Clair's book, is a useful rebuttal of Bush Jnr's hypocritical "weapons of mass destruction" hyperbole. It explores the US's own use and stockpiling of dangerous weapons, providing in one essay a history of US production and use of germ weapons since 1900, and in another, its Cold War stock-piling of nerve gas.

The final part, "Excursions" includes a short story by St Clair of a family trip that has an environmental moral.

For some, St Clair's 410 pages might seem like a mountain of depressing information. It is hard to draw a positive conclusion from the book alone, as even the big green organisations are shown to be part of the problem and, it seems according to St Clair, the only thing standing between humanity and environmental oblivion is the "thin green line" of environmental activists up tripods or chained to trees.

But what The Politics of Nature does well it does very well. By providing such a wide variety of case studies of environmental destruction, by providing so many specific examples, St Clair's book will make a useful compendium of concrete examples for environment activists, and sound an alarm for anyone who has forgotten the supreme urgency of the situation we face today.

From Green Left Weekly, August 18, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.


You need Green Left, and we need you!

Green Left is funded by contributions from readers and supporters. Help us reach our funding target.

Make a One-off Donation or choose from one of our Monthly Donation options.

Become a supporter to get the digital edition for $5 per month or the print edition for $10 per month. One-time payment options are available.

You can also call 1800 634 206 to make a donation or to become a supporter. Thank you.