Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.14 (955 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1859847501 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 256 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-03-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
"It is not desolate at all," he insists. That struggle has not been universally popular among his fellow desert dwellers: while across the country voters have rejected plans for proposed toxic-waste incinerators for toxic wastes, in that part of Utah, he writes, "we had a tradition of trading environmental quality for jobs and revenue"--and there is, he acknowledges, money to be made in lethal detritus, from which substantial fortunes have been born. He has emerged from it, years later, as a spokesman for that forbidding landscape, the repository of decaying plutonium, retired biochemical weapons, and other manifestations of what he calls the "ecocidal schemes" of big business and government. Above all, he emphasizes that the desert should no longer be seen as a wasteland fit only for hiding our mess. Ward documents his group's efforts to clean up their corner of the American desert, a quest that took him into the halls of Congress and before voters across the country
"A book everyone should read" according to Mike Smith. This is not a perfect bookbut it is a book you need to read. "Canaries on the Rim" is an eye-opening look at the sad environmental state of the American West, and at the health hazards that constantly threaten the West's people: nerve gas incinerators, the lingering effects of atomic testing, chemical weapons manufacturers, air and water pollution, grazing abuse, and more.Every chapter of the book could stand alone as an article on a certain facet of this huge problem, and together the chapters paint a compelling picture of an environmental disaster and the ways to help fight it, ways Chip Ward has tested out personally.Chip Ward's. "An articulate view of Utah accepting environmental abuse" according to A Customer. An important book that tells a fascinating story of the passive but patriotic citizens of Utah. They believe, accept, and even support the environmental PR spoutings of the Army and large industry while the isolated county of Tooele gets rich off the results. Fascinating and compelling reading. Very well written by Chip Ward.. Welcome to Utah! When you enter Utah, the Billboards don't tell you that you've entered the largest environmental sacrifice zone in the country. You have to read Canaries on the Rim: Living Downwind in the West to find that out. Ward details what the Army and other government officials are afraid to tell you. He documents the environmental ecocide that has taken place in the once pristine deserts of the Great American West from decades of uncontrolled military experiments and unregulated industrial pollution.In his book, Ward describes the attitude and mindset of the people who live in one of the most beautiful, yet most polluted states in America,
A seven-year quest to understand a hidden history of ecocide followed. Canaries on the Rim is Ward’s firsthand account of that quest and how lessons learned in the wilderness were later applied to building opposition to toxic waste disposal, chemical weapons incineration, industrial pollution, and nuclear waste storage. There, on the edge of the Great Basin Desert, disturbing tales of local sickness and death interrupted an idyllic life. If civil action took place in Edward Abbey’s West, this is the book that would result.. In the late 1970s Chip Ward and his wife left the Sleeping Rainbow Ranch in Capitol Reef National Park to raise their children in the classic small-town American setting of Grantsville, Utah. Canaries on the Rim is a warning and a call to arms, but it is also a compelling drama and a lively primer on environmental activism. The secret holocaust that is unfolding along the toxic shadow of America’s Great Basin Desert is grim, but Ward’s colorful and often-humorous story is not