Over the last century mankind has irrevocably damaged the environment through the unscrupulous greed of big business and our own willful ignorance. Here are the strikingly poignant accounts of disasters whose names live in infamy: Chernobyl, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez, Three Mile Island, Love Canal, Minamata and others. And with these, the extraordinary and inspirational stories of the countless men and women who fought bravely to protect the communities and environments at risk. “Robert Hernan provides a deep service … May this book give heart and courage to many more such great souls, for there are assuredly many more such fights to come.” ― from the foreword by Bill McKibben “A wake-up call to all concerned citizens of this earth.” ― from the preface by Graham Nash “ This Borrowed Earth: Lessons from Fifteen Environmental Disasters Around the World, powerfully depicts in simple, transparent prose, the lasting and wrenching impact of some of the major environmental disasters of the last century, which younger generations may only barely remember. But Mr. Hernan's book does much more. It reveals a striking similarity in the genesis of these disasters that can shed light on ways to prevent them in the future – in particular, the profit-driven development of production technologies with no heed to their health and environmental effects or the environmental fate of their products. One is convinced, after reading Mr. Hernan's book, that the only way to slow the rate of growth of devastating climate change is for governments around the world to assert control over our most basic technology – the production of energy in ways that can lift the world out of poverty without destroying it in the process.” ― Barry Commoner “Lets the facts and the victims speak for themselves. Again and again, we see polluters hiding or denying information, threatening those impacted by pollution, and putting profits before people. Hernan's stories show that each of these disasters were avoidable; we can only hope that by reading of them we all learn and avoid future ones.” ― Peter Lehner, Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council Robert Emmet Hernan , author of This Borrowed Earth, is a former senior counsel for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Assistant Attorney General for New York State. He was a trial lawyer for New York State in the infamous Love Canal Case. He lives in New York City. Bill McKibben is the author of more than a dozen books, including the best sellers Falter , Deep Economy , and The End of Nature , which was the first book to warn the general public about the climate crisis. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental Studies at Middlebury College and the winner of the Gandhi Prize, the Thomas Merton Prize, and the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called “the alternate Nobel.” He lives in Vermont with his wife, the writer Sue Halpern. He founded the global grassroots climate campaign 350.org; his new project, organizing people over sixty for progressive change, is called Third Act. This Borrowed Earth Lessons From The Fifteen Worst Environmental Disasters Around The World By Robert Emmet Hernan Palgrave Macmillan Copyright © 2010 Robert Emmet Hernan All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-230-61983-8 Contents Acknowledgments, Foreword by Bill McKibben, Preface by Graham Nash, Introduction, Minamata, Japan, 1950s, London, England, 1952, Windscale, England, 1957, Seveso, Italy, 1976, Love Canal, New York, 1978, Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, 1979, Times Beach, Missouri, 1982, Bhopal, India, 1984, Chernobyl, Ukraine, 1986, Rhine River, Switzerland, 1986, Prince William Sound, Alaska, 1989, Oil Spills and Fires of Kuwait, 1991, Dassen and Robben Islands, South Africa, 2000, Brazilian Rainforest, Global Climate Change, List of Some Environmental Organizations, Notes, Sources, Index, CHAPTER 1 MINAMATA, JAPAN 1950s Minamata is a fishing town beautifully situated on a bay in the foothills of the mountains on Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands. In 1908, the Chisso electrochemical company established a plant there. Labor and land were cheap, and water from the mountains supplied plenty of hydropower. The company began by using calcium carbide to make acetylene, a fuel for lamps, and then developed facilities for making nitrogen fertilizer and other products. The fertilizer was important for Japanese farming, and it turned into a major export product when the First World War disrupted supplies from Europe. After the war, Chisso developed organic chemical compounds to produce a variety of materials, including acetaldehyde, which employed mercury as a catalyst. Acetaldehyde, first made in 1932, was used in plastics, pharmaceuticals, photographic chemicals, and perfumes. The company prospered as a result of the economic reconstruction following World War II and the Korean War. By the 1950s, t