Salon Wanderlust | Can this planet be saved?

[Salon Wanderlust: Travel with a passion]

A L S O_ T O D A Y

Earth odyssey
By Mark Hertsgaard
Excerpt: A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age
[ NEWS ]
The war against sprawl I
By Rob Gurwitt
Think Al Gore's "smart growth" plan is a no-brainer? Think again
[ NEWS ]
The war against sprawl, II
By Susan Zakin
It's owls against developers in Arizona's Oro Valley

T A B L E_T A L K
Will you party like it's 1999? Discuss your upcoming New Year's Eve plans in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk

___________________
Check out barnesannoble.com's fabulous selection of travel book bargains!
___________________

R E C E N T L Y
Sex and fate in Macau
By Rolf Potts
Inspired by a sidewalk fortuneteller, a traveler tries his luck at an erotic cabaret in this soon-to-be-transferred Portuguese colony
(01/20/99)
Teaching the cannibals to dance: Part Two
By Craig Nelson
A mock battle culminates in a transcultural two-step -- and an unexpected gift
(01/19/99)
Teaching the cannibals to dance
By Craig Nelson
An adventurer journeys farther than expected into a land of penis gourds and pig sacrifices
(01/17/99)
This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe
(01/15/99)
Beijing's Backingham Palace
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
From back rubs to bowling to B-movies, this Chinese spa has it all
(01/14/99)

Browse the
Wanderlust Feature archives

Wanderlust's Official
Travel Book Partner

Can this planet be saved?
__________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
MARK HERTSGAARD DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK ABOUT THE HUMAN TOLL OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION.

BY DON GEORGE | Mark Hertsgaard has been tackling big issues throughout his 20-year career as a journalist. But his new book, "Earth Odyssey," is certainly his most ambitious work to date. To research "Earth Odyssey," Hertsgaard visited 19 countries over six years. His goal was to investigate and understand on ground level the impact of environmental devastation around the globe -- and the steps we must take to ensure our survival. The book that resulted is an extraordinary accomplishment, interweaving moving tales of raw personal encounters in China, Sudan, Thailand, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere with a compelling accumulation of quotes, facts and figures. Hertsgaard's previous books include "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency" and "Nuclear Inc.: The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Energy." He teaches nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University.
What originally inspired you to undertake this daunting global project?
Well, the original idea was not a book. The original idea was to travel around the world. Actually, the original idea was to escape from America, and once I was given an opportunity to escape, I said, Well, why not just keep going? I was taking a sabbatical in January of '91. I was very disgusted with a number of things. One, the Persian Gulf War was just about to unfold, and I was watching the way that once again, the media was snapping to attention. And the government was manipulating the public, and, in some ways worst of all, the public was falling into line. As someone who had spent most of the 80's writing a book ["On Bended Knee"] that attacked this kind of unthinking complacency and timid acquiescence, I found it very, very discouraging to see it all happening again, as if nobody had learned a goddamn thing.
In addition, I was being censored in my professional career. I had been fired from my regular job as a commentator on "Morning Edition" at NPR because I had done a satire that poked fun at McDonald's and NBC and this million-dollar-a-night lottery scam that they were running -- that essentially poked fun at the free enterprise system. And I was getting censored at Rolling Stone because I'd done a big investigation of "60 Minutes" and uncovered grotesque sexual harassment on the part of Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, which [Rolling Stone publisher] Jann Wenner, at Hewitt's insistence, had tried to kill.
It was very ironic. "On Bended Knee" had got me accepted within the left wing of the mainstream media: National Public Radio commentator, Rolling Stone columnist. They all think they love you when they read your book, but then when it comes to actually putting your stuff on the air or in the paper, it's like, "Whoa, dude! You're outside the consensus!" So I was disgusted with all that.
Then I got an invitation to go speak at a conference in Stockholm on the prevention of nuclear war, and it just popped into my head: "That's halfway around the world from here. Why not just keep going?" It took me about another week to think, "Well, I should try and do something socially useful." For a long time, since my first book on the nuclear industry ["Nuclear Inc."], I had been reporting on the question of whether the species was going to make it or not. I can't think of a more important, or larger, or more interesting question. So I began to play with the idea of the book, and then I pitched the idea to [then-New Yorker editor] Mr. Shawn, and he gave me his blessing, and off I went.
Were you either happily or unhappily surprised by what you found in your travels?
It varied according to where I was. I'd read a lot about the Chinese environmental crisis before I got there, for example, yet when I actually saw it, it overwhelmed my intellectual mind. I was surprised at just how terrible it was -- and at just how stoically they all accepted it. That really impressed me very deeply -- the tenaciousness of the Chinese masses. It's so packed, and everyone is just scurrying around on the low end of the totem pole -- and nobody's giving up. They're clutching at life even under these miserable conditions. When you're there, you get a real sense of the power of the survival urge, and that of course is what translates into all this pollution. So that was surprising.
And I think also I was surprised in Africa. It sounds macabre, but famine was something I wanted to see for myself. I'd written about it quite a lot, and it was the first issue that politicized me back when I was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. I remember literally crying myself to sleep after reading a Time magazine cover story on the African famine in the mid-'70s. I read everything I could find on it in the library, even though it was finals week. Ever since then I've been very involved with the issue of famine, but I realized, "What a phony! I've never seen it. I've never experienced it. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about." So I had to go see it. And when I traveled among the Dinka tribe, I was surprised by the grandeur of, and the dignity of, human spirit that people could have under those circumstances. It's easy to say that, and it becomes a cliché, but when you see them in front of you, it's not a cliché. It's the flip side of what I saw in China. These are two of the poorest peoples in the world, and yet, even at that level, there's just unquenchable human spirit. The light in the eyes. That was something.
Hearing that makes me think about one of the most enlightening and frustrating messages in your book: how for people in those circumstances, pollution is just not high on the list of priorities. They're trying to fulfill very, very basic needs. And if polluting is the means to that end, well, so be it. They're not going to take the environmental initiative when they don't have enough food to eat every day. So, as you show, it's wrong both practically and morally for the Northern Hemisphere to look at the Southern Hemisphere and expect them to make sacrifices to save the planet. But what do you do with that truth?
Well, I think the first thing you do is to make it very clear. If there's one thing I hope this book does, it is to get through to people, especially people here in the United States and throughout the North, that the biggest environmental problem in the world today is not global warming, or ozone, or any of those things. It is poverty. Because that necessarily takes first claim on people's lives. And it's not, by the way, that they don't mind the pollution. They do. They're not stupid. They know that shit is not good for them. It's just that they don't have the luxury of dealing with that problem yet. I mean, they would love to deal with that problem. It's just down the list. So first you have to make that point very clear to people and then there's a number of steps to follow from that.
N E X T+P A G E | The myth that cleaning up the environment has to cost jobs

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HERTSGAARD


	A L S O_ T O D A Y Earth odyssey By Mark Hertsgaard Excerpt: A visit to Bangkok reveals the economic temptations and environmental troubles of the Technological Age [ NEWS ] The war against sprawl I By Rob Gurwitt Think Al Gore's "smart growth" plan is a no-brainer? Think again [ NEWS ] The war against sprawl, II By Susan Zakin It's owls against developers in Arizona's Oro Valley T A B L E_T A L K Will you party like it's 1999? Discuss your upcoming New Year's Eve plans in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk ___________________ Check out barnesannoble.com's fabulous selection of travel book bargains! ___________________ R E C E N T L Y Sex and fate in Macau By Rolf Potts Inspired by a sidewalk fortuneteller, a traveler tries his luck at an erotic cabaret in this soon-to-be-transferred Portuguese colony (01/20/99) Teaching the cannibals to dance: Part Two By Craig Nelson A mock battle culminates in a transcultural two-step -- and an unexpected gift (01/19/99) Teaching the cannibals to dance By Craig Nelson An adventurer journeys farther than expected into a land of penis gourds and pig sacrifices (01/17/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/15/99) Beijing's Backingham Palace By Mary Elizabeth Williams From back rubs to bowling to B-movies, this Chinese spa has it all (01/14/99) Browse the Wanderlust Feature archives Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		Can this planet be saved? __________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MARK HERTSGAARD DISCUSSES HIS NEW BOOK ABOUT THE HUMAN TOLL OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL DEVASTATION. BY DON GEORGE \| Mark Hertsgaard has been tackling big issues throughout his 20-year career as a journalist. But his new book, "Earth Odyssey," is certainly his most ambitious work to date. To research "Earth Odyssey," Hertsgaard visited 19 countries over six years. His goal was to investigate and understand on ground level the impact of environmental devastation around the globe -- and the steps we must take to ensure our survival. The book that resulted is an extraordinary accomplishment, interweaving moving tales of raw personal encounters in China, Sudan, Thailand, Brazil, Russia and elsewhere with a compelling accumulation of quotes, facts and figures. Hertsgaard's previous books include "On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency" and "Nuclear Inc.: The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Energy." He teaches nonfiction writing at Johns Hopkins University. What originally inspired you to undertake this daunting global project? Well, the original idea was not a book. The original idea was to travel around the world. Actually, the original idea was to escape from America, and once I was given an opportunity to escape, I said, Well, why not just keep going? I was taking a sabbatical in January of '91. I was very disgusted with a number of things. One, the Persian Gulf War was just about to unfold, and I was watching the way that once again, the media was snapping to attention. And the government was manipulating the public, and, in some ways worst of all, the public was falling into line. As someone who had spent most of the 80's writing a book ["On Bended Knee"] that attacked this kind of unthinking complacency and timid acquiescence, I found it very, very discouraging to see it all happening again, as if nobody had learned a goddamn thing. In addition, I was being censored in my professional career. I had been fired from my regular job as a commentator on "Morning Edition" at NPR because I had done a satire that poked fun at McDonald's and NBC and this million-dollar-a-night lottery scam that they were running -- that essentially poked fun at the free enterprise system. And I was getting censored at Rolling Stone because I'd done a big investigation of "60 Minutes" and uncovered grotesque sexual harassment on the part of Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt, which [Rolling Stone publisher] Jann Wenner, at Hewitt's insistence, had tried to kill. It was very ironic. "On Bended Knee" had got me accepted within the left wing of the mainstream media: National Public Radio commentator, Rolling Stone columnist. They all think they love you when they read your book, but then when it comes to actually putting your stuff on the air or in the paper, it's like, "Whoa, dude! You're outside the consensus!" So I was disgusted with all that. Then I got an invitation to go speak at a conference in Stockholm on the prevention of nuclear war, and it just popped into my head: "That's halfway around the world from here. Why not just keep going?" It took me about another week to think, "Well, I should try and do something socially useful." For a long time, since my first book on the nuclear industry ["Nuclear Inc."], I had been reporting on the question of whether the species was going to make it or not. I can't think of a more important, or larger, or more interesting question. So I began to play with the idea of the book, and then I pitched the idea to [then-New Yorker editor] Mr. Shawn, and he gave me his blessing, and off I went. Were you either happily or unhappily surprised by what you found in your travels? It varied according to where I was. I'd read a lot about the Chinese environmental crisis before I got there, for example, yet when I actually saw it, it overwhelmed my intellectual mind. I was surprised at just how terrible it was -- and at just how stoically they all accepted it. That really impressed me very deeply -- the tenaciousness of the Chinese masses. It's so packed, and everyone is just scurrying around on the low end of the totem pole -- and nobody's giving up. They're clutching at life even under these miserable conditions. When you're there, you get a real sense of the power of the survival urge, and that of course is what translates into all this pollution. So that was surprising. And I think also I was surprised in Africa. It sounds macabre, but famine was something I wanted to see for myself. I'd written about it quite a lot, and it was the first issue that politicized me back when I was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins. I remember literally crying myself to sleep after reading a Time magazine cover story on the African famine in the mid-'70s. I read everything I could find on it in the library, even though it was finals week. Ever since then I've been very involved with the issue of famine, but I realized, "What a phony! I've never seen it. I've never experienced it. Maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about." So I had to go see it. And when I traveled among the Dinka tribe, I was surprised by the grandeur of, and the dignity of, human spirit that people could have under those circumstances. It's easy to say that, and it becomes a cliché, but when you see them in front of you, it's not a cliché. It's the flip side of what I saw in China. These are two of the poorest peoples in the world, and yet, even at that level, there's just unquenchable human spirit. The light in the eyes. That was something. Hearing that makes me think about one of the most enlightening and frustrating messages in your book: how for people in those circumstances, pollution is just not high on the list of priorities. They're trying to fulfill very, very basic needs. And if polluting is the means to that end, well, so be it. They're not going to take the environmental initiative when they don't have enough food to eat every day. So, as you show, it's wrong both practically and morally for the Northern Hemisphere to look at the Southern Hemisphere and expect them to make sacrifices to save the planet. But what do you do with that truth? Well, I think the first thing you do is to make it very clear. If there's one thing I hope this book does, it is to get through to people, especially people here in the United States and throughout the North, that the biggest environmental problem in the world today is not global warming, or ozone, or any of those things. It is poverty. Because that necessarily takes first claim on people's lives. And it's not, by the way, that they don't mind the pollution. They do. They're not stupid. They know that shit is not good for them. It's just that they don't have the luxury of dealing with that problem yet. I mean, they would love to deal with that problem. It's just down the list. So first you have to make that point very clear to people and then there's a number of steps to follow from that. N E X T+P A G E \| The myth that cleaning up the environment has to cost jobs - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - PHOTOGRAPH BY MARK HERTSGAARD