An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck

Title:  An Inconvenient Book:  Real Solutions to the World’s Biggest Problems

Author:  Glenn Beck

Hardback:  295 pages

Published:  2007

ISBN:  9781416552192

“Although [political correctness] arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones.  It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.

“What began as a crusade for civility has sourced into a cause of conflict and even censorship.  Disputants treat sheer force – getting their foes punished or expelled, for instance – as a substitute for the power of ideas.

“Throughout history, attempts to micromanage casual conversation have only incited distrust.  They have invited people to look for an insult in every word, gesture, action.  And, in their own Orwellian way, crusades that demand correct behavior crush diversity in the name of diversity.”

–An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck, page 151

The above quote begins chapter 12: “You Can’t Say That!  The Politics of Correctness” in An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck.  The shocking thing about this quote is that it was delivered in a 1991 commencement speech given by former President George H. W. Bush.  1991 was just the beginning of the PC movement, and at that time, it felt more like a passing liberal fad than the enslaving censor that it has become.  Bush’s speech now seems oracular.

I found this book to be very intelligently, and often funny, written.  It wasn’t just a bunch of right-wing rhetoric slapped on pages and tossed out to the public.  On occasion, Beck even agrees with the left,  often the right, but mostly he lands somewhere in the middle with his own well-researched thoughts and ideas.  It is set up in textbook style, with inserts and graphs and illustrations to further make his points.  With the chapter on Child Molesters, he makes it a point to say that this is a subject in which all political lines fall and we become just people, fathers and mothers, who desire to protect our children.  With each chapter, Beck offers a solution to the problems he addresses. 

I believe that political correctness is the biggest threat this nation faces today.  Sure, you won’t see newspaper articles about the nuclear program it’s working on, but it’s an enemy nonetheless.

Think of it as a poison that was dumped into our water supply years ago by our enemies.  They knew that it would take time for the entire country to be affected, but they were patient, and now the entire country has been poisoned, and most don’t even know it.

The only antidote for this toxin is for everyone to stop sitting down and taking it like French soldiers at war.  We all have to start being open about the fact that political correctness not only exists but is killing us.  The first small step in doing that is becoming aware and suspicious of the people and groups who are always trying to ban certain words or otherwise restrict your freedom of speech.  Let’s call them the linguistically intolerant or the opposing-viewpoint-averse.

When you see them, stop and ask yourself a simple question:  Why? … It’s time to take back the First Amendment. -page 160

Not only does he say, “Here’s the problem and here’s how we can solve it,” but he also explores the history and thinking behind the problem and how we got here.  His chapter on the UN is particularly acerbic, his solution to the problem a bit shocking.

I read this at the very end of 2009, when I was reading nearly a book a day to make my 75-book goal, and therefore some of what I read went in one eye and out the other.  I do plan to re-read it again, this time with highlighters and flags in hand, and a notepad and pen to my left.  There is just far too much info crammed in the book to just leave it with one read.

I give An Inconvenient Book by Glenn Beck 4 out of 5 stars.

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The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

Title: The World Without Us
Author: Alan Weisman
Paperback: 369 pages
Publisher: Picador (division of St. Martin’s Press)
Publish Date: August 2008
ISBN: 9780312427900

… picture a world from which we all suddenly vanished. Tomorrow.

Unlikely perhaps, but for the sake of argument, not impossible. Say a Homo sapiens-specific virus – natural or diabolically nano-engineered – picks us off but leaves everything else intact. Or some misanthropic evil wizard somehow targets that unique 3.9 percent of DNA that makes us human beings and not chimpanzees, or perfects a way to sterilize our sperm. Or say that Jesus… or space aliens rapture us away, either to our heavenly glory or to a zoo somewhere across the galaxy.

Look around you, at today’s world. Your house, your city. The surrounding land, the pavement underneath, and the soil hidden below that. Leave it all in place, but extract the human beings. Wipe us out, and see what’s left. How would the rest of nature respond if it were suddenly relieved of the relentless pressures we heap on it and our fellow organisms? How soon would, or could, the climate return to where it was before we fired up all our engines?

How long would it take to recover lost ground and restore Eden to the way it must have gleamed and smelled the day before Adam, or Homo habilis, appeared? Could nature ever obliterate all our traces? How would it undo our monumental cities and public works, and reduce our myriad plastics and toxic synthetics back to benign, basic elements? Or are some so unnatural that they’re indestructible?

…Since we’re imagining, why not also dream of a way for nature to prosper that doesn’t depend on our demise? We are, after all, mammals ourselves. Every life-form adds to this vast pageant. With our passing, might some lost contribution of ours leave the planet a bit more impoverished?Is it possible that, instead of heaving a huge biological sigh of relief, the world without us would miss us?

 

–The World Without Usby Alan Weisman, pages 5-6

 

This is the premise for The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.  Weisman puts the question “What if ?” to the reader, then thoroughly, intelligently and scientifically systematically answers the question:  How long and by what process would it take for nature to reclaim the world if humans were to suddenly disappear?

In many ways, animals and plants would thrive and take off.  Several places in the world have been negatively impacted greatly because of what man has done, Chernobyl, Johnson Island, and a large number of coral reefs to name a few.  However, to say that the world would go back to pre-human conditions without us is naive and a romantic fantasy.

Without human mechanics and equipment operators, our 141 nuclear reactors would meltdown, spreading radioactive waste on clouds that would spread globally, as well as leech into the soil and ground water, eventually finding their way to lakes, rivers and oceans.  Also in need of these human beings care and service are the vast number of petroleum refineries, which would also suffer catastrophic failure in our absence and spread heavy metal and carcinogenic particle laden smoke along trade winds, reaching ground in other parts of the world in the rainfall.  No, the world without us would NOT be a better, cleaner Edenic place.

It is unmistakeable that mankind has forever irrevocably altered the Earth.  We have introduced gender-bending chemicals, which show no signs of EVER degrading,  into water sources.  The plastics that we produce for our disposable convenience only break down into smaller and smaller particles that are then eaten by birds and fish, many of which later suffer agonizing deaths from constipation as the pieces do not digest.  And in case there was a slight chance nothing of us would last, we’ll throw in the uranium and plutonium, both “depleted” and “weapons grade,” some of which have a half-life longer than the estimated time of the demise of our solar system!

The World Without Usby Alan Weisman is a sobering book.  I had to take a step or two back and look at what I, myself, do that contributes to the destruction of our ecosystem.  When Weisman talks about how some of those tiny pieces of plastic ending up in the oceans come from some of the body washes and other beauty care products, I ran to my shower to check the label of my shower gel (I was happy to find no plastic beads, only natural exfolients).   Second, I’ve always looked at “recycling” as some hippy-dippy commune-escaped concept and haven’t ever really done it (I looked at that toter as just an extra trash can).  After reading what the effects of my plastic water bottle and plastic bag usages does to the world, I know I have to change at least MY little contribution.

One poignant thought from this book is:  The Earth is like a super-organism, the soil, atmosphere and oceans its circulatory system regulated by its resident flora and fauna.  As such, this living planet may be suffering a high fever with humans the virus.  A sobering thought.

As a scientifically and intelligible answer to a simple question with an extremely complex answer, I give The World Without Us by Alan Weisman 5 out of 5 stars.  I recommend everyone with a stake in the Earth’s future to read it.