Rating: 
Summary: Eye Opening!
Review: "Paul Dreissen forcefully makes the case that the environmental movement has been needlessly anti-human. The real moral and technical challenge is to save both planet and people, and we've been given the intelligence and societal skills to do it. Hopefully, with the human population surge now ending, we'll feel free to be humane again."
Rating:
Summary: The Environmental Movement Has Been Needlessly Anti-Human
Review: "Paul Dreissen forcefully makes the case that the environmental movement has been needlessly anti-human. The real moral and technical challenge is to save both planet and people, and we've been given the intelligence and societal skills to do it. Hopefully, with the human population surge now ending, we'll feel free to be humane again."
Rating: 
Summary: Should open a lot of eyes
Review: Before reading this exceptional primer on the negative effects of modern environmentalism, I was clueless of the far-reaching costs that group's policies have had on the Third World. Driesen documents at length the effect radical environmentalism has had on Africa's struggling poor, who want nothing more than to benefit from the same energy sources and standard of living the First World takes for granted. He shows how DDT saved thousands of lives in Africa by protecting families from malaria, while radical Greens fought to eliminate the benign chemical because of a theoretical risk it posed to birds. When families were restricted from using the chemical on their huts in Africa, malaria deaths shot through the roof. Driesen lays the blame for those thousands of deaths at the doorstep of the Sierra Club and other like-minded groups who would rather maintain a politically correct notion of what good environmentalism is rather than save actual lives. Driesen goes on to show how environmentalists keep the Third World populations in poverty by fighting against the use of traditional, affordable sources of energy like coal and fossil fuels. Instead, Greens think other sources like wind and solar should be the only option for these people, disregarding the fact that the technology is no where near advanced enough to provide the energy needs these populations need to pull themselves out of poverty. Ironically, it would take over 10,000 acres of windmills to generate the same amount of electricity a 2-3 acre fossil fuel plant produces. So much for "saving the land." Driesen does not endorse using fossil fuels forever and ever amen. In fact, he wants nothing more than for the world to develop and invest in alternative energy because he knows as well as everyone else the day will come when we have no other choice. He simply believes (and rightly so) that, in the mean time, the problems of the Third World are real and not theoretical like so many Green "concerns", and that First World governments should not be intimidated by radical Greens and NGOs in their efforts to employ free-trade and responsible investment in these areas. One of the books biggest themes is how unfair it is that NGOs are not held to the same standards of accountability and transparency they constantly demand from for-profit coroporations. The only problem with the book is that it is poorly edited, which takes away from its overall intellectual package and gives it a slightly amateur vibe. I came across way too many punctuation errors and word omissions for this to be a serious book for serious readers. But the arguments are strong and the evidence is solid. Anyone interested in understanding why the Third World continues to fail at modernization should read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Corporate Attack Dogs Target Environmental Activists
Review: Driessen is obviously doing the bidding of corporate interests that want access to the world's markets without any accountability for environmental risks or concern for sustainability. The world does not need monoculture and genetically-engineered crops to eliminate hunger. It needs the political and moral will to share. Current food production is enough to feed a population 50% greater than the world's current population. Greedy corporations, dictators hoarding wealth, and international agencies that favor export crops over sustenance crops are to blame for hunger, not environmentalists. Don't let this mouthpiece for Monsanto and Dow fool you.
Rating:
Summary: Eco-Imperialsim
Review: More reviews as well as articles, excerpts, media, and news pertaining to the subject can be found at the book's supplement website...
Rating:
Summary: Corporate Attack Dogs Target Environmental Activists
Review: My Lord! This is one of those books that has such an immediate and gut wrenching impact that it is hard not to lose your balance after each chapter. The modern, mostly American, environmental movement has gotten it all wrong. Hearing the logic of Doctor Norman Borlaug who has concluded that organic farming will never be able to feed more than 4 Billion people (6.6 is our current population folks) or that good old fashioned malaria is killing a million people in Africa each year left me cold. I've enjoyed the huge comeback of migratory wildfowl and raptors in the U.S. since WE eliminated DDT, but I forgot to appreciate the benefit of not dying of malaria. We eliminated this disease, but won't let others use the same method. Farming, Dams, Water sources, pesticides...each issue is fraught with cumulative bad, past decisions... Wow, Wow, Wow....Who is going to fix this one? DB
Rating:
Summary: We've had it all wrong
Review: My Lord! This is one of those books that has such an immediate and gut wrenching impact that it is hard not to lose your balance after each chapter. The modern, mostly American, environmental movement has gotten it all wrong. Hearing the logic of Doctor Norman Borlaug who has concluded that organic farming will never be able to feed more than 4 Billion people (6.6 is our current population folks) or that good old fashioned malaria is killing a million people in Africa each year left me cold. I've enjoyed the huge comeback of migratory wildfowl and raptors in the U.S. since WE eliminated DDT, but I forgot to appreciate the benefit of not dying of malaria. We eliminated this disease, but won't let others use the same method. Farming, Dams, Water sources, pesticides...each issue is fraught with cumulative bad, past decisions... Wow, Wow, Wow....Who is going to fix this one? DB
Rating:
Summary: Useful account of environmental movement
Review: The issue of global warming is scaremongering, a massive red herring to make workers take their eyes off the tasks facing us - stopping deindustrialisation, unemployment, the destruction of our services, the European Union's destruction of our nation Britain. Scare stories about global warming, melting ice caps and glaciers, intensifying storms and droughts, a `Day After Tomorrow'-style ice age, overpopulation, mass extinctions, imminent famines, nuclear proliferation and energy shortages are grounded not in reason but in false science and a fear of progress. They are kin to medieval fears of apocalypse. We need to denounce the doom-mongers who portray us as helpless victims, at the mercy of events beyond our control as a nation.
The facts are that Antarctica has been cooling and its glaciers thickening for the past 30 years. Global fertility rates are falling dramatically, and with advanced technology, farmers are producing more food using fewer resources than ever before. Environmental pollution accounts for at most 2% of all cancer cases versus 30% caused by tobacco use. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world's forests covered 40.24 million square kilometres in 1950, and 43.04 million in 1994. 80% of the world's original rainforest is still intact. Sea levels in the region of the Pacific around the island nation of Tuvalu have been falling.
Some see all problems as supranational, requiring supranational solutions, worldwide action through intrusive international agreements like Kyoto, with cartoon cries to `save the world' through pre-emptive actions. They revive the anarchist slogan `No states, no borders' mirroring the capitalist agenda of `globalisation'.
Human innovation is the ultimate resource. Workers are wonderfully creative. The Greens, with their contempt for productive forces, line up with the anti-industry parson Malthus against the pro-industry Marx. The working class cannot conduct its present policy on the basis of scares about a possible future ice age in 50,000 years.
Rating:
Summary: Follow the Money
Review: The premise of Paul Driessen's sobering 'Eco-Imperialism' is as straightforward as it is chilling: the increasingly radical agenda of the so-called green movement is stifling economic development in the third world and, worst, resulting in the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of millions. Is argument is presented with clarity and fact - as well fed affluent bureaucrats of the EU, the UN, the US, and any number of environmental protection groups force their unfounded radical views on developing nations, the basic steps in economic evolution to these nations are being denied, virtually eliminating any hope for improvement. Issues ranging from alternative energy source, genetically modified food, sweatshop labor, global warming and others are reviewed in enough detail to make the points, sparing the reader of the often endless graphs, charts, and minutia that often accompany books of this type. In an interesting twist, Driessen does not limit this criticism to the political bureaucrats and radical activists, but also points a finger at global corporations. On one hand, rather than standing up to the junk science and extreme positions of the radical green movement, most large corporations are simply rolling over, acquiescing to these economically dangerous demands. On the other hand, a number of corporations - most notably BP, to which Driessen delivers some well-deserved body blows - are allowing the Greens to play into their hands, duping the public into believing their pro-environmental purity, while in fact simply spinning clever PR smoke. BP, for example, would profit greatly from acceptance of the Kyoto accord through their natural gas business, while continuing to grow oil revenues and profit.
Drinker of the Green Kool Aid will undoubtedly dismiss 'Eco-Imperialism' out-of-hand, falling back on their tired and tiresome accusations of Driessen as simply another 'corporate pawn.' However, as Driessen so forcefully articulates, it is in fact the fat cat bureaucrat environmentalists and politicians who are profiting at the expense of struggling third world nations. This is a proactive and chilling expose - should be required reading in all US Public Schools, if for no other reason as balance to the steady diet green pabulum our students are fed today.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable
Review: There is no greater way to underline the point of Paul Driessen's brilliant and meticulously foot-noted book than to read the review here that blindly criticizes it (from a brave anonymous reader). Just for a start the book and its message is endorsed by the man who FOUNDED Greenpeace - and that message is that the Radical Environmental movement has become so entrenched in dogma and a vision of a world without people that they summarily ignore the suffering, famine, disease, and death of millions. These radical groups are incredibly well-funded, untaxed, and totally unaccountable. What's worse is that they flatly refuse to engage in any debate whatsoever. They expect their followers to toe the line or be immediately dismissed as corporate ghouls. Driessen's review of their history and tactics is accurate, verifiable and horrifying. Anyone in politics, the media, or even the environmental movement itself ought to read this book and consider what it says. Driessen gives a voice, and a platform, to the people who are actually affected by decisions made by world bodies, NGO's, and pressure groups. What they speak is the truth as they live it - not conjecture from 2000 miles away. Eco-Imperialism is a shocking, profound, and desperately needed account of what happens when the privileged Western world decides the fate of millions of people whom they never have to see or hear. Driessen sees, and hears, and shares it all.
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