Edward Flattau's Green Morality: Mankind's Role in Environmental Responsibility Reviewed By Norm Goldman of Bookpleasures.com

Author: Edward Flattau
ISBN: 9780982141922
Publisher: The Way Things Are Publications

For 40 plus years Edward Flattau has been the only nationally syndicated environmental newspaper columnist with his regular twice-weekly commentary. These columns first appeared in 1972 when he succeeded the late former US Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Flattau has contributed over 3700 articles on pivotal environmentally related events and his work has appeared in over 120 daily newspapers. He is the recipient of ten national journalism awards.

In his biting and no holds barred Green Morality: Mankind's Role in Environmental Responsibility Flattau tackles the complex crisis pertaining to our environment and the multitude of individuals that have been playing crucial negative and in some instances positive roles in the USA and abroad. Flattau strongly believes that well-established solutions have been tossed aside by many of our leaders for a variety of reasons to the point that he considers such behavior as being immoral. His opening introductory remarks succinctly sums up the principal themes of his book when he asserts: “Most of us would consider environmental protection fundamental to survival and, by logical extension, a moral imperative. Yet all too often we behave with reckless abandon in our interactions with the environment, leaving many victims in our wake.” And it is with this in mind and providing a wealth of background material that Flattau explores and analyzes within the nine sections of the book the following topics: the lack of human respect towards the world around us, is nature humane or malevolent, our capacity for compassion in our relations with other human beings as well as with lower life forms, our courage and cowardice in facing challenges posed by environmental degradation, how honest is the government, the private sector, and individuals in revealing the truth concerning environmental problems and how to solve them, humility and hubris in our treatment of fellow humans as well as our surrounding environment, the role of people in authority and how they have failed us, who has risen to the challenges with their extraordinary creativity and tenacity and what is needed to create a harmonious, sustainable relationship with the biosphere and if it is possible to attain it in time to prevent disaster.

With Green Morality: Mankind's Role in Environmental Responsibility Flattau can be described as a grouch on a rant, yet he does succeed in waking us up and reminding us of just how far we have fallen concerning the sorry state of our attitudes and behavior towards the environment. Presenting dozens of examples, he shows the misrepresentations on the part of our leaders in industry, politics and even religion that have as their aims the diverting of our attention from the important issues by using a variety of tactics. Without doubt the book is a welcome and very strong contribution to the dialogue concerning environmental issues and a must read for anyone that wishes to become an active participant.