Subject: Earth in the Balance
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Comments:
Sooner or later election year politics will turn to the environment.
When they do, the better part of the Democrat's story is likely
already told in Senator Gore's EARTH IN THE BALANCE, subtitled
Ecology and the Human Spirit.  The Futurist ran a review of the book
in their July/August issue.  It should give you a glimpse of the man
and his views on the environment. 1 page.  Dave.

                        -------========X========-------

BOOK REVIEW: (From The Futurist, July/August 1992)
                                               
                                                                  Eco-Watch
                                                                     7/30/92  

              EARTH IN THE BALANCE:  Ecology and the Human Spirit
                              By Senator Al Gore

  While running for U.S. president in 1988, Senator Al Gore (D.-Tenn.) attempted
to make the environment one of the central issues of the race.  However, both
the public and the press were concerned with other matters.  Four years later,
during another election year and at a time of increasing concern about the
environment, Gore has published an insightful book that probes the roots of the
environmental crisis and offers a blueprint for saving the planet.

  The senator brings a wealth of experience to the task.  He has long been an
environmental leader on Capitol Hill, having co-authorized the Superfund Law to
clean up hazardous chemical dump sites and organized the first congressional
hearings on global warming.  In this book, he describes his visits to
environmental trouble spots around the world, including the Amazon rain forest,
Antarctica, and the Aral Sea.  And among the scientists whom he thanks for their
advice are such luminaries as oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, archaeologist
Richard Leakey, and astronomer Carl Sagan.

  Gore believes that a wait-and-see attitude toward the environment is a recipe
for disaster:  "Those who argue that we should do nothing until we have
completed a lot more research are trying to shift the burden of proof even as
the crisis deepens.  This point is crucial:  a choice to 'do nothing' in
response to mounting evidence is actually a choice to continue and even
accelerate the reckless environmental destruction that is creating the
catastrophe at hand."

  After providing a convincing picture of the severity of the environmental
crisis, Gore looks at how this crisis has come to pass.  The reasons range from
a shortsighted political system and technological hubris to an economic system
blind to the costs of nonrenewable-resource consumption.  The author also draws
a number of intriguing psychological parallels between a dysfunctional family
and what he calls "our dysfunctional civilization."

  Gore concludes that "we must make the rescue of the environment the central
organizing principle for civilization."  Thus, he proposes a Global Marshall
Plan aimed at stabilizing world population, developing appropriate technologies,
reforming economics, reaching international agreements on environmental
protection, and educating the world's citizens about the earth's plight.

  In the final analysis, says Gore, healing the planet will require healing
ourselves in a spiritual sense.  This means reestablishing a connection to the
natural world and renewing our faith in the future; otherwise, our addiction to
consuming the earth's resources to meet our short-term needs could foreclose
that future.

  Earth in the Balance, 1992, is available from Houghton Mifflin Publishers.