Planet Under Pressure

520 An informative and entertaining, non-technical examination of the nature, properties, and importance of water. The text is divided into four principal parts--what is water?; water and life; water in motion; and water and humans, including the problem of pollution--and is thoroughly illustrated with photographs and specially commissioned artwork. Planet Earth is unique in the known solar system because of the presence of liquid water--a substance which covers almost three-quarters of the total surface area of the globe. In straightforward, non-technical language, this book examines this extraordinary substance--which we all take for granted.

"Catherine Flowers grew up in Lowndes County, Alabama, a place that's been called "Bloody Lowndes" because of its violent, racist history. Once the epicenter of the voting rights struggle, today it's Ground Zero for a new movement that is Flowers's life's work. It's a fight to ensure human dignity through a right most Americans take for granted: basic sanitation. Too many people, especially the rural poor, lack an affordable means of disposing cleanly of the waste from their toilets, and, as a consequence, live amid filth. Flowers calls this America's dirty secret. In this powerful book she tells the story of systemic class, racial, and geographic prejudice that foster Third World conditions, not just in Alabama, but across America, in Appalachia, Central California, coastal Florida, Alaska, the urban Midwest, and on Native American reservations in the West. Flowers's book is the inspiring story of the evolution of an activist, from country girl to student civil rights organizer to environmental justice champion at Bryan Stevenson's Equal Justice Initiative. It shows how sanitation is becoming too big a problem to ignore as climate change brings sewage to more backyards, and not only those of poor minorities"--

This book examines how pollution has become a global issue and looks at the debate over possible solutions.