Trashing the Planet [antikvár]

PREFACE This book was written because I believe too many people are losing touch with common sense. Reading the headlines and lead stories in newspapers or listening to television and radio news, one could conclude that we Americans are the most gullible of people and certainly the most easily frightened. From simple scare stories about carcinogens lurking in everything we eat, breathe, and touch to truly stupendous claims of earth-destroying holes in the sky, global changes in climate, and doom for Western society, we have been panicked into spending billions of dollars to cure problems without knowing whether they are real. Whatever happened to healthy skepticism? Whatever happened to the "show me before you spend my money" attitude? Shouldn't we question the assumption that every industrial product may be a danger to life and limb? Should every new development be fought against to protect us from everything, including ourselves? I was delighted to read that an industrialist in England is fed up with always being on the receiving end of shocking allegations from opponents of progress. Norman Mischler, chairman of the British arm of the German chemical giant, Hoechst, hit back with this horrifying (but fictitious) account of the sinister goings-on at the plant of his IX