We've got a short week coming up -- Jon's hosting a benefit in DC Thursday night, so they'll be re-airing tonight's shows (don't ask me why Colbert'll be off too. Or why they aren't going a bit further back in time for the reruns. Makes my blog-life easier, in any case).
Jon's starting the week off with his most serious guest: Alex Prud'Homme is the author of The Ripple Effect: The Fate of Fresh Water in the Twenty-First Century. Here's Publisher's Weekly (a starred review):
Prud'homme, a journalist and the coauthor with Julia Child of My Life in France, examines crucial issues concerning the world's finite supply of fresh water--pollution, water quantity (drought and flood), waste, and governance. Focusing on the U.S., he explores how water scarcity, population growth, and environmental degradation are forcing the country to a moment of reckoning on a scale not seen since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. And he notes how woefully obsolete laws designed to protect drinking supplies in the 1970s are becoming, when hundreds of untested new chemicals enter U.S. waterways every year, and the majority of water pollution now comes from unregulated storm-water runoff, where insecticides, fertilizers, paint, and motor oil are washed into the water supply. Prud'homme offers ample and eloquent warnings of a looming water crisis: intersex fish in Chesapeake Bay, the poisoning of water wells in Wisconsin from agricultural runoff, Lake Mead's record-low waterline in Nevada, decaying dams and levees. Prud'homme's eloquence and local focus will help this book rise to the top of the recent flood of water-themed books including Elixir by Brian Fagan and The Big Thirst by Charles Fishman.
And Booklist:
As development spreads and water resources are stretched to the limit, one essential resource, water, is becoming increasingly commodified and the subject of corporate interest and investment as well as lawsuits when consumers weigh in with their concerns. How did we get to such a place, and what does the future hold for water quality and supply in the U.S. and around the world? Prud’homme examines the everyday products whose use affects the quality and the supply of water, including fertilizers, antibacterial soap, and prescription drugs containing chemicals that later find their ways into water and sewage treatment systems to the detriment of the ecosystem. Prud’homme takes as a starting point the mysterious death in 2005 of a hydrochemist killed while taking water samples in Passaic, New Jersey, a hotbed for controversies over water. Proceeding from it, he offers historical and current perspectives on incidents ranging from the “black mayonnaise” of sludge found in New York neighborhoods to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico BP oil rig blowout. An important book on a fundamental resource.
— Vanessa Bush
Other stuff: the booksite has other reviews (and quite a lot more, including a kinda generic ways to make a difference action-item list and several excerpts), The Atlantic has his brief 2009 article on the topic, and Huffpo (I know) has what looks like a different excerpt. |