Loving This Planet

Leading Thinkers Talk About How to Make a Better World

Helen Caldicott

More than two dozen internationally recognized advocates discuss the state of the planet in candid conversations with leading antinuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

“The book is a treasure trove of anecdotes featuring high-profile politicians, academics, and celebrities, including Martin Sheen, Lily Tomlin, Bob Herbert, and Lester Brown. . . . Alongside the celebrity sightings runs the thread of a growing urgency to change our energy, environmental, and military policies in the United States and on a global scale. Surprising statistics about nuclear waste storage, rising sea levels, and military spending serve as an alarm, but Caldicott and her collaborators also offer many innovative solutions.” —Publishers Weekly

Ever since quitting her job as a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School in 1980, Helen Caldicott has worked tirelessly for a safe, sustainable, nuclear-free planet, most recently by hosting a weekly radio show featuring environmentalists and leading activists from around the globe.

Together with some of the most brilliant thinkers and inspiring advocates of our time, including Maude Barlow, Bill McKibben, and many others, Caldicott—whom Meryl Streep has called “my inspiration to speak out”—scrutinizes our unsustainable dependence on nuclear energy and the absurdity of nuclear arms and seeks to raise awareness about other planetary issues, including deforestation, sea-level rise, and privatization of water reserves. In these stirring conversations, we hear from Martin Sheen on the power of grassroots movements and the ability of unionized labor to influence politicians; Jonathan Schell, bestselling author and contributing editor to The Nation and Harper’s, on key environmental and economic fallacies; and award-winning nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani on transitioning to a society based completely on renewable energy, omitting the need for fossil fuels or nuclear power. Loving This Planet offers an informative and accessible overview of the chief environmental and social issues of our time.

Contributors:

Maude Barlow
Lester Brown
Rhett Butler
John Church
Diane Curran
Daniel Ellsberg
Carole Gallagher
Hugh Gusterson
William Hartung
Denis Hayes
Chris Hedges
Bob Herbert
Vini Gautam Khurana
Michael T. Klare
David Krieger
Antony Loewenstein
Michael Madsen
Arjun Makhijani
Bill McKibben
Frances Fox Piven
Phil Radford
Jonathan Schell
Martin Sheen
Janette Sherman-Nevinger
Lily Tomlin

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Praise

“Without fail, Caldicott asks thoughtful, deeply nuanced questions, and her subjects respond with intense and often personal reflections on many important issues. With a level of intellectual discussion all too absent in our national discourse, this is a worthy collection that educates with each turn of the page.”