"An award-winning environmental activist and social entrepreneur exposes the link between our financial and environmental crises
For decades, politicians and business leaders alike told the American public that today’s challenge was growing the economy, and that environmental protection could be left to future generations. Now in the wake of billions of dollars in costs associated with coastal devastation from Hurricane Sandy, rampant wildfires across the West, and groundwater contamination from reckless drilling, it’s becoming increasingly clear that yesterday’s carefree attitude about the environment has morphed into a fiscal crisis of epic proportions.
About The Author:
Amy Larkin has been at the forefront of the fight for the environment for years, and in Environmental Debt she argues that the costs of global warming, extreme weather, pollution and other forms of “environmental debt” are wreaking havoc on the economy. Synthesizing complex ideas, she pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cultural touchstones of the environmental debate, revealing how, for instance, despite coal’s relative fame as a “cheap” energy source, ordinary Americans pay $350 billion a year for coal’s damage in business related expenses, polluted watersheds, and in healthcare costs. And the problem stretches far beyond our borders: deforestation from twenty years ago in Thailand caused catastrophic flooding in 2011, and cost Toyota 3.4 percent of its annual production while causing tens of thousands of workers to lose jobs in three different countries.
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Amy Larkin is the Business Advisor for Greenpeace International and the former director of Greenpeace Solutions. She has been featured in The Washington Post, Newsweek, Reuters, Bloomberg, and Greenbiz, appeared on NPR and CNBC, and won multiple awards, including a recent nomination for the United Nations Foundation Clean Energy, Education and Empowerment Award. She is the Chair of the Advisory Board of Biomimicry NYC and a Strategic Advisor to the public policy think tank RESOLVE, and is currently advising Mars, Inc. and Unilever on overhauling their supply chain and manufacturing operations.
