Almost daily, new and often contradictory reports appear on the
earth’s future and the environmental challenges before us: destruction
of forests and habitats, dying rivers and oceans, exhaustion of energy
resources, mass extinctions, displaced and starving populations,
melting ice caps, and climate change. So what’s the real story? What
are the lessons of the past and the hope for the future?

In ECO BARONS: The Dreamers, Schemers, and Millionaires Who Are Saving
Our Planet, (Ecco/HarperCollins; March 3, 2009; $25.99; Hardcover),
Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Humes takes an illuminating and up-to-the-
minute look at the exceptional individuals — inventors,
philanthropists, grassroots activists, and gadflies — who are using
their money, smarts, celebrity, and the law to stake out a middle
ground between the deniers and the doomsayers as they save the planet
one acre at a time. These later-day Rockefellers, Carsons and Browers
are setting the standard and showing the way.

But despite their incredible accomplishments, from patenting a
revolutionary hybrid car to finally getting George Bush to admit
global warming is real, there is so much damage to be undone that the
Eco Barons cannot do it alone. As Humes shows, the need for aggressive
government intervention and public commitment is essential to our
national and economic security. For eight years, the Bush
Administration has systematically dismissed, vilified, altered, and
censored science; repeatedly violated the Endangered Species Act, the
Clean Air Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act; and left us
far behind the rest of the world on clean energy, fuel efficient
vehicles, and greenhouse gas controls.

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