“If you care about the future of our world—the health of our planet, the legacy we leave our children—I urge you to read No Rain in the Amazon. Compellingly readable, it’s an intriguing, jolting, authoritative account of one of the greatest environmental challenges facing us all. It just doesn’t get any bigger than this.”──William F. Laurance, Staff Scientist, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute

Acting as the planet’s air conditioner, the rainforest sucks up millions of tons of greenhouse gases and stores them safely out of the atmosphere. South America's deforestation threatens to unleash a kind of “carbon bomb” that will add to our already deteriorating climate difficulties. As he travels across Peru and Brazil, recognized South America expert Nikolas Kozloff talks to locals, scientists and activists about the rainforest and what should be done to avert its collapse.

Drawing on his expertise of South American politics, Kozloff argues that cooperation between the world's countries is essential in turning back the tide of climate change and that the fate of the planet depends on our response to environmental problems within the southern hemisphere.

 

Nikolas Kozloff is a former senior research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C. and the author of Hugo Chavez and Revolution!. He blogs on CounterPunch and has appeared on PBS's World Focus, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and The Daily Show. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

 

“Much of the global warming attention has been focused on the high north, but this valuable book reminds us not to forget, even for a second, the contribution the rainforest plays to keeping our planet habitable--and the fears that it may soon reverse that role, with disastrous consequences.” --Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, and the National Bestseller Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future

“Nikolas Kozloff has issued a Code Red alert from the pulmonary system of the planet. This meticulously researched and urgently written book documents the perilous condition of Amazonia and by extension the tenuous fate of life on Earth as we know it. Kozloff pinpoints the manifold forces, economic and political, driving the senseless destruction of the world's greatest rainforest and its indigenous cultures and ecosystems. He vividly and convincing links the deforestation of the Amazon to the impending prospect of runaway climate change. Time is running out. Kozloff has done his job. Now it's up to us to intervene. Read it, absorb it, act on it.” -- Jeffrey St. Clair, author Born Under a Bad Sky, co-editor of CounterPunch