You Are Here: Exposing the Vital Link Between What We Do and What That Does To the Planet by Thomas M. Kostigen, Kevin Bacon (Foreword by)

From Barnes & Noble

This book has a clear and simple message: The health of our ecosystem and, indeed, global survival begins at home. Thomas Kostigen, coauthor of The Green Book, emphasizes the connection between individual action and the state of the environment. In You Are Here, he brings readers face to face with the results of small actions like flicking on a light switch or shirking just one week of recycling. Sometime the results are so vast that they cannot be ignored: The Pacific Ocean now contains a dead zone twice the size of Texas. Urgently needed insights for concerned citizens.

From the Publisher

In this groundbreaking book, the New York Times bestselling coauthor of The Green Book Thomas M. Kostigen reveals the vital missing link in today's environmental crisis: how we as individuals are connected to the most tenuous geography on the planet. Despite the recent prominence of "green" issues in the news, the direct relationship between our actions and the earth is too often ignored. But the seemingly insignificant things we do every day have the power to literally alter the landscape in the ongoing battle to resuscitate the planet.

There are living narratives of climate change that reveal the consequences of our everyday actions. You Are Here allows us to both comprehend and care about what's happening in these encampments of ruin. Kostigen shows us what may well be a glimpse of our future in Linfen City, China, one of the most polluted places on the planet. From a garbage patch twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to the melting arctic ice shelf, to the flood zone that is Mumbai, India, to the dwindling rainforests of the Amazon, You Are Here describes the environmental crisis in a way we can feel, see, and touch. Kostigen presents us with opportunities for change and shows us how to take action on the spot, wherever we are. Combining groundbreaking research and page-turning frontline reporting, Kostigen pulls back the curtain on the most pressing and provocative issues of the day and in so doing we see the earth and our place on it in a brand new light.

Publishers Weekly

In a travelogue heavy on statistics but disappointingly pale in atmospherics, Kostigan (The Green Book) invites readers to accompany him on a trip "into the thick of the most environmentally tenuous places on the planet" to observe the havoc caused by human behavior, from Jerusalem, where acid rain and global warming-induced salt weathering are wearing down the Western Wall, to the sewage-logged Great Lakes. He visits "the future": the "orgy of color, mayhem, flash modernity, and squalor" of Mumbai; Linfen City, China, "the dirtiest place on Earth"; and the Eastern Garbage Patch, a mid-Pacific "lethal marine habitat" of trash "twice the size of Texas." Post-trip, Kostigen exclaims, "Now I see people in my actions.... I feel differently about what I do and what it does to the planet." Unfortunately, his feeble powers of description convey little feeling to the reader (the Amazon jungle is "definitely a bit of Survivor out here") and his naïvely optimistic claim that "We have changed the Earth's natural course of development" and "we can just as easily change its course again-for the better" is less than convincing. (Oct.)

Kirkus Reviews

Self-styled environmental "adventure story" makes an impassioned plea for greater understanding and commitment. Discover magazine columnist Kostigen attempts to show how our habits and consumption cause problems all over the world. Among other places, he visits Mumbai, India, to which the West exports enormous quantities of hazardous waste, and Borneo, where the global demand for palm oil is causing deforestation. "We are contributing to our own demise and health hazards by the products that we buy and the choices we make," he writes. As an example, he points to the remote Alaskan village of Shishmaref, "the first community in the world to succumb to climate change," where houses fall into the sea due to erosion of the permafrost; he agrees with residents' assertions that this erosion is caused by pollution from "the lower forty-eight." Kostigen illustrates the effects of Americans' obsession with cheap goods by visiting Linfen City, China, "the dirtiest place on earth," where coal plants fuel the manufacturing boom. He finds the tail end of consumerism in the Pacific Ocean, where he joins a researcher tracking a spiral of debris "twice the size of Texas" that generates plastic fragments that are replacing zooplankton in the oceanic food chain. The author's approach produces mixed results. Colloquial prose conveys a great deal of information in a manner that often seems scattershot. Readers learn about per capita paper use, personal carbon emissions (a pound for every mile we drive), rates of recycling, the size of New York's Fresh Kills landfill (world's largest man-made structure), the effects of soybean farming upon the Amazon (negative) and many other subtopics. When Kostigen connectsthe dots to demonstrate the effects of human action, he often sounds pedantic, despite the melodramatic asides. Similar in content to Fred Pearce's Confessions of an Eco-Sinner (2008), this is a less engaging book. A somewhat muddled clarion for readers wishing to transform their impact upon a battered planet.

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