This book is a vigorous effort to answer the question, "How did we get here?"--a question that troubles virtually every American over the age of fourteen. How did America lose power in the world? How did American democracy become undermined? The press industry, who once would have been charged with answering this question, is not--according to Phelps--currently capable of doing so. Closely read, this book allows an answer to emerge to this compelling American question.
This book gives new perspective on just whom activists must target to slow global warming--that is, target those who are warming the globe deliberately and hugely, instead of just semi-accidentally and in small degree, like the rest of us. The book delineates how and where profits are being taken, by large corporate interests (in oil, crime, and real estate) through a deliberate acceleration of global warming by commercial actions of this group. Thus, the book gives evidence that the effective concert of Big Oil, Organized Crime, and Big Real Estate is liable legally for planet harm--the law says one is liable for a harm if in an action he either intended the harm or intentionally acted while knowing it would do harm. Beyond this, the book is educational in giving a revised history of important events of Western corporate exploitation of foreign natural resources--in the regions of central Africa and MesoAmerica--which events have been crucial to the acceleration of global warming.