Frank Joshua - The big heat: Earth on the brink

Advance Praise for The Big Heat

If Hunter S. Thompson had been a backpacker, this is the book he would have written. But dont let the fear and loathing fool you: this book is a love letter to the American Westthat is, whats left of the West in the wake of fracking, toxic waste, the gunning down of grizzlies and wolves, the hypocrisy of Democrats, and the venality of Republicans. There are passages here that will break your heart.

Ted Nace, author of Climate Hope: On the Frontlines of the Fight Against Coal

Heres the real story of our privatization of free-living animals. Of the federal malpractice of forestry. Of every bit of pious and charitable pandering that got us the weird EPA leadership and toxic militarism controlling our lives today. Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank tell all that unfolds when political parties share the same lethal ideology of infinite consumption. In this important folio of essays, these two legendary investigative writers tell the urgent story of vast open lands, of mighty waters yearning to flow free again, of elk and grizzlies.

Their perspective is informed here by Foucault, and thereby the down and out in Las Vegas and the lonely worker who retrieves their bodies from the Colorado River. This hardworking book is the antidote to todays obsequious political journalism. Buy extras. Put copies in the hands of those ready to shake off complacency, to struggle for human decency, to champion the Earths atmosphere and the great, global biological community within it, from the glaciers to the plains to the cities.

Lee Hall, environmental attorney and author of On Their Own Terms: Animal Liberation for the 21st Century

Many thanks to Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, who have elegantly highlighted the lives and actions that matter most in the 21st-Century struggle to keep it real. In a culture of artifice and unreality where everythings for sale, stories like these exemplify how persistence and focused resistance inspire a new generation of radical dissent. Ask any oligarch, CEO, opposing bureaucrat, or government attorney what melts their glacier, and they will all tell you about that unique artist, poet or grassroots activist that cant be bought, wont cave in and never gives up.

Steve Kelly, co-founder Alliance for the Wild Rockies

Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank connect the dots between environmental destruction and Big Oil, Big Timber, Big Meat, Hydro-Imperialists and other greedy expropriators of our land and water. The Big Heat: Earth of the Brink names names, names policies and give readers an essential overview of the culprits in our environmental crisis and what can be done about it.

Martha Rosenberg, author of Born With a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks, and Hacks Pimp the Public Health

While the reigning media-politics culture blares on about the latest bizarre White House drama, the ecological commons is being sacrificed on the bipartisan altar of a deranged state capitalism. Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank have been brilliantly ad righteously depicting, explaining, and denouncing this deeply political, man-made calamity from the environmental front lines for many years. The names and party configurations in nominal power change, but the eco-exterminist beat marches on at an ever-escalating pace, bringing us to the cusp of extinction. A collection of the authors finest individual environmental essays over the last decade plus, The Big Heat: Earth on the Brink is left environmental writing at its eloquent, state-of-the-art best. It is also a stirring call to meaningfully militant action.

Paul Street, author of They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy

Also by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank

Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion

Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland

CounterPunch
PO Box 228
Petrolia, CA 95558
www.counterpunch.org

Copyright 2018 CounterPunch
All Rights Reserved.
First published by CounterPunch 2018.

AK Press
370 Ryan Avenue #100
Chico, CA 95973
www.akpress.org

ISBN: 9781849353366
E-ISBN: 9781849353373
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018932447

Typography and design by Tiffany Wardle.

Sitting Sun

The cover image on this edition is a rendition of the Sitting Sun pictograph on the basalt cliffs of the Columbia River Gorge near Maryhill in what is now Washington state. The image was painted by a shaman of the river tribes more than 300 years ago, when the first European plagues began to sweep across the Pacific Northwest, killing upwards of 80 percent of the tribal people. The sun was a holy image found across the region, often depicted as a rayed arc by the Northwest tribes. But the Sitting Sun is distinct. Each of suns rays is barbed with a smaller sun and those smaller suns are painted not with red ochre, the color of life, but in white clay, the shade of death. The Sitting Sun burns with the heat of 20 suns, forever rising over Miller Island, an ossuary of the river tribes, the isle for a new kind of dead.

photo by Scott Dietz

Acknowledgments

This book, which spent many years in the germination stage, started out as one thing and morphed into something quite different. As a consequence, The Big Heat had many midwives, but none more vital to its existence than Becky Grant, whose head for figures and eye for aesthetics keeps CounterPunch fresh, feisty and solvent. Sitting beside Becky in Petrolia are Deva Wheeler and Nichole Stephens, both of whom can be counted on to do the impossible on little notice. As usual, Tiffany Wardles crisp and fluid design makes our prose look better than it probably reads. Up in Stumptown, Nathaniel St. Clair zealously promotes our heresies whether he agrees with them or not. We are deeply indebted to Zach, Lorna, Bill, and rest of the gang at AK Press, for working with us over the last dozen years and for running one of the most vibrant and fearless publishing companies on this (or any other) continent. We are indebted to Scott Dietz for the use of his photograph of the Sitting Sun rock painting. For more of Scotts work check out his website The Narrative Image (https://thenarrativeimage.blogspot.com). Our book tries to give voice to the thousands of activists and organizers who are putting their hearts, minds and bodies on the line in what may prove to be the ultimate battle for the fate of the planet as we know it. Among those who have educated and inspired us, wed like to extend a special note of gratitude to: Clarke Abbey, Mike Bader, Martin Billheimer, Denise Boggs, Barbara Brower, Patricia Clary, Ted Nace, Tom Carpenter, Michael Colby, Karen Coulter, Stan Cox, John Davis, Susan Davis, Michael Donnelly, Mike Garrity, Marnie Gaede, Keith Hammer, Tim Hermach, Robert Hunziker, Steve Kelly, Owen Lammers, David Mattson, Arlene Montgomery, David Orr, Scott Parkin, Doug and Andrea Peacock, Lauren Regan, Mike Roselle, Dr. Robin Silver, Chris Simon, John Weisheit, Louisa Willcox, and George Wuerthner. On the homefront, Chelsea Mosher and Kimberly Willson-St. Clair kept the creative fires stoked, the egos grounded and the honey dripping.Weve lost some companions in the last few years whose friendship shaped our thinking on nature, political struggle and about how to live: David Brower, Tom Cannon, Alexander Cockburn, Dean Frank, Margot Kidder, Franklin Lamb, Saul Landau, Norman Pollack, TH St. Clair, John Trudell, and Larry Tuttle. We dedicate this book to them. The Big Heat was written under the influence of Peter Tosh, Blue Mitchell, Townes Van Zandt, David Vest, Joe Strummer and Moxie Tung!