“Who am I upon this Earth so green, so blue, so round?”
Having returned from a journey to Canada’s Yukon Territory — a remote northern part of this planet — I needed the answer to that question. The year was 1989. I had gone there without a car, traveling by bus, train, boat, and foot, seeking a refuge where I could live out the rest of my life within nature, and away from the civilization that was destroying everything I loved.
To my horror, I did not find it. Even in the wilderness of the far north, the air was polluted. Pelts of wolves and polar bears hung on the walls of saloons, and were for sale on the shelves of tourist shops. The residents of that region zoomed around in their motorboats, snowmobiles, and private airplanes.
I returned south, and walked the streets of Vancouver, asking the universe Why? How was it possible that one of Earth’s creatures could destroy all the rest? What was the real cause of this holocaust? I had to find out, because the answers that were being given to me did not make sense. And without real answers, no real solutions are possible.
Back home, I spent much of the next four years in the archives of the main branch of the New York Public Library, the famous building with the stone lions keeping watch out front. And my research became a book — a book with surprising answers that I had to put aside while I dealt with an emergency threat to my life in the form of the wireless revolution.
This year I picked up the manuscript again, brought it up to date, and found a publisher for it. It is even more relevant today than it was thirty years ago, because the Earth is being destroyed even faster than it was, and our society still pretends that humans are gods, and in control, whereas in fact nothing could be further from the truth.
The Earth and I is the human story, from two million years ago to today. It is about the environmental crisis. It is about technology. It is about choices.
The Earth and I is being published in hardcover by Skyhorse Publishing, and can be pre-ordered now from Amazon.
Arthur Firstenberg
President, Cellular Phone Task Force
Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life
P.O. Box 6216
Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA
phone: +1 505-471-0129
arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org
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