When the Bough Breaks: Our Children, Our Environment

by Laura Thomas (Author), Lloyd Timberlake (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $5.64

  Published as a TV tie-in, this book presents a revolutionary concept, showing how caring for our environment is linked to caring for our children. It asks whether we can pass on a healthy environment to future generations when environmental mismanagement kills millions of children today - four million from unsafe water alone. Most of these deaths are in the Third World, where almost 90% of the world's children live. But even in Britain, lead and acid pollution, smog and radiation blight the futures of many. Our ability to meet all the needs of children provides a test of our ability to provide for the needs of more distant progeny next century and beyond. The authors contend that it is a test we are failing. There are many solutions, most of them simple and cheap, many of them already being used. Children have no political voice, and the choices we make today critically affect the choices they will be able to make as adults. The right choices will not be made without an informed public. Throughout the book individual stories of children in Britain, Ethiopia, India and Peru reveal the personal realities behind the global challenges of bad water, industrial pollution, global warming and soil loss. Children themselves are becoming a force for change. Lloyd Timberlake has also written Only One Earth amd Africa in Crisis . Laura Thomas was the major campaigner for the Citizen Action campaign for lead-free petrol and is a consultant for Friends of the Earth.