Brian Tokar’s widely-acclaimed book, Earth for Sale, largely disappeared from circulation after the leading New Left publisher, South End Press, went out of business in 2014. The entire book is available here for download for the first time. (An earlier online PDF version was not very readable.)
When it first appeared in 1997, Earth for Sale was one of the first books to critically examine the compromises of mainstream environmentalism and highlight the sharp contrast with emerging alternative tendencies, including environmental justice, the new radical forest activism, rising ecological outlooks from the global South and others. While a pair of other books highlighting these contrasts appeared while this book was still in preparation, Earth for Sale updated original research on corporate influences in the mainstream environmental movement that was first developed for the 1990 Earth Day Wall Street Action, offered one of the first published critiques of the new ‘market-oriented’ brand of environmentalism and grounded its assessment of new ecological tendencies in a clear social movement-centered perspective.
Earth for Sale was favorably reviewed by The Nation, Orion magazine, The Ecologist (“In the well-written and thoroughly researched style that Tokar brings to all his projects, Earth for Sale is a clarion call for nothing short of an ecological revolution”) and other outlets. The back cover featured comments from several key movement voices of the era, including:
Howard Zinn: “Earth for Sale is a sharp-tongued critique of the corporate greed and government collaboration that have created our environmental crisis. It delivers a rousing call for grassroots action, believing that only a democratic environmentalism can save us all.”
Dave Dellinger: “Given Brian Tokar’s 25 years of environmental research and activism, this book is a must for anyone who wants the universe and its occupants to survive. . . Exposing the shallowness of corporate-supported mainstream environmentalism, he shows that we need a multiracial, multicultural, international environmentalism that is grassroots based and works for social justice.”
Barbara Dudley (then-director of Greenpeace USA): “The Environmental movement, like all movements, needs to constantly challenge itself and watch for signs of complacency or co-optation. We need to remember our history, question our present, and rewrite our future. Earth For Sale can help us do that.”
The book can be downloaded here in its entirety, or by chapter:
Front Matter, Introduction and Prologue to Part One: The Limits of Environmentalism
Chapter 1: Questioning Environmentalism
Chapter 2: Trading Away the Earth
Chapter 3: The Limits of Regulation
Chapter 4: Activist Dilemmas: Insider Politics vs. the Forests
Part Two: New Ecological Movements:
Chapter 5: Ecology and Revolution
Chapter 6: Environmental Justice
Chapter 7: The New Forest Activism
Chapter 8: Ecological Movements in the Third World
Chapter 9: Unifying Movements: Theory and Practice
