Strategic Ignorance:
Carl Pope, president of the Sierra Club, and writer Paul Rauber have put together this thoroughly readable account of the dismantling of environmental rules and regulations that most people not only take for granted, but also didn’t even know were in place to protect us. They provide a brief history of U.S. environmental efforts, starting with Teddy Roosevelt, and then detail how the Bush administration has managed to completely overturn or do an end run around almost all of them. From the institution of special committees to deal with industry complaints, to the use of “Luntz speak” (i.e., referring to incredibly timber-industry-friendly rules as “Healthy Forests”), Pope and Rauber detail how Bush and company have simply abandoned a hundred years’ worth of public consensus on the environment.