I had the great pleasure of meeting Cox last week (late June) during a conference on global warming in St. Louis. His sharp insights on sustainability and activism are a refreshing antidote to the apolitical lifestyle environmentalism that has hindered serious efforts to fight global warming. Just before the St. Louis conference he published an excellent piece in Alternet, explaining why home gardening is no substitute for fighting corporate power: http://www.alternet.org/environment/86943/

Here is the blurb for his new book, Sick Planet:

Sick Planet was published in spring 2008 by London's Pluto Press and is being distributed in the US through the University of Michigan Press. If you judge a book by its cover and if, instead of making you feel at one with nature, this cover makes you feel a bit queasy, that's intentional -- and the book will have the same effect. But this isn't just another effort to convince you that we're in ecological trouble, because you already know that. Sick Planet tells nine stories in which the global capitalist economy turns the well-intentioned efforts of humanity inside-out. By the tenth chapter, it will be clear that neither organic chicken soup nor full medical coverage can cure what ails this planet.

Read more about what's inside Sick Planet

"Cox’s revelatory book is a Silent Spring for the 21st century."

-- Jeffrey St. Clair