the company. Some of the workers were side-tracked in 2006 into accepting severance in return for limited concessions while others became tied up in court action over compensation which is continuing. Yet their message has spread to workers in other battery companies. By 2007 workers in Huanyu, Panasonic and Wuxi Matsushita had started protests. Altogether, the book estimates "at least 10,000 cadmium-affected workers experienced collective actions against irresponsible employers and government officials." No Choice but to Fight is frank about the mistakes made in this struggle as well as its successes. The book also puts the dispute in a wider context. Cadmium still travels round the world in the form of consumer goods, especially toys. But the EU has banned cadmium products and trade unions, consumer groups and green activists, taking their cue from the Chinese workers, are campaigning for countries elsewhere to do the same. The book concludes: "It is time for us to campaign for extending the EU ban...to China and the rest of the world.'
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No rain in the Amazon: How South America's climate change affects the entire planet Nikolas Kozloff Macmillianscience from £10 Reviewed by Terry Conway Enjoyment isn't a word I would normally associate with reading about climate chaos, but Nikolas Kozloff's book is a riveting read. Having spent three months travelling in Latin America last year - a month of which was in Peru, I was particularly drawn to reading this book to find out more about that country, as well as about neighbouring environmentalists internationally have tended to give greater One of the highlights of my trip was the sight of Machu Picchu, the extraordinary archaeological site in the Peruvian Andes built in the fifteenth century in one of the most beautiful spots on the planet- at 2430 metres above sea level it is breathtaking in more ways than one. I was therefore completely devastated to hear of the dramatic flood in the area only a few months later in January tourists had to be evacuated by helicopter, the railway line was swept away and the site reported here in Britain was that 10,000 local people saw their homes destroyed, and that the impact on the economy of what a completely tourist town of Aguas Calientes has also been a major problem for the local population. Kozloff gives us a context to understand that this was no one off problem, no natural product of climate chaos. He explains that Peru is subject to aluviones, glacial floodbursts, which in 1998 resulted in the collapse of a nearby hydroelecreconstruction cost $400 million. While this year's destruction hadn't happened when the book was published, Kozloff also explores events that were going on during my visit in Peru, the resistance of the indig enous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon to the Neoliberal policies of the government of Alan Garcia. 70% of the rainforest has been handed over to oil and gas concessions as part of a free trade agreement with the US - areas which not only overlap with protected wildlife areas but where indigenous communities live. Understanding that their lands would be privatised and that massive deforestation and pollution would follow, tens of thousands of indigenous people took action in the summer of 2009, blockading roads and railways and occupying oil industry installations in an attempt to force the government to back down. Instead Garcia upped the stakes, declaring a state of emergency and attacking a group of people sleeping by a roadside blockade resulting in the death of at least 25 civilians and nine policeman and injuring over 100. In the aftermath Garcia was forced to back down, but without this
27 * Reviews was only a temporary retreat... The book covers a great deal of ground - including expound ing on the ravages that the growth of soy bean production - used extensively for cattle feed - is wreaking in Lula's Brazil, the growth of biofuels and the less discussed problem of major hydroelectric dams - the latter two under the telling rubric of "the Clean Energy Trap" He paints a graphic picture of the way that climate chaos creates feedback between so many different phenomena, fuelled by the profit driven greed of neoliberalism - single crop agriculture, soil erosion, glacial melting, floods, droughts, hurricane and the increasing exploitation of the indigenous peoples of the region. There are some frustrations: Kozloff is not systematic in his analysis of the political forces involved. Discussing Peru's Alan Garcia for example he refers to him as jettisoning previous political ideals - but elsewhere describes him as a scoundrel. He is also soft on Garcia's predecessor Fujimoro - despite the fact that both have promoted policies which have exacerbated the effects of climate change on the people of Peru. He is clearly sympathetic to the resistance of indigenous peoples but has little to say about what is going on at the grass roots. This is most clearly demonstrated in his treatment of Brazil where he sets up former environment Minister Marina Silva - who left the Worker's Party and joined the Green Party - as the good fairy in counterposition to President Lula's ogre. While I agree with his criticisms of Lula, it is in mass organisations defending the rainforest that ecosocialists are more likely to see the seeds of hope than in individuals, however charismatic. Nevertheless this is a book l would highly recommend - useful preparatory reading in the run up to the Hugo Blanco tour.