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While world leaders respond to dire environmental ills with one derisory greenhouse gas cap-and-trade proposal after another, growing numbers of consumers are taking the cause into their own hands. Part fashion, part reaction, a popular movement to reduce the average person’s “carbon footprint” has officially arrived.

As individuals turn to environmentally responsible forms of consumption, a new dynamic green marketplace has exploded in the West: the trade in organic food has continued its surge despite the economic downturn; hybrid automobiles and biofuels are now in full production; and an increasing number of companies offer the service of neutralizing consumers’ CO2 emissions. Implicit in these efforts at “going green” is the promise that global warming can be stopped by swapping out dirty products for “clean” ones, with little disruption to daily life. But can earth-friendly goods really save the planet?

This far-reaching, riveting narrative explores how the most readily available solutions to environmental crisis may be disastrously off the mark. Rogers travels the world tracking how the conversion from a “petro” to a “green” society affects the most fundamental aspects of life—food, shelter, and transportation.

Green Gone Wrong takes the reader into forests, fields, factories, and boardrooms around the world to draw out the unintended consequences, inherent obstacles, and successes of the products and practices that pledge to remedy today’s environmental woes. Reporting from a large-scale export-driven organic farm in Paraguay, a super low-energy “eco-village” in Germany’s Black Forest, biodiesel plantations in the slashed and burned rainforests of Borneo, and drought-plagued Southern India where trees are being planted to offset carbon emissions in the United States and Europe, Green Gone Wrong pieces together a global picture of what’s happening in the name of today’s environmentalism.

Expertly reported, Green Gone Wrong speaks to anyone interested in climate change and the future of the natural world, as well as those who want to act but are caught not knowing who, or what, to believe. Rogers casts a sober eye on what’s working and what’s not, fearlessly pushing ahead the debate over how to protect the planet.

About Heather Rogers Heather Rogers is a journalist and author. She has written for the New York Times Magazine, Mother Jones, and The Nation. Her first book, Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, traces the history and politics of household rubbish in the United States. The book received the Editor’s Choice distinction from the New York Times Book Review, and Non-Fiction Choice from the Guardian (UK). Her documentary film, also titled Gone Tomorrow, screened in festivals around the globe. Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution, her latest book, takes a critical, on-the-ground look at popular market-based solutions to ecological destruction. Rogers has spoken internationally on the environmental effects of mass consumption and is a senior fellow at the progressive US think tank Demos. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.