Amazon Defenders Meet Climate Warriors
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- Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn published The Fate of the Forest through Verso in 1989, documenting Amazon deforestation during Brazil's military dictatorship era.
- Thomas Berry's The Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club Books, 1988) introduced the concept of the universe as a "communion of subjects" rather than a collection of objects.
- Russell Means, co-founder of the American Indian Movement in 1968, published Defending Mother Earth through South End Press in 1991.
- Sharon Beder's Global Spin (Green Books, 1997) exposed how corporations spent billions manufacturing doubt about environmental science.
- Ian Watson's Fighting Over the Forests examined Australian logging conflicts during the 1990s timber wars in Tasmania and Victoria.
The Fate of the Forest: Developers, Destroyers And Defenders of the Amazon — Susanna Hecht and Alexander Cockburn
The 1989 Verso investigation that named names while the Amazon burned. Hecht and Cockburn didn't write an elegy — they wrote a forensic report. The Fate of the Forest tracks who profited from slash-and-burn agriculture, which World Bank loans funded highway construction through Indigenous territories, and why rubber tappers like Chico Mendes (assassinated in 1988) became inconvenient obstacles to cattle ranchers. This is investigative journalism disguised as environmental writing, and it refuses to let anyone off the hook — not the Brazilian military, not international development banks, not the economists who sold "modernisation" as inevitable. The prose has teeth. Explore our current copy of The Fate of the Forest | Browse more Australian Books at PatinaFighting Over the Forests — Ian Watson
The Australian timber wars got their receipt in this 1990s business exposé. Watson wrote Fighting Over the Forests while logging trucks still blocked highways in Tasmania and conservationists chained themselves to 400-year-old eucalypts. This isn't romanticism about pristine wilderness — it's a corporate autopsy. Watson tracks how forestry companies lobbied state governments, how export markets shaped logging quotas, and why "sustainable yield" became meaningless jargon when applied to old-growth forests that took centuries to establish. If you want to understand why Australia's forest politics remain a minefield, this is the origin story. Explore our current copy of Fighting Over the Forests | Browse more Australian Books at PatinaThe Dream of the Earth — Thomas Berry
The Catholic priest who rewrote the planet's job description in 1988. Thomas Berry wasn't interested in incremental policy fixes — he wanted a cosmological overhaul. The Dream of the Earth argues that the environmental crisis is fundamentally a crisis of imagination: we've treated Earth as a resource warehouse instead of a living communion. Berry writes like a theologian who spent too much time reading geology papers, blending deep time with spiritual urgency. His concept of the "Great Work" — humanity's task of creating a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship — predates half the language now standard in eco-philosophy. This book still reads like prophecy. Explore our current copy of The Dream of the Earth | Browse more Australian Books at PatinaGlobal Spin: The Corporate Assault On Environmentalism — Sharon Beder
The 1997 manual for how corporations bought doubt and sold it as debate. Sharon Beder, an engineer turned academic turned corporate watchdog, wrote Global Spin as a field guide to manufactured uncertainty. She documents how fossil fuel companies, chemical manufacturers, and industry lobby groups spent billions creating front organisations, funding sympathetic scientists, and rebranding pollution regulations as job-killers. This is pre-internet astroturfing at industrial scale — think tanks with neutral-sounding names, "citizens' coalitions" funded entirely by Exxon, full-page newspaper ads warning that environmental protection would destroy the economy. Beder's research is meticulous and infuriating in equal measure. Explore our current copy of Global Spin | Browse more Australian Books at PatinaDefending Mother Earth: Native American Perspectives on Environmental Justice — Russell Means
Russell Means didn't ask permission to call colonialism what it was. Defending Mother Earth, published by South End Press in 1991, collects speeches and writings from Means — Oglala Lakota activist, American Indian Movement co-founder, and the guy who occupied Wounded Knee in 1973. Means connects environmental destruction directly to Indigenous dispossession, arguing that uranium mining on Navajo land, clearcutting in the Black Hills, and toxic waste dumping near reservations aren't accidents of geography — they're features of a system that treats land and people as equally exploitable. His voice is uncompromising, and the analysis hasn't aged a day. Explore our current copy of Defending Mother Earth | Browse more Australian Books at Patina These five titles share shelf space because they refused polite framing. No one in this stack thought recycling would fix structural collapse. As of September 2026, reading them feels less like historical research and more like catching up on correspondence you should have answered decades ago.Where can I buy secondhand environmental crisis books in Sydney?
Patina Paperbacks ships preloved environmental writing Australia-wide from our Sydney base, including vintage climate investigations, corporate exposés, and Indigenous perspectives on land management. Our rotating stock of 13,000+ secondhand titles means availability shifts weekly, but search "environment" on the site or check the Australian Books collection for current holdings.
Are 1980s and 1990s environmental books still relevant today?
Painfully, yes. Writers like Sharon Beder and Susanna Hecht documented corporate greenwashing, Amazon deforestation, and Indigenous land dispossession decades before they became mainstream talking points — which means the problems they identified are now deeply entrenched, not emerging threats. Reading these books in 2025 is less about nostalgia and more about understanding how we got here.
What's the difference between environmental writing and climate activism books?
Environmental writing from the 1980s-1990s often focused on specific ecosystems, corporate actors, and policy failures before "climate change" became the umbrella term. Books like Fighting Over the Forests or The Fate of the Forest are forensic — naming companies, tracking money, documenting who profited from destruction. Modern climate activism tends toward systemic critiques and future solutions; vintage environmental lit is usually angrier and more granular.
Does Patina stock current environmental books or just vintage copies?
Our preloved stock skews toward out-of-print and older editions because that's what ends up in secondhand circulation — publishers don't remainder current bestsellers to us. You'll find 1980s-2000s environmental investigations, Indigenous philosophy, and corporate exposés more often than 2020s climate lit, which is still in print and sold new elsewhere.
Why read Russell Means on environmental justice specifically?
Because Means connected environmental destruction to colonialism without hedging, and because Indigenous perspectives on land stewardship predate Western environmentalism by millennia. Defending Mother Earth isn't a gentle introduction to eco-philosophy — it's a direct challenge to the frameworks that treat land as property and extraction as progress. If you want theory written from the ground that's being fought over, start here.