The facts of our chemical-laden reality are at once alarming and overwhelming. Philip and Alice Shabecoff’s Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children casts environmental contamination in the context of kids, connecting the dots between the toxification of the young and a slew of once rare, now devastatingly commonplace childhood diseases. The authors — Philip Shabecoff, formerly chief environmental correspondent for The New York Times, and his wife Alice, freelance journalist and former executive director of the National Consumers League — report that childhood cancer rates have risen about 67 percent in the last half century. The Shabecoffs not only explain the science behind this number, but tell the stories of families personally affected by it. At points, it makes for grim reading.

But wait, there’s hope! Though we’re exposed daily to a smorgasbord of cancer-causing agents and other poisonous concoctions, the good news is there are alternatives out there, and they’re getting more attention as the dangers of toxic chemicals become better known.

The Shabecoffs acknowledge that their book deals with a depressing subject–but that’s why they wrote it. Change can happen, they say, but it’s up to us to make sure it does.

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Q. Have you seen, in the year since Poisoned Profits was published, that your message is reaching your intended audience?

A. Alice: We’ve found a pretty warm response among parents — blogs and websites and letters directly to us. We’ve gotten a bunch of totally heartbreaking stories, as well as people who call us or write us and ask us to help them deal with bad things that happen in their community. We had very good response from the scientific and health professionals, their journals.

Q. Have you witnessed a change in the way the public and policymakers view toxics?

A. Philip: One very major thing that has happened since then is we have a president who seems to understand these issues, and a Congress that is now not against the government protecting children, or anybody else. We have people appointed to key government positions, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, who do not see themselves as the servants of the corporations but the servants of the people. I think that’s the most significant thing that’s happened.

Alice: I add Michelle Obama into that, the step that she took in doing an organic garden. It was a symbolic step; at least she understands that children can be harmed by what’s in their food.

And then around the margins there have been [other] stories, especially about bisphenol A. In a way that’s annoying because if you focus on one little chemical, it almost means you’re not looking at the whole picture. But let’s look at it in a good light and say at least they’re beginning to see that some chemicals can do harm, and at least people are beginning to understand the concept that it could change the way the genes work.

Q. Michelle Obama got a negative reaction from agribusiness after planting her organic garden. What’s your take on that?

A. Philip: I think it’s par for the course. I think industry likes to protect its turf and its profits, and because it’s not sufficiently regulated, it can get away with doing things that harm our kids and the rest of us. I think the whole corporate culture has to change somehow if we’re going to solve our basic environmental problems and protect our children. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening yet.

Q. Who bears the most responsibility to bring about change in a toxic landscape?

A. Philip: Ultimately, the American people are responsible. They are responsible in the way they conduct their daily lives, and especially their economic lives, like buying this terrible stuff that’s out there, by not educating themselves enough about what’s going on.

But then, of course, individuals alone cannot solve these problems, we cannot consume our way out of a toxic environment. The only entity that is powerful enough to stand up to these mega-corporations is government, and the government has to do the job at some point. I think that the Obama administration wants to do something, but whether it will be able to or not is another question. Opposition by conservative politicians who don’t want any interference with the private sector, who regard absolute free market as kind of a religion, are trying to block him. And they’re also trying to block him just so he’ll fail, so they can return to power.

Alice and Philip Shabecoff

Alice: I agree with Philip, that the ultimate responsibility lies in the public, on the shoulders of the parents. We are a democracy and a free enterprise system; it’s up to people to make their wills known.

Philip: In the marketplace, and in the voting booth.

Alice: You don’t want to let the corporations off the hook. As we showed in the book, they know what they are doing, and they continue to do it, lawsuit after lawsuit, and story after story. But the only people who can really change them is the buying public.

Q. Is the current, more mainstream interest in organics and natural products just a passing trend, or do you believe that people are waking up to the reality of toxics?

A. Alice: I think it’s a true trend, which will grow. I don’t know the magnitude of it and how far it will spread. Is this something that only the college-educated people will take on, or is this something that will spread across the whole country to every level of economics and education? When you start to think about how people are interested in recycling and so on, that too is a harbinger of what we would love to see in terms of environmental health issues.

Q. Why has it been so difficult to draw attention to these issues?

A. Alice: It seems too overwhelming, and yet that was one of the messages [we want to get across]–it isn’t overwhelming. There are steps you can take in your own home and with your neighbors that will eventually change the picture. But there are people who just don’t want to face the music.

Philip: But we wrote about children because people can’t just throw up their hands about their children or their grandchildren. You may downplay it yourself in terms of your own health, but you want to do everything you can for your kids. Or at least that’s the way it should be.

Q. What’s the best way to spread the word and educate those around us?

A. Alice: I thought that we could make some inroads through parent groups. There are so many parent groups around the country–small networks of mothers, sometimes fathers, who have coalesced around various illnesses. The parents of the kids with autism are the most visible, but they exist for all of the illnesses that we talked about in the book. One way that we might be able to get some motion going, despite education, despite whether you’re small town or big city, is to work through these parent groups.

I’ve come across many parents who, when it comes to their children’s illness, they have educated themselves and they are fighting mad. If we could work through those networks of parent groups–and in fact, that’s what I’d like to try in the coming year–maybe we could make some changes in the community, the neighborhood level. And that’s one good step in the right direction.

So why is Ellen Ruppel Shell’s new book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, so shocking?

Shell deftly weaves a compelling, cautionary tale out of disparate strands: the psychology of manipulating shoppers, the environmental costs of our lust for inexpensive things, the deskilling of the retail industry, and the loss of appreciation for “quality.” Tracing the history of discount culture from the yesteryear excitement over brown paper packages to today’s ambivalence about crammed plastic bags, Shell shows us why we feel we’ve been ripped off if we pay “full price.”

She pushes readers to ponder the strange circumstances that make an item shipped from thousands of miles away less expensive than something homegrown. And how a major furniture retailer can convince a customer to get attached to a piece just enough to buy it, but not enough to keep it long. And, most disturbingly, just how expensive our bargain hunting is turning out to be.

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Ellen Ruppel Shell

Q. What audience did you have in mind when you wrote Cheap?

A. This grew out of my own curiosity about my own behavior. Since I have a science background, and I try to be a very rational person, I was startled by my own shopping behavior. So if that was happening to me, I figured it was happening to an awful lot of people. As someone who is socially conscious, I was making purchasing decisions that didn’t reflect that social consciousness sometimes. I wondered what was behind that.

I’m trying to reach a thoughtful audience, and I’m particularly interested in reaching younger people because I think they have the spirit and the opportunity to change. Interestingly, it seems to resonate with young people quite a bit.

Q. Why do you think your message is resonating with young people, especially considering how inclined they are to move around and not get attached to their property?

A. I don’t want to speak for all young people, but there are all sorts of ways to get value without playing into this con game of cheap.

You go to a place we have in my town [Boston], called the Garment District, which is second-hand, third-hand kind of clothes, and you can get really good stuff there for very little money. You can be creative with it — dress it up or dress it down, do what you want with it. It’s not a cookie-cutter piece out of H&M that everybody’s wearing that week. You’re the boss of that thing, it’s not the boss of you. It’s style rather than fashion.

The idea that you can go to IKEA and get good deals — it’s really not a good deal. You can’t ever get rid of it, it’s not something you can resell. You don’t really own it; you’re kind of renting it. So that’s something that young people who are thinking about moving can think about. What you want to do is to be able to put it on craigslist, or maybe get your friends to help you move your stuff. You want your stuff to [have] resale value if you really want to save money. You’re not being cheap, you’re being smart. They’re two different things.

Q. How does the psychology of marketing inhibit the ability of consumers to see an item in terms of its entire lifespan?

A. IKEA names all its products to make stuff seem cute, but then they’re telling you, “You’re not really attached to this, are you crazy?” They’re getting you to laugh at and make a mockery out of the idea of durability. They make durability seem like an old-fashioned, passé idea. And it works. I think it’s really juvenilizing: “Oh, come on, you want a new toy. You always want a new toy.”

Particularly in the marketing of cell phones. You have a cell phone that works really well for you, and then you have a friend who has a cooler one, and you want it. That’s kind of 4-year-old behavior. When you have 3- or 4-year-olds, they want the new shiny thing. But as you get older and a little more mature–and I don’t mean 50, I mean 16 or 17–you learn that that’s not what it’s about. It’s about what works for me. Marketers obviously don’t want you to think that. In the case of the cell phone, they assume you’re going to use it for a year or less, and it’s not durable. Even if it is, they assume you’re going to junk it. I say, “Screw them!” If it works for you, hang on to it. Don’t buy into that, because basically, it’s all about them making a profit. It’s not about you and what you really want.

Come hither — cheap goods for sale!Q. Do you see similarities between the psychology of marketing cheap goods and of greenwashing?

A. Yes, I do. There’s a mnemonic device that’s used by marketers in terms of discounting. The mental shortcut is, “Lower price, good deal.” And those two things don’t necessarily follow. Something that’s low price triggers the impulsive side of our brains and causes us to make decisions without much thought. The same thing is true for some of this green marketing. We’re told that something is green, or it has the aura of green, and that makes it OK to buy it.

That’s actually why I [focused on] IKEA instead of Wal-Mart. Most of us think, “IKEA’s the good guy.” IKEA has taken some tiny, baby steps towards environmentalism. For example, they started charging for their plastic bags. When you charge for plastic bags, it’s reasonable to question if it’s really a green step or just a way to make profit. They use low-wattage bulbs in their stores. But those are cost-cutting measures. There’s nothing wrong with cost-cutting measures, but they don’t take environmental steps that cause them to reduce their profits. People think, “Oh, it’s a green store.” But the whole story that they tell of clean living and the outdoors is a mnemonic to get you to buy. When you look under the hood, and you look at something that is essentially being sold as a non-durable product, something that won’t last and isn’t necessarily marketed to last, that’s not an environmentally sound product.

Q. What do you say to those who believe the way discounters do business is essential to the American spirit of capitalism?

A. If you reconsider Adam Smith‘s arguments, in light of today’s realities, he would not say what a lot of people think he was saying. He was concerned about greed and morality. He was a moral philosopher. When we talk about a free market, Adam Smith could have never anticipated the free market that we have today, which is a global market of supply chain that depends on instant messaging across the globe and transportation costs being so low that they’re essentially negligible.

That’s why the invention of [shipping containers], which has severely lowered transportation costs, is so important in the story. In [Smith's] days, if you shipped something from Japan or China, it was costly. Now, it really isn’t. It completely changes the argument about what works and what doesn’t. And when you’re talking about a global economy and you have workers who are completely out of our sight, who we use as a labor source–and the resources in those countries as well–and costs are so low because transportation costs are so low, it’s a completely different equation.

Q. Do you foresee a change in our perception of cheap if transportation costs are driven up through climate legislation?

A. There’s no question [about] that, if we actually taxed for carbon use around the globe so that we can’t just outsource our pollution–which is what we’re doing now to the developing world. In terms of pollution, it was pretty shocking to see the levels of particle pollution of areas in China. We’re talking huge amounts of carbon being burned, toxins in the air and the water, which is all to keep prices low, because when you put in environmental protection it costs money. If the price of oil went up substantially and environmental restrictions were made globally so that we couldn’t outsource our environmental costs, I definitely think this could have a big impact on cheap.

Q. So there are two ways to frame the rejection of cheap: from a personal, psychological standpoint and also an environmental standpoint.

A. And also sociopolitical impact, because as we pursue cheap goods, we also pursue lower wages, less benefits, and worse working conditions because that’s what makes things cheaper and cheaper. If wages go up in Mexico, plants close up and go to China, and if wages go up in China, the plants move on to Vietnam. We’re basically pursuing the least regulated cultures, where the rule of law is the weakest when it comes to enforcing the kinds of things we in the United States really value.

Q. Do you think the general public is shocked when they make the connection that their cheap habits are supported by deregulation?

A. Some of the critics have said the book is shocking in the sense that it kind of opened their eyes. And it was shocking to me; I didn’t know this stuff before I did the book. I think with knowledge comes power and you get to enact change in people.

Q. Is a rejection of cheap goods and food sustainable on a global scale?

A. In the book I quote World Bank economist Michael Morris because I don’t want people to think that this is going to be easy or that we’re all going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It is a world of many billions of people. In talking about agriculture and small farms, there’s this notion of happy peasants–which is a myth. It’s true that small farmers can flourish, but it’s also true that in many places in the world, the small farmers are the poorest of the poor. We do need to feed this world, which has so many more people than when we had these small farms. We do need to have large agricultural systems.

What I call for in the book is a middle way. I don’t think we necessarily need factory meat farms, for example. I think that’s actually a very costly system in many different regards. If that’s something that the local-food movement and the slow-food movement pushes against, it’s probably a good thing. Do we need large fields of gain? I think we do. [Fields of corn] to be fed to livestock is an unfortunate thing, but, as my background is in science, I do see the positives there, and I don’t want to sell them short. For people who are starving around the world, they need a source of readily available food.

To feed the world, we’re going to have to keep some of that in place, but we’re also going to need a lot of local farmers, and we need more diversity in what we subsidize. We subsidize the grain growers, and the corn growers, and the soybean growers–anything that has to do with the meat industry. But we don’t subsidize very much fruit and vegetable growers, which, if you’re going to have a healthy diet, that’s what you need. We need to really rethink our agricultural system, but the way to do it, I believe, isn’t just to tell everyone to shop at their local farmers market–it’s too expensive for most people, and it’s unavailable to most people. I take more of a middle ground than a lot of other folks, people who I very much respect, but who I think are looking through a very narrow lens. I think we have to be careful not to oversell or oversimplify.

Q. In Cheap, you talk about the role that corporations and politics have played in how we’ve gotten to where we are, but you also place a significant part of that burden on individual consumers. How do we get to a sustainable middle ground in the retail landscape?

A. Consumers need more information. When you go to New York City and you go to a coffee shop, they tell you the calories of what’s in the food. You can make better decisions; you change your choices.

I didn’t write this in the book and I wish I had, but some kind of labeling so that consumers know the origins of what they’re buying, and how it’s made, and what it’s made of [is important]. And eventually you should be able to go on the web and find out what company made this, where’s the supplier, and [if] are they acting responsibly. Suppliers in the developing world are notorious for labor abuses. The way you make these changes is to make the labeling at the point of purchase where the buyer can see, right then and there, what he’s buying. And that changes behavior.

What comes to mind when you think of royalty? Luxurious palaces, the Queen of England, and overused puns on Marie Antoinette’s infamous one-liner?

How about chemical-free gardens, recycling, and sustainable seafood? Ruling families from around the globe are using their media magnetism and sovereign sway to draw attention to a variety of eco-causes, fighting climate change, greening their homelands, and making sure all that cake we’re eating is organic too.

1. Prince Charles of England

An outspoken proponent of fighting climate change, Prince Charles has an across-the-board interest in environmental issues. He’s advocated for tropical rainforest preservation through The Prince’s Rainforests Project and brought attention to the rapid depletion of global fish stocks. After moving to the Highgrove country estate in Gloucestershire three decades ago, the prince took interest in back-to-basics farming and converted the Home Farm from conventional to organic food production. Deciding that this sustainable farming thing was a brilliant idea, he started Duchy Originals in 1992 to sell organic and sustainably produced goodies, from British tea classics to organic hair and body products.

Seattle voters will decide on Aug. 18 whether to impose a 20-cent fee on all paper and plastic bags from grocery, drug, and convenience stores. But it’s not the first U.S. city to restrict disposable bags — nor even the first in Washington state.

In Edmonds, Wash., north of Seattle, the city council voted in late July to ban disposable plastic bags at retail outlets (excluding those used for produce and bulk foods). The ban will go into effect next year.

Even green-leaning western Washington is behind the times in comparison with San Francisco, which enacted the nation’s first ban on plastic bags at grocery and drug stores in 2007. The city council in Oakland, Calif., also voted in 2007 to impose a ban on the bags, but the plastic-bag industry has tied the measure up in court.

Other bag-hostile California cities include Palo Alto, Calif., where a plastic-bag ban is set to go into effect this September, and Los Angeles, which will begin banning plastic bags in July 2010.

Maui, Hawaii, will start banning plastic bags in 2011. A smattering of other cities around the U.S. are also considering bans.

But on the global stage, plastic-bag restrictions are hardly new.

In 1989, Italy took a look around its beaches and saw plastic bags cluttering the scenery and choking dolphins. To help clear up the mess, the Italian government began taxing plastic bags, and next year it will institute an all-out ban on them.

After bag-clogged drains led to prolonged flooding in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1988 and 1998, the government banished disposable plastic bags from the city in 2002.

Lethal floods blamed on bag-clogged drains have also prompted a number of city and state governments in India to impose plastic-bag bans.

In 2002, Ireland became the first European nation to tackle the plastic-bag problem. It imposed a 15-cent PlasTax, revolutionizing the Irish shopping scene with reusable sacks and reducing the use of flimsy plastic ones by 90 percent within weeks.

In South Africa, plastic bags were such a ubiquitous scourge that they became known as the “national flower” until the nation banned them in 2003. Eritrea, Rwanda, and Somalia followed suit in 2005, and Tanzania in 2006.

In Kenya, Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Mathaai blamed plastic bags for helping to spread malaria because discarded bags can fill with rainwater and become a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Her country banned thin plastic bags in 2007 and imposed fines on thicker ones. Uganda followed its lead.

In China, where up to 3 billion plastic bags were being used per day, the government in 2008 banned super-thin plastic bags and imposed fees on thicker ones.

South Australia hopped on the “ban” wagon this year, threatening fines of up to $5,000 for stores that don’t comply. The rest of Australia is considering a similar ban.

Find out more about bag bans around the world from Planet Ark, the BBC, and National Geographic News.

Rod Coronado.

Back in the 1980s and ’90s, during Rodney Coronado’s radical sabotage campaigns on behalf of animals and the environment, terrorism was generally considered to mean violence against people. Feeling strongly that the loss of any life was wrong and that casualties would harm the movement, Coronado took care to not hurt anyone as he liberated animals and burned down research facilities across the American West. Charged with arson in 1995, Coronado served four years in a medium-security prison and, in August of 2006, was sentenced to eight more months for dismantling a government-owned mountain lion trap.

But over the years, the official definition of terrorism expanded. Through the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act, the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, and the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, the federal government proclaimed that the tactics the radical animal-rights crowd had been using for years were now a form of “terrorism” and could be prosecuted much more harshly.

In 2007, Coronado found himself standing before a judge once more–though not for property destruction, as his days of burning down buildings were long behind him, but for making a speech. While giving a lecture about his past radical actions, Coronado answered an audience question about how to build an incendiary device out of a plastic jug, and for that, Coronado was charged with a felony and ultimately sent to federal prison for a year and a day. Compared to other collared eco-activists who have been threatened with sentences of up to 20 years under the stricter federal laws, perhaps he got off easy.

Kuipers has been following Coronado’s flame-broiled tale of radical action for 17 years and tells the whole story in Operation Bite Back. Kuipers makes it clear that he does not advocate arson or property destruction, but challenges us to consider whether it’s reasonable to apply the label of terrorist to someone who releases animals from a lab.

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Q. How has the shifting definition of “terrorism” changed the environmental movement since the 1980s?

A. I think a lot of the old-timers, the “rednecks for wilderness”–it’s sort of where Earth First! began, and Sea Shepherd too in a way–might pin a little bit of that expansion of the term “terrorism” on the late ’80s-’90s anarchists who came into the scene. Guys like Rod Coronado. They changed things a lot because the original eco-radical[s], like Greenpeace, were sort of mainstream conservation guys — they called themselves conservationists. Mostly they were white men who had parties out in the woods and ate steaks and drank whiskey. They were kind of red-blooded Americans, like the heroes of The Monkey Wrench Gang.

And then this whole new contingent, right around 1990, started coming in that was much more about anarchism and identity politics. “What do I believe, and how does that separate me from the rest of the world?” People got into listing their issues. “I not only don’t eat animals, but also I am transgendered and I have these piercings that are very important to me.” Those kind of issues just drove the old-timers insane, because all of those things started being in the radical journals: “What are we going to do about the homophobia in our movement?” Those are all important discussions, but they didn’t have anything to do with saving whales or species problems. That was very disconcerting to the old school of the movement. A lot of them kind of left the movement, because they didn’t think that was as important as saving a chunk of wilderness or preserving a specific species.

The use of the word terrorism was always around, even in the ’60s, early ’70s — but it was always rhetorical. I think it was Ron Arnold who actually coined the term in 1982: “eco-terrorist.” But it was rhetorical at that time because eco-terrorism didn’t exist. Unless you killed somebody, you weren’t a terrorist. And they hadn’t killed anybody, so there wasn’t any eco-terrorism.

Changing [terrorism] laws [to encompass environmental activism] really came about because guys like Rod Coronado went further, started using arson. The threat of more violence was sort of there in that movement and I don’t think that went over very well with a lot of the conservation movement, and they kind of split off in a lot of ways. So I think that the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front and people who modeled themselves after them have found themselves very isolated from the rest of the movement.

Q. Where do you see the eco-movement going from here?

A. I think that the mainstream approach is totally taking over right now, and they’re being successful. Kind of all they had to do is wait out George Bush. I think they have a very sympathetic ear right now. All of the big groups — NRDC, the Sierra Club — are very effective right now. They have sympathetic ears in Congress; people like Henry Waxman [chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and cosponsor of the House climate bill] kind of took the key positions that they needed them to take. The deck is loaded now for a lot of stuff to happen.

However, I think that the radical parts of the movement arise because of threat. The global warming question will continue to get bigger, and species extinction and various types of animal abuse, for lack of a better word, are not going to get better. So I think that that kind of action will rise. I don’t see that the terrorism laws have ever really stopped it because people — young people in particular — just assume they won’t get caught. And they’re right. They’ve hardly caught any of those people through the years, [even though there have] been over 1,200 actions and like a billion dollars worth of damage.

I think that the radicalism will rise if the mainstream movement fails to get anything done. I think that’s why there’s always a radical element to any movement. They’re there to step it up and push everybody to a more aggressive position. If they pass some real bullshit legislation about global warming that’s basically full of loopholes and everybody can drive a Hummer, the radicalism will step up.

Q. How do people respond when you talk about your work?

A. It depends on who it is. There’s such a huge community of people who believe in more radical action — called direct action — in solving environmental and animal rights problems that there’s a lot of sympathy. But there [are] a lot of people for whom Rodney Coronado is not radical at all and would like to see it go far beyond that.

But that’s not the mainstream, and for the most part, mainstream America doesn’t really want to get involved in this. They still eat meat and they don’t really want to think about factory farms or where their mink coat comes from. Consciousness has definitely gone way, way up, but still it’s a huge jump from being conscious about where your food comes from or where your coat comes from to being somebody who knows people who actually go out and do stuff about it, [whether] it’s just legislation [or] actually trying to close a place down physically. That’s kind of shocking.

I’m sure my family in Michigan would be a little bit appalled: “Another book from Dean that we can’t read!”

Q. Have you faced conflicts within the mainstream media because there are stereotypes about environmental activists?

A. I haven’t encountered that many serious challenges. You have to dial things back. You have to position them in such a way that the publication feels comfortable that you haven’t just completely denied one half of the story from getting its say. Even when we know things are just absolutely for sure — something like a cancer cluster of people from asbestos — you’ve still got to call for a comment from the asbestos department where they say, “No, it’s not us.” But I do that, so there haven’t been too many stories I’ve brought to people where they’ve just said, “No, that’s too radical for us.”

Even in my book, I don’t write about Rod Coronado saying that arson is awesome. Arson is not awesome. Arson sucks. It’s a thing that people should not do, but it’s a tool that he used and I present it pretty matter of fact. I’m sure I will be accused of being an apologist for arson, but that’s not my purpose. But if I did write a book about that, I don’t think it would be as good, because suddenly there’s no reason for any of the farmers to talk to me, the FBI, the police. All those guys have amazing and cool facts that I don’t know, and I want all that stuff. As long as we do that, I think the story gets better and people are more open to reading it. I lose less of the audience. You can make more of a difference.

Q. What originally drew you to writing about eco-radicalism?

A. [The actions] happen in great locations. I grew up in the woods in Michigan with a big hunting and fishing family. I was living in New York City when I first started doing this stuff and really sweating it, and having a hard time getting myself out to the Catskills on the weekends to see some trees.

But there are whole protests that last for months happening in redwood groves in Northern California, and people trying to stop roads from being built into central Idaho, which is like God’s Country. It’s just amazing there — huge contiguous pieces of roadless wilderness with wolves and moose. Those are the kind of places I like to be in. And on a boat with the Sea Shepherds out in the eastern tropical Pacific to Cocos Island or something — it’s fantastic. I’m not only working on a story, but I’m in the places I would like to see preserved.

Q. Does it water down our legitimate concerns about terrorism to have environmental and animal-rights activists looped into it?

A. Sure. I think it’s an insult to the intelligence of the average American, that we can’t tell the difference. But of course we can tell the difference! Osama bin Laden goes on the TV on one of his Al Jazeera tapes and says, “We will make the infidels pay,” and that’s about killing people. The Militant Vegan League — which is something I’m just making up — sends out their communiqué saying you have to stop hurting bunnies and you have to stop factory farming where you keep chickens in little cages. It’s just a completely unrelated issue in every way — strategically, philosophically, tactically, in every way. Terrorism is such a strong word that it just allows the same kind of law enforcement tactics to be used to suppress it.

Q. What is the No. 1 message you want to stick with people after reading your book?

A. What we were just talking about. I picked out a particular person–Rod Coronado–to help me tell the story because I want it to be obvious by the time you get to the end that Rod Coronado is not a terrorist. He’s done lamentable things, he’s burned things and attacked businesses and been very aggressive. But he’s never attacked any people. He’s an intelligent and respectful person who did things on principle and believed that he was executing the height of nonviolent direct action.

There’s a difference between bursting into the Holocaust museum with a gun with the intention of “I’m going to kill a bunch of people to make a statement,” and going into someplace late at night and burning their fence and making sure that no people are hurt because you want to make a statement.

We need to take some action to preserve the difference, for all kinds of reasons. So that people don’t rot in jail who don’t need to for long periods of time. So that we, as a country, are not spiritually affected by this — I think that there’s a price to pay when your country endorses things like torture, and calling people terrorists who are not terrorists plays into that. You’re falsely accusing certain sectors of the public of doing something they’re not doing.

I also think that it’s not that good for us environmentally, that we shouldn’t be able to demonize people who are trying to get a message across that many people would recognize as positive.

Catch Dean Kuipers on his book tour or follow him on his blog. You can also see him on BookTV Sunday, July 25.