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Junk raft : an ocean voyage and a rising tide of activism to fight plastic pollution
Eriksen, Marcus, 1967-Boston : Beacon Press, [2017]"An exciting account of an activist scientist's unorthodox fight in the growing movement against plastic marine pollution and of his expedition across the Pacific on a home-made "junk raft" Over the past several years, the news media has brought the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"--The famous swirling gyre of plastic litter in the ocean--into the public consciousness. When Marcus Eriksen cofounded the 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna, and set out to study marine pollution, they found that the reality is even more dire: instead of a stable mass of litter, they discovered that a "plastic smog" of microparticles permeates the world's oceans, defying simplistic clean-up efforts. What's more, these microplastics and their toxic chemistry have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine life and humans alike. Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, though, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen's fight to raise awareness and solve the problem of plastic pollution, contributing to a fast-growing movement to stem the tide of trash. Eriksen writes of his voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii aboard his homemade "junk raft," and along the way he recounts the successful efforts to fight corporate influence and demand that plastics producers take responsibility for a problem they've created. Eriksen provides concrete, actionable solutions and an empowering message: it's up to bold, brash, unapologetically activist "citizen scientists" to challenge the status quo for the sake of the planet"--
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Junk raft : an ocean voyage and a rising tide of activism to fight plastic pollution
Eriksen, Marcus, 1967-Boston : Beacon Press, [2017]"An exciting account of an activist scientist's unorthodox fight in the growing movement against plastic marine pollution and of his expedition across the Pacific on a home-made "junk raft" Over the past several years, the news media has brought the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"--The famous swirling gyre of plastic litter in the ocean--into the public consciousness. When Marcus Eriksen cofounded the 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna, and set out to study marine pollution, they found that the reality is even more dire: instead of a stable mass of litter, they discovered that a "plastic smog" of microparticles permeates the world's oceans, defying simplistic clean-up efforts. What's more, these microplastics and their toxic chemistry have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine life and humans alike. Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, though, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen's fight to raise awareness and solve the problem of plastic pollution, contributing to a fast-growing movement to stem the tide of trash. Eriksen writes of his voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii aboard his homemade "junk raft," and along the way he recounts the successful efforts to fight corporate influence and demand that plastics producers take responsibility for a problem they've created. Eriksen provides concrete, actionable solutions and an empowering message: it's up to bold, brash, unapologetically activist "citizen scientists" to challenge the status quo for the sake of the planet"--
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My river home : a journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico
Eriksen, Marcus, 1967-Boston : Beacon Press, c2007."Popular culture teaches young men to enjoy war, to act it out as play and then don a uniform as a rite of passage into manhood. This warrior myth has long held a powerful place in our society. In My River Home, Marcus Eriksen, a former marine, tells his own story as a way of articulating the danger of this myth. It took ten years and an adventure down the Mississippi River to help him come to terms with his experience of war."."Eriksen grew up, alongside the other kids in his hometown outside New Orleans, playing war games and looking up to the veterans in town. At seventeen, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. While in college, as the first war in Iraq started, his reserve unit was called into battle. He finished his schoolwork, said goodbye to professors, family, and friends, and headed to the Middle East."."But real war is not like that heroic myth seen in the movies, and not everyone goes home afterward. Eriksen truly learned this lesson as he came upon the charred remains of hundreds of retreating Iraqis on what later became known as the Highway of Death. His experience with the dead and dying left him disillusioned, like so many veterans before him. In this environment, amongst endless deserts and oil fires, his unit left behind in Kuwait long after the U.S. declared the war over, Eriksen and a fellow marine dreamed of taking a classic American journey: sailing down the Mississippi River on a raft, living simply, with no responsibilities, no worries, and no war."."Ten years after returning from combat and soon after joining the antiwar movement against the second war in Iraq, Eriksen made the 2,000-mile journey, starting at the river's source, Lake Itasca in Minnesota, and travelling past his hometown and into the Gulf of Mexico. His vessel was not Huckleberry Finn's log raft, but instead a pontoon boat kept afloat by 232 empty soda bottles, recycled junk, and a dose of ingenuity." "My River Home is the story of one man's need to find the true heart of his country after losing faith in the warrior myth."--BOOK JACKET.
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