19 June 2014 EYES WIDE OPEN: GOING BEHIND THE ENVIRONMENTAL HEADLINES by Paul Fleischman, Candlewick, September 2014, 208p., ISBN: 978-0-7636-7102-0

“Oh mercy, mercy me

Ah things ain’t what they used to be

What about this overcrowded land

How much more abuse from man can she stand?”

-- Marvin Gaye

“Who would guess that Citizens for Recycling First is a coal industry front group promoting the use of coal ash in industry?  The Greening Earth Society sounds green, but it’s in favor of CO₂ emissions.”

EYES WIDE OPEN is about the global environmental issues that -- if not dealt with substantively -- will make Planet Earth uninhabitable for humankind. 

But even more importantly, EYES WIDE OPEN is a book about information literacy.  It shows how the world really works in the 21st century, and it repeatedly reveals how people are often duped into opposing their own best interests. 

One of the most important concepts presented by Paul Fleischman is the need to understand and recognize vested interests:

“If you owned an energy-drink factory, your desire to make a profit would give you a vested interest in opposing laws that would keep your product out of school vending machines.  You’d no doubt belong to a trade group that would hire lobbyists to fight such laws.  Your trade group would hire public relations (PR) firms to improve the public’s opinion of energy drinks through ads, articles, Facebook posts, tweets, and the ‘talking heads’ you see interviewed on TV news.  The information dispersed might or might not be accurate.  Its goal isn’t truth but promoting energy drinks.

“This distinction is crucial.  Impartial investigators have nothing to gain from their particular findings.  They test and revise them in a continuing quest for accuracy.  This is the model science follows.  Vested interests’ prime goal is preserving their power, not seeking truth.  The evidence is all around you.  When powerful people or institutions are accused of misconduct -- from army massacres and police brutality cases to clergy sex-abuse scandals and cyclist Lance Armstrong’s use of performance-enhancing drugs -- the first reaction is almost always to refute the charge, no matter how accurate.  If the truth is a threat to power, money, or reputation, there’s a strong motive to cover it up.”

In a past era, students were expected to memorize a limited body of information and regurgitate it during tests.  But today, the forever-growing wealth of information makes it essential for students to learn how to efficiently search for, retrieve, and evaluate the information they need to answer questions and solve problems.  EYES WIDE OPEN provides a common sense framework for understanding why we regularly encounter so much misinformation.

EYES WIDE OPEN is an apt title for this indispensable book. Issues of worldwide population growth, of increases in production of and consumption of stuff, of the race to exploit fossil fuels, of the need to produce larger and larger amounts of food, and the climate changes that result from all these other global issues don’t cause us to react in the same way that the 9/11 attacks did.  Most of us are ignorant of the planet- and people-damaging processes through which our stuff and energy and food are produced.  We can go on forever blind to what’s really going on, unless we begin to pay attention. 

Throughout EYES WIDE OPEN, Paul Fleischman refers to dozens of other books and information resources, each of which will further enlighten readers about these environmental and information issues.  One could readily build a comprehensive course of study around these references.

“‘History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.’”

-- Abba Eban (1915-2002), as quoted in EYES WIDE OPEN

Barring some nick-of-time miracle cure, our generation and the ones that follow are eventually going to be forced by Mother Nature to wise up and make some hard choices.  Those who read EYES WIDE OPEN will have taken a giant step toward understanding these issues and the necessity for action.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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