About this item
Peter Gleick knows water. A world-renowned scientist and freshwater expert, Gleick is a MacArthur Foundation "genius," and according to the BBC, an environmental visionary. And he drinks from the tap. Why don't the rest of us? Bottled and Sold shows how water went from being a free natural resource to one of the most successful commercial products of the last one hundred years-and why we are poorer for it. It's a big story and water is big business. Every second of every day in the United States, a thousand people buy a plastic bottle of water, and every second of every day a thousand more throw one of those bottles away. That adds up to more than thirty billion bottles a year and tens of billions of dollars of sales. Are there legitimate reasons to buy all those bottles? With a scientist's eye and a natural storyteller's wit, Gleick investigates whether industry claims about the relative safety, convenience, and taste of bottled versus tap hold water.
About the Author
Dr. Peter H. Gleick (born 1956) is a scientist working on issues related to the environment, economic development, and international security, with a focus on global freshwater challenges. He works at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, which he co-founded in 1987. In 2003 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship for his work on water resources. Among the issues he has addressed are conflicts over water resources [1], the impacts of climate change on water resources, the human right to water, and the problems of the billions of people without safe, affordable, and reliable water and sanitation. Gleick received a B.S. from Yale University and an M.S. and Ph. D. in Energy and Resources from the University of California, Berkeley. Gleick is the author of the biennial series on the state of the world's water, called The World's Water,[2] published by Island Press, Washington, D.C., regularly provides testimony to the United States Congress and state legislatures, and has published many scientific articles. He serves as a major source of information on water issues for the media, and has been featured on CNBC, CNN, Fresh Air with Terry Gross [3], NPR, and in articles in The New Yorker,[4] and many other publications. He has also been featured in a wide range of water-related documentary films, including "Running Dry" [5] and "Flow: For Love of Water" [6], accepted for the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. He is the brother of noted author James Gleick and editor Elizabeth Gleick.
