Since 1988 the President of Save the Rainforest, Bruce Calhoun, has been raising awareness about the importance of protecting tropical forests in order to mitigate climate change.
“Back then we called it global warming, and I remember bringing a delegation of young people in 1991 to Washington D.C. to speak at a special Senate Hearing hosted by Al Gore on the threats of global warming to our planet,” says Calhoun. “During the visit we also delivered tens of thousands of signatures petitioning President George Bush to attend the climate summit in Rio. He declined; we continued our efforts, which included pioneering eco-education programs for young people that were conducted by our conservation partners in countries like Costa Rica and Ecuador.”
Those programs bore fruit. Not only did the programs generate funding for conservation organizations on the front line of rainforest preservation, but it inspired a generation of students to become environmentalists well before Greta Thunberg, who has so heroically taken up the fight to address climate change, was born.
The story of the early days of Save the Rainforest is summed up in Bruce Calhoun’s autobiography – Close Calls and Foolhardy Romances: The Maturation of an Environmentalist. Through entertaining anecdotes and high adventures it unveils the importance of rainforests as carbon sinks, watersheds and storehouses of biodiversity. It also talks about the efforts to collaborate with indigenous communities to safeguard both their culture and the integrity of the Amazon rainforest. “
“Our work with indigenous communities – there are over 3100 in the Amazon Basin – is the focus of our initiatives these days,” Calhoun says. “It includes obtaining legal title for their traditional lands, getting them access to the internet through solar power, and providing logistical support for their nutrition and reforestation projects.”
Close Calls and Foolhardy Romances: The Maturation of an Environmentalist
Published in 1999 by Lost Coast Press
Available wherever books are sold
Link to Amazon.com at: https://www.literaryworksbrucecalhoun.com/index.html
ISBN 1-88289741-2
