EP. 887: RAINFOREST RADICALS ft. DAVID BENAC

About this episode

David Benac discusses the history and impact of the Rainforest Action Network and its role in environmental activism.

Get David's book here: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/.../rainforest-radicals/ Rainforest Radicals presents the first history of one of the most innovative and successful environmental organizations of the late twentieth century. Rainforest Action Network emerged in 1985, when it took over a fledgling effort to protect rainforests from transnational corporations funding the expansion of tropical cattle ranching. It excelled at using nonviolent, civil disobedience in dramatic campaigns that captured the attention of the public, media, and RAN’s corporate adversaries. As a result, two decades later rainforest conservation went from a niche academic topic to a fixture in American popular culture, the rights of Indigenous people had gone from ignored or romanticized to at least considered in discussions of the management of their ancestral homelands, and RAN had scored a series of victories over some of the planet’s largest corporations. In Rainforest Radicals David Benac traces the evolution of RAN and radical, transnational grassroots environmentalism through the four campaigns identified at the group’s founding: rainforest beef, Hawai‘ian rainforests, tropical timber, and…

People in this episode

Host: bitterlake

Guest: David Benac

Topics covered

• environmental activism
• rainforest conservation
• Indigenous rights
• grassroots movements
• nonviolent protest

Keywords

• Rainforest Action Network
• David Benac
• environmental organizations
• civil disobedience
• tropical rainforests

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Rainforest Action Network, Nebraska Press

Books & works: Rainforest Radicals

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