‘Monthly Review’ and the Environment

...interview of John Bellamy Foster


 

Batuhan Sarican: John, how did your relationship with nature begin? What do you remember about it from your childhood?

John Bellamy Foster: I grew up in the Pacific Northwest in the United States, which is famous for its forests and general environment. I was born in Seattle, but when I was between the ages of 1 and 5, we lived in a timber town, Raymond, Washington, where my father was a teacher. Some of the sawmills in Raymond, one owned by the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, made shingles from Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata). The sawdust from Western Red Cedar is a major known cause of asthma, containing a chemical called plicatic acid, though this was not widely recognised at the time. All three kids in my family had chronic asthma from a very young age, though there was no prior history of it in my family. I ended up with one of the most serious cases of asthma in the country...


For a full read of this brief, click here or on the picture to download the pdf file.