The East Side Freedom Library invites you to the next conversation in  our series “Learning From the Past, Fighting for the Future”: A  Conversation between Tom O’Connell and Barbara Freese.  

Join host Tom O’Connell as he interviews environmental attorney Barbara  Freese about her new book, "Industrial-Strength Denial: Eight Stories of  Corporations Defending the Indefensible." This new and timely book  takes the reader through eight campaigns of corporate denial from the  slave trade to radium consumption; financial manipulation to climate  change. In a general election campaign in which corporate abuses too  often go unchallenged, Freese’s powerful stories equip citizens with the  understanding we need to hold corporations accountable in the future.  

Barbara is also the author of "Coal: A Human History," selected as a New  York Times Notable Book and recently released in an updated edition.  This critically-acclaimed book tells the story of how coal has  transformed the world over the centuries, describes the drama swirling  around coal use today, and explains why coal represents such a profound  threat to the global climate.  Barbara is an environmental attorney, policy analyst and speaker who has  for several years been deeply involved in energy and climate issues,  with a particular focus on coal. She has fought to block the  construction of new coal plants and to enact climate protection laws at  the state and federal level, and she co-authored multiple reports on  coal use when she was a senior policy advocate on the staff of the Union  of Concerned Scientists. In the mid-1990s, when she was an Assistant  Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, Barbara litigated the  science of climate change against the coal industry, confronting  first-hand the science denial that would later become so prominent in  the U.S.

View the video: https://youtu.be/pbbHou0I3_U