How the Rich are Destroying the Earth - Softcover

Kempf, Herve

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1900322412 ISBN 13: 9781900322416

Publisher: Green Books, 2008

Synopsis

A best-seller in France, and already translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Korean, Herve Kempf's "How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth" now appears in its first English edition. In this important primer on the link between global ecology and the global economy, Kempf makes the following observations: First, that the planet's ecological situation is growing ever worse, despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around the world. And second, despite environmentalists' emphasis that 'we're all in the same boat', the world's economic elites - who continue to benefit by plundering the environment - have access to 'lifeboats' that insulate them from the resulting catastrophes. Societies have not been able to effectively combat the expanding ecological crisis because it is intimately linked to the social crisis in which the ruling form of capitalism has been organized to impede democratic initiatives.This link explains the failure to make progress against the greatest emergency of our time, because in this relationship the oligarchy plays an essential and destructive role. For this reason, solving the ecological crisis depends on disrupting the power of the world's elite. We cannot understand the entwined ecological and social crises, Kempf argues, if we don't see them as the two sides of the same disaster - a disaster that comes from a system piloted by a dominant social strata that has no drive other than greed, no ideal other than conservatism, no dream other than technology. But Kempf also calls for measured optimism: 'Despite the scale of the challenges that await us, solutions are emerging and - faced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promote - the desire to remake the world is being reborn'.

About this title

Review

A fact-filled, concise, hard-hitting, highly rational, and much needed analysis of the crises we face, and of the need to both reduce and redistribute global material consumption. --John Perkins, bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Manand

Speaks seldom-heard truths about economic growth, environmental destruction, poverty, and equity that hold the key to human survival and well-being. An important book. --David Korten, author of The Great Turning:From Empire to Earth Community and When Corporations Rule the World

From the Back Cover

The human race faces a completely new challenge: the extraordinary dynamism of our civilization is endangering the biosphere and threatening our common future. We need to find a means of reorienting this human energy and our desire for `progress'.
But the financial elites are obstructing the changes we so urgently need. Having triumphed over communism, the neoliberal ideology they embrace has no purpose but to celebrate itself - its vision of boundless greed is acted out through the wasteful lifestyles of the super-wealthy.
The policies of the rich are not only sinister, actively promoting the reduction of public freedoms, but also blind - they don't understand the explosive power of injustice, and they underestimate the gravity of the poisoning of the biosphere. They are indifferent to the living conditions of the great majority, and to the diminishing chances of survival of future generations.
Kempf sees clearly that we won't resolve the ecological crisis without attacking the social one. They are intimately linked. Today, it is the rich who are the biggest threat to our planet.

About this edition

• Publisher: Green Books
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1900322412
• ISBN 13: 9781900322416
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128