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The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

door James Gustave Speth

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How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels-they are accelerating, dramatically-and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe. Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today's destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.… (meer)
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Capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability
  jhawn | Jul 31, 2017 |
This book, from a leading US environmentalist, argues that the environmental situation is critical, not just in terms of global warming, but also in terms of the extent of species extinction taking place, and the destruction of many major ecosystems. It claims that capitalism as it currently works is the major cause of this, as growth is the prime purpose of companies and governments, but this necessarily comes at the expense of natural resources and the environment. It claims that our obsession with growth is misplaced anyway, since beyond a relatively modest salary, happiness doesn't increase. Instead, happiness is primarliy supported by social and communal ties, which modern capitalist habits erode. The book then goes on to suggest potential solutions, by changes on a personal, corporation and government level.

I think that Speth makes a convincing case for how dire the environmental crisis is, and for how destructive and misguided capitalism can be. However, the book is very largely about the US, which frustrated me enormously, firstly because many of the problems are (hopefully) specific to the Bush administration, and secondly as this is a world crisis and many different countries are facing these problems in different ways. When it comes to the solutions, Speth comes across as a teenage idealist in many ways: naive and vague. There is no detailed economic discussion of what kind of system could replace capitalism and yet stabilise wealth, no detailed blueprint for how government can stabilise carbon emissions, or what role the individual can play. Although at times Speth recognises the complexities of the situation, he makes no attempt to provide pragmatic analyses of these complexities, in order to provide some guidance. This over-general approach to providing a "bridge" over the abyss ended up making me feel more pessimistic rather than less, and I found the book keenly frustrating overall, particularly since the style is rather repetitive and wildly overburdened by quotations. I'd say worth reading for the first half, and aggressively skimming for the second.

((I read this book on the recommendation of a series of articles in the New Scientist (see Opinion Section from 16 October 2008), and actually found those articles considerably better and more succinct.)) ( )
  RachDan | Jan 24, 2009 |
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How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels-they are accelerating, dramatically-and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe. Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today's destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.

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Yale University Press

2 edities van dit boek werden gepubliceerd door Yale University Press.

Edities: 0300136110, 0300151152

 

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