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How The Rich Are Destroying the Earth (Foreword by Greg Palast) | 
 enlarge | Author: Hervé Kempf
Creator: Greg Palast
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 7818
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 124
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 1603580352
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7
EAN: 9781603580359
Publication Date: September 15, 2008
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Product Description
A best seller in France, and already translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Korean, Hervé Kempfs How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth now appears in its first English edition. Bringing to bear more than twenty years of experience as an environmental journalist, Kempf describes the invincibility that many of the worlds wealthy feel in the face of global warming, and how their unchecked privilege is thwarting action on the single most vexing problem facing our world.In this important primer on the link between global ecology and the global economy, Kempf makes the following observations: First, that the planets ecological situation is growing ever worse, despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around the world. And second, despite environmentalists emphasis that "were all in the same boat," the worlds economic eliteswho continue to benefit by plundering the environmenthave 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 worlds elite.We cannot understand the entwined ecological and social crises, Kempf argues, if we dont see them as the two sides of the same disastera 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 andfaced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promotethe desire to remake the world is being reborn."
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 a powerful indictment of the super-rich September 1, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
No question, this is a very significant book, one that needs to be read by anyone who is concerned about what our children and grandchildren's future will look like. Herve Kempf, the environmental editor at Le Monde for many years, draws attention in this book to the issues the economists have fundamentally ignored, ie, that a sustainable future is predicated upon social transformation, which must precede any return to ecological balance on this earth. Solving the social and environmental crises can only happen by disrupting the power of the global oligarchs, the hyper-rich along with their political lackeys.
The greatest obstacle to any sustainable future is the uncontrolled pursuit of redundant wealth by the oligarchs. By diffusing this ideology of waste via the imitation of their lifestyles by the middle classes, our social systems cannot change trajectories. According to Kempf, the 3 preconceived notions that are blocking transformation are:
a) the belief in growth as the best way for resolving social problems;
b) that technological progress will resolve environmental problems;
c) that chronic unemployment is an inevitability.
He maintains that these all-powerful oligarchs want to delete the democratic process - the War on Terrorism has duly shown how this is being achieved. In other words, Capitalism no longer needs Democracy.
Mr. Kempf believes the global oligarchy could become divided by the power of the system itself (if the socially conscious part of this oligarchy and the middle class take the side for public freedom and the common good); and also if the mass media reorients towards freedom and "the left" becomes "reborn". This vague but hopeful optimism, that the grave social inequities and ecological degradations of our time will reverse through transformations of awareness, is based upon the never-seen-before phase of human history we are now traversing.
Because of this awareness, solutions can and are emerging, and "the desire to remake the world is being reborn". For our sakes, and for those coming up behind, let us hope that Mr. Kempf's optimistic and forceful words will prevail.
Highly recommended reading.
The Cloud Reckoner
Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts
Predatory Oligarchy is the Main Agent of the Global Crisis August 30, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
First of all, this is not a book about envy and "sour grapes." That is not it at all. The global ruling class is the essential factor in the environmental crisis because: 1) it establishes a horrible model of conspicuous consumption that lower classes in their own country and around the world feel compelled to imitate, and 2) because they directly control the levers of economic and political power that allow them to maintain this inequality. You could also argue that their horrible moral and ethical standards rot the entire society, but that would be another book...
I feel fortunate that I found this book. The strident title almost made me dismiss it as a probably poorly reasoned (and poorly written) sidewalk leftist polemic. Instead, I found perhaps the most comprehensive and best reasoned summation of the current world crisis that I have yet seen. The only works that I have read that come close to this level are by Noam Chomsky, but this one goes even further. The way that the author shows all the interconnections of the major ecological crises , then does the same with the economic sphere, and then goes on to show the relationship between the two is a marvel of synthesis. It is so well reasoned and researched that I repeatly found myself saying to myself, "I wish that I had written this!"
One reason that I compare this work with Chomsky's is that it makes me just as mad (at neoliberalism and the oligarchy) as does his. At moments I indeed felt physically ill. Unless you are totally cynically numb and soul-dead it would have to. And while the author gives reasons for possible optomism I just can't buy into it. The oligarchy is too entrenched, the ecological situation is too close to tipping over into collapse. The only optimism that I could generate was a sense of satisfaction that the rich and their lackies will not be able to insulated themselves forever from the hell and holocaust they have created. Forgive me for sounding pessimistic, but a lifetime in the working class has taught me that even if the oligarchs at the top are liquidated there is an infinate number of the ambitious and sociopathic at the bottom to take their places... This is the case of an entire civilization that has become cancer and who may very well kill off the host planet that they feed upon- in this coming century. Do not delude yourself into thinking that this is just one more period of crisis like all those in the past. Never before have we exceeded the planet's carrying capacity- this is not business as usual.
"If there is no justice, what are kingdoms, if not vast hold-ups?" -- Saint Augustine
What indeed, what indeed...
Should be required reading August 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Herve Kempf tells us in no uncertain terms just what is going on with the environment and our world. How and why, what we can do, and how we can help stop this madness. As people question the fate of our world this book gives you the truth about economic growth, the destruction of our planet and environment, and how many of our population doesn't think anything about global warming. They are intent on being selfish and living their lives as they want with no regard for the future, our children's future and the future of mankind.
Concise and powerful analysis September 6, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"How the Rich are Destroying the Earth" by Herve Kempf articulates the wisdom accumulated through a lifetime of environmental reporting into a concise and powerful analysis about the economic roots of our environmental crisis.
In a mere 100 pages, Mr. Kempf briskly but effectively makes the case that capitalism must be overturned if we wish to achieve a sustainable and equitable society. A brief but compelling Foreword is conributed by the irrepresible Greg Palast which is followed by a brief Preface by Mr. Kempf that explains his motivations. Mr. Kempf also includes an Epilogue that cleverly imagines a thoughtful discourse that might ensue among an assortment of contemporary thinkers about some of the key issues raised in the book.
Mr. Kempf begins by reminding us that ecology and society are interrelated. Capitalism has long maintained the social order by promoting economic growth that promises the attainment of material wealth for anyone of good fortune or ingenuity; but Mr. Kempf argues that we must now recognize the earth's resources can no longer sustain this strategy. The author contends that only by redistributing resources from the wealthy to the poor can we end the destructive cycle of conspicuous consumption and class envy in the hope of restoring democracy and achieving environmental stasis.
Mr. Kempf draws from his experiences traveling the world to present an uniquely informed, mature and reflective perspective. Mr. Kempf memorably describes the plight of poor people who have been driven to squalor and desperation in Central American garbage dumps as a consequence of powerlessness and environmental exploitation. Inspired by the work of Thorstein Veblen, Mr. Kempf contrasts the fate of the poor with the super rich who attempt to outdo each other in an endless pursuit of vanity and frivolity. Mr. Kempf goes on to suggest that as resources become more constrained, tightening oligarchical control will imperil democracies around the world, as has already been observed in the U.S., various EU nations, Russia and elsewhere.
Mr. Kempf's work challenges us to renew class struggle to reclaim our history in the name of freedom, democracy and ecology. I highly recommend this riveting, timely and important book to everyone.
"Consume less, share better." September 1, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
As Greg Palast points out in his introduction to the English translation (by Leslie Thatcher) of French journalist Herve Kempf's How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008):
"In the USA, we continue to pretend that destroying our planet is somehow the result of working-class vices, like driving to work or not recycling our juice bottles. Saving the planet, we are told, is the work of our enlightened rulers. After all, British Petroleum has painted all its gas stations green."
So, don't be duped into filling your house and wardrobe with building materials, clothes and furnishings made from recycled plastic bottles -- breathing those bisphenols is as bad as drinking from them. The point is to stop DuPont etc. from continuing to make the stuff. Why aren't the manufacturers responsible for recycling? Why is it left to consumers -- who have little choice, really, since nearly everything is at least partly made from or packaged in toxic plastic these days? Because those who make it have the money, and money = political power and social clout.
It's rather sad, reading this and knowing that those who would most benefit from its message are the least likely to peruse its pages. That is to say, I fear that Kempf's is is a sermon that won't reach much further than the usual choir of left-of-Democrat voices.
And that is a shame.
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