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How The Rich Are Destroying the Earth (Foreword by Greg Palast) | 
| Author: Herve Kempf
Creator: Greg Palast
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $12.95
Buy New: $5.74
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Rating:  24 reviews
Sales Rank: 445382
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 140
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 1603580352
Dewey Decimal Number: 333.7
EAN: 9781603580359
ASIN: 1603580352
Publication Date: September 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A best seller in France, and already translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Korean, Herve 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 19 more reviews...
 A Bit Preachy January 8, 2009
Though the points made are mostly valid, the author is shouting from a soap box. If the intent is to persuade those that disagree, or even those who are neutral, he will fail. However, the choir will find the book to be a wonderful venting.
 of course, the rich are destroying the earth... December 17, 2008
The title of the book sums it up so admirably that just to say anything about it would seem a tautology. The rich are destroying the earth. Sure. And do we, really, need to hear about "how"?
Well, yes and no. The book does more than churning out the same-old same-old about how the rich (corporations) outrageoulsy "rape" the planet and such and offers something like a theory, with which the present environmental crisis may be explained thoroughly in its, say, cause, effect, and solution. The book has a "foreword," written not by the author but his fellow journalist Greg Palast, which reads something like a manifesto and, naturally, contains basic tenets of such theory. Such as: "Ecological destruction is a profitable business" or "Environmental devastation is class war by other means."
But, no, we don't really need to hear about all this because, well, it's rather a poor theory. I couldn't be sure whether the author was just incapable of subtlety or sacrificing it in light of the urgency of the issue at hand, but, in too many places, he displays a strong tendency to dogmatic over-simplification. The chapter where he discusses Thornstein Veblen ("How the Oligarchy Exacerbates the Ecological Crisis") is a case in point. One of his aims in that chapter is to urge people to read Veblen, for Veblen's economic theories will powerfully enlighten us about our pitfalls. Yet, his way of handling Veblen's theories make them sound so simplistic and even absurd that few readers, who don't know much about Veblen but are likely to be receptive to his ideas, will actually foray into that direction after reading the book.
 The Chips Are Down November 12, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Rick Wagoner, current CEO of General Motors, opined in the Wall Street Journal (November 11, 2008) that he didn't think he should be fired. GM stock is the lowest it has been since 1946. The company can't sell its ridiculous cars and trucks because nobody wants these vehicles because everyone on the planet can see that the handwriting is on the wall for these gross, pathetic tubs of personal transportation and the carbon-dioxide-spewing internal combustion engines that power them. Consequently, General Motors will go bankrupt if we, the taxpayers, don't give them billions and billions of dollars of our hard-earned money to bail it out from Mr. Wagoner's and the Board of Directors of GM's supremely destructive and stupid business decisions.
Ten years ago, General Motors had the opportunity to be first in line with an electric car. If they had done so, they'd be sitting pretty. But they killed the car and its technology. Doesn't this seem positively unremittingly ill-advised to you in every way, from failing to be able to read the financial signs--for which business people are paid to do--to continuing to contribute to the degradation of the environment? If you were working for a company as a middle manager and you blew a major project that cost the company so much money that it was going to go bankrupt, wouldn't you be fired? When things are going well, it seems, the people at the top take the credit, but when events turn, everyone and everything else is responsible for that turn except themselves. Too bad we couldn't vote for the president of GM. Mr. Wagoner could then meet Mr. McCain's fate
This may seem like an odd introduction to this excellent, informative, little book by Herve Kempf, the environmentalist editor for Le Monde. Mr. Kempf never mentions Rick Wagoner, but he would know why the GM honcho gets two paragraphs as an intro here. As Mr. Kempf says without mincing words, the rich--like Mr. Wagoner--are responsible for the pickle in which our planet and its people now find themselves. A small number of human beings--billionaires in America, China , France, India, Canada, Germany, and Saudi Arabia--i.e., the super rich, own the connections and the power; their decisions have put us where we are. Who else is in charge? The poor in Mumbai? The peasants of China? Middle managers? Joe the Plumber?
Make no mistake, this book is not an updated Communist Manifesto. Mr. Herve goes after the left for its blinkered view as much as he does the right. The left simply cannot drop its old allegiances to strictly social change, thus arguing only for a bigger piece of the pie. The increasing size of pie is ending because the ideology of capitalism, with its linear notion of endless exploitation of our Earth, of greater and greater GNP, is done, finished, over, kaput. Growth is not possible any longer and--this is a key point for Mr. Herve--it is no longer desirable because growth is destroying our planet. No planet. No us. Quick. You decide.
We are all going to have to take a hit in every way in the coming decades, and for the duration. We must simplify. And whether they like it or not, that hit has to start at the top because the top is where the hit can matter most in terms of freeing resources for the rest of us. But us, too, the lower orders, we must change. No more aping our so-called "betters", no more buying Ford Expeditions so that we can ape the rich with their Hummers. In this regard: Ever heard of Thorstein Veblen? He was an economist who coined the term "conspicuous consumption". Mr. Herve re-introduces us to him, and a valuable re-introduction it is.
I could go on, but if you read Mr. Herve, a very nice French intellectual by the way, you will be filled with hope and scared at once. We have maybe ten years to turn the ship around. Maybe eight years. If we don't, we are doomed. No. Seriously. Doomed. It's that clear. The melting of the Arctic is not a plot point in a Disney animation. This slim book helps us to see things as they are. So let us begin with a reading of How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth, and proceed to the firing of Mr. Wagoner, and the refusal to invest one blue cent in GM--unless we as the taxpayers buy it outright and the plant starts to turn out electric cars and makes us a tidy profit so our taxes can be lower. As we should have been doing for the last decade if anyone at the helm had had any foresight. Socialism? Making money is fine, friends, so long as the planet is protected, and we all share. Liberty! Ecology! Fraternity!
Needs more solutions to balance out the complaints October 30, 2008
There are many, many things to be angry about right now with regards to the state of the world. One of the problems with the left in America is that we have a tendency to have our pet causes, and elevate them to the exclusion of all others, as thought what we believe to be important is better than anything else.
Herve Kempf offers up a text that links the destruction of the environment with the extravagance of the wealthiest people in the world, complete with 400-foot-long yachts, private jets, and other exorbitant luxuries. By shattering our tunnel vision about social issues being independent of environmental issues, he shows us how efforts made for the sake of one can be helpful for dealing with the other--and then some.
The biggest weakness of this book is that Kempf gives us a lot of evidence, and a lot of complaining--but not much in the way of actual solutions. The final chapter is a scant four pages, and barely makes a very few vague scratches on the surface of all the grand problems he explores. So while he proposes some valuable connections between causes, he leaves us rather hanging about what to do about it all.
Clearly written, concise and provcative October 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The entire book is excellent. He makes the point that biosphere limits makes the development of the current on-the-threshold areas impossible along 19th century European and American lines. The interweaving of Veblen's observations of later 19th century robber baron industrial society to today is very interesting. This engine for growth now must be substituted for an engine that decreases material consumption letting go a yearning for more and more.
Following the logic of leadership of desire by the hyper rich on the global middle class the rich must scale back to allow the larger group with the actual planetary consumption gravitas to scale back and lower global material consumption. Kempf sees the world's elites looking to the opulent countries as their standard and as the richest of them all the United States stands brightly lit.
Of course, the explosive fear I had about this book was that it would be awash or subtly hide simple envy. Often comments I hear from Europeans seem to have a lot of envy hiding somewhere in them. But that is not where this book is coming from. You need only to be patient and read the next few pages wherever you are in the text to see that. Excellent and short enough and clearly written enough that it is not a burden to read.
His ideas of future political structures under the war on terror are also very interesting.
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