Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability
Speth contends that this critique leads to a severe indictment of today’s economic and political system — capitalism as it now actually operates. Our vital task is to change the operating instructions for the modern economy before it is too late.
The book is about how to do that.
James Gustave Speth, a distinguished leader and founder of environmental institutions over the past four decades, is Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He was awarded Japan’s Blue Planet Prize for “a lifetime of creative and visionary leadership in the search for science-based solutions to global environmental problems.
“When a figure as eminent and mainstream as Gus Speth issues a warning this strong and profound, the world should take real notice. This is an eloquent, accurate, and no-holds-barred brief for change large enough to matter.”
“Honest, insightful, and courageous. Dean Speth draws on his formidable experience and wisdom to ask why we are failing to preserve a habitable Earth. His conclusions are cogent, revolutionary, and essential.”
"My point of departure in this book is the momentous environmental challenge we face. But today’s environmental reality is linked powerfully with other realities, including growing social inequality and neglect and the erosion of democratic governance and popular control… As citizens we must now mobilize our spiritual and political resources for transformative change on all three fronts.”
—Gus Speth
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 no 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: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline. Something is badly wrong, and a deeper critique is needed.
Speth contends that this critique leads to a severe indictment of today’s economic and political system — capitalism as it now actually operates. Our vital task is to change the operating instructions for the modern economy before it is too late.
The book is about how to do that.
James Gustave Speth, a distinguished leader and founder of environmental institutions over the past four decades, is Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University. He was awarded Japan’s Blue Planet Prize for “a lifetime of creative and visionary leadership in the search for science-based solutions to global environmental problems.
“When a figure as eminent and mainstream as Gus Speth issues a warning this strong and profound, the world should take real notice. This is an eloquent, accurate, and no-holds-barred brief for change large enough to matter.”
“Honest, insightful, and courageous. Dean Speth draws on his formidable experience and wisdom to ask why we are failing to preserve a habitable Earth. His conclusions are cogent, revolutionary, and essential.”
—David W. Orr, Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics, Oberlin College, and author of Design on the Edge and Earth in Mind
