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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The author of Red Sky at Morning would be the first to agree that we are in deep environmental trouble, but he offers hope that there is still time to avert global catastrophe. Gus Speth explores a wide variety of promising and even radical ideas for transforming modern capitalism so as to protect and restore the natural world.
A conversation with Gus Speth
Q: What might surprise the readers of your new book?
A. It’s no surprise to many people that we are facing momentous environmental challenges. But what few people realize is that we can’t solve these problems with more of the same approaches we’ve been using.
Despite the best efforts of environmentalists to work within the system, the system has not delivered. And so it is now time for the environmental community indeed, everyone to step outside the system and develop a deeper critique of what is going on.
We all live lives powerfully shaped by a complex system that rewards as well as destroys. That system is now giving rise to an undesirable reality environmentally, socially, and politically. If we want to transform that system for the better, we should stop being predictable and become agents of change.
Q: What have you concluded? Can we still make enough meaningful changes to reverse the damage?
A: My conclusion, after much searching and considerable reluctance, is that most environmental deterioration is a result of systemic failures of the capitalism that we have today. Real solutions will require transformative change in the key features of this contemporary capitalism. In this book I’ve tried to identify these transformative changes.
The good news is that impressive thinking and some exemplary action have occurred on the issues at hand. Proposals abound, many of them very promising, and new movements for change, often driven by young people, are emerging. These developments offer genuine hope and begin to outline a bridge to the future.
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