Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

By James Gustave Speth, Dean of the School of Forestry at Yale University.

Reprinted with permission from Rachel’s Democracy # 956

The remarkable charts that introduce this book reveal the story of humanity’s impact on the natural earth.[1] The pattern is clear: if we could speed up time, it would seem as if the global economy is
crashing against the earth — the Great Collision. And like the crash of an asteroid, the damage is enormous. For all the material blessings economic progress has provided, for all the disease and destitution avoided, for all the glories that shine in the best of our civilization, the costs to the natural world, the costs to the glories of nature, have been huge and must be counted in the balance as tragic loss. (more…)