“A fact-filled, concise, hard-hitting, highly rational, and much needed analysis of the crises
we face, and of the need to both reduce and redistribute global material consumption.”– John Perkins, bestselling author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man and The Secret History of the American Empire
A bestseller in France, and already translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, and Korean,
Hervé Kempf’s How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth now appears in its first English
edition. In this important primer on the link between global ecology and the global
economy, Kempf makes the following observations: First, that the planet’s ecological
situation is growing ever worse, despite the efforts of millions of engaged citizens around
the world. And second, despite environmentalists’ emphasis that ‘we’re all in the same boat’,
the world’s economic elites – who continue to benefit by plundering the environment –
have 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 world’s elite.
We cannot understand the entwined ecological and social crises, Kempf argues, if we
don’t see them as the two sides of the same disaster—a 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 and—faced with the sinister prospects the oligarchs promote—the desire to remake the world is
being reborn.”
The Author: Since 1988 Hervé Kempf has specialized in environmental and ecological
reporting. He created the environmental magazine Reporterre, and has written for scientific and economic newspapers. He is the Environmental Editor of the influential French newspaper Le Monde.
Our current best-selling title (22,000 copies in print):
The Transition Handbook: from oil dependency to local resilience
by Rob Hopkins
“This is much more than just a book. It is a manual for a movement. And not just any movement, but one which – in avoiding the civilisational collapse threatened by the twin crises of peak oil and climate change – could prove to be the most important social force humanity has ever seen.” – Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees
We live in an oil-dependent world, and have got to this level of dependency in a very short space of time, using vast reserves of oil in the process – without thinking ahead to plan for when the supply is not so plentiful. Most of us avoid thinking about what happens when oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive), but The Transition Handbook shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive outcome. These changes can lead to the rebirth of local communities, which will grow more of their own food, generate their own power, and build their own houses using local materials. They can also encourage the development of local currencies, keeping money in the local area.
BREAKING NEWS . . . In the long-running Radio 4 series 'The Archers', Pat Archer is drumming up interest in making Ambridge a Transition Village, or Borchester a Transition Town!
