The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

by James Gustave Speth

Book Overview

"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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300151152
• ISBN13: 9780300151152
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

Challenging overview and critique of possible solutions to our environmental problems

James Gustave Speth's book supplies a surprisingly radical critique of our current economic system as undermining the environment. I say surprisingly because Speth is currently the Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and therefore Speth is part of the establishment. The book is clearly a call from the heart. Speth has a long background as the leader or founder of various environmental groups, and the book reads as if he is trying to sum up what he has learned from his entire career about the nature of our environmental problems. In the process of providing his radical critique, Speth also provides a useful summary of current environmental problems, their causes, and the limitations of current solutions. Part I of the book presents evidence that despite some environmental progress, there remain numerous environmental problems that are getting worse. Foremost among these problems is global warming. Part I also argues that our current form of capitalism embraces growth without adequate restrictions to prevent these global environmental problems. Our current form of capitalism where possible uses its political power to block or evade such restrictions. Speth also argues that the current approach of environmentalism, which focuses on trying to get rational governmental environmental agencies to enact sound environmental regulations, has shown itself to be inadequate in addressing some of the most pressing environmental problems. Environmentalism needs to address more the causes of our environmental problems in our economic system, our political system, and our cultural attitudes towards consumption and growth. Parts II and III consider a wide range of possible solutions to this conflict between our current economic system and what Speth sees as the environment heading towards the abyss of environmental destruction, in order to find the title's "Bridge at the Edge of the World" over this abyss. These solutions begin at the modestly reformist and then consider increasingly radical and more comprehensive transformations of our current society. Among the solutions considered are: seriously implementing environmental economics and "getting the prices right" (chapter 4); restricting overall economic growth or at least physical throughput (chapter 5); refocusing economic growth and economic development on the social investments that will really make people happy (chapter 6); reconsidering consumption and materialism (chapter 7); restructuring the rules governing corporations (chapter 8); considering alternatives to corporations (chapter 9); transforming cultural attitudes towards growth and the environment (chapter 10); dramatically restructuring how politics is conducted (chapter 11). In my view, compared to other writing on economics and the environment, Speth's strongest contribution is his critique of the conventional environmental economics approach to environmental problems. Many other environmental advocates, such as B

A bridge too far...or still within reach?

As do other current writers such as Thomas Homer-Dixon and David Korten, James Speth sees us heading for catastrophe in the way we're over-using and over-polluting the earth, but holds out hope that we may yet turn back from the brink of destruction. He attributes our predicament to an economic system based on little more than constant growth, which in turns requires ever more extraction from the earth; weak or nonexistent government leadership; and an environmental movement that has been less "movement" and more an insider operation that down deep believes a) the government can and will eventually do the right thing and b) there won't be need for drastic redirection of our economic and political systems or serious change in our way of living. Speth calls for a rediscovery of the true meaning of life (relationships, service, enjoyment of leisure, etc.)--and orienting our economic pursuits around this; a new form of participatory democracy that takes back our country from the corporate-led government we currently "enjoy"; ending over $850 billion in annual global subsidies for "perverse" practices such as overfishing the seas; developing an economic model that incorporates environmental care, human rights and worker well-being at its core; and international treaties with "teeth" to enforce environmental protection of critical habitats and endangered species and ecosystems. This is a depressing book in that it clearly lays out the challenges facing us; it is hopeful in that it does provide a "bridge" to get us from this world to the next. It's up to us to build it and then be ready to walk over it. Telling quote: "When the crisis occurs, the actions taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, and to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."

A Book That Must Be Heeded

This is a book that must be heeded. It is about the most crucial, portentous issue of our time: the rapid destruction of the natural world by human activity and human institutions. Other issues that now dominate the news and with which we are preoccupied--the war in Iraq, the presidential campaign, the faltering economy, the health care debacle--are from a broad perspective merely transient. They will pass. But The Bridge at the Edge of the World makes us look unflinchingly at a crisis that will not pass--the eroding ability of our planet to support life. Global warming is only one of the megaproblems that threaten our future. Others include the toxification of the environment, the loss of biological diversity, dwindling per capital supplies of water and arable land, too many people consuming too many resources and producing too much waste. Dean Speth is most trenchent in pointing to the underlying causes of our environmental failure: market capitalism that does not value the environment, human health or the future of life; corporations whose only duty is to profit; government that fails to protect us from corporate misdeeds and, of late, has abetted those misdeeds. We are standing before the abyss. Speth warns. But he offers a bridge across that fatal chasm. A better economics that reflects the realities of what is happening to the world. A new politics that recognizes and addresses the real crises facing humanity. And a new consciousness by all of us to end our indifference and lethargy and demand that we do what is needed to protect the future for our children and grandchildren. This is a quiet, beautifully written book, but what it contains is explosive enough to wake us all up. Philip Shabecoff

An Eloquent Call for Transformation to Save Our Planet - Includes a Spiritual Challenge That's Great

When dozens of major Southern Baptist leaders broke news in the spring of 2008 with a letter to the world about climate change, it was a major milestone in this era of global change. Their letter simply underlined what millions are coming to see, already. We all need to help forge a powerful new linkage between spiritual values and values concerning our natural world. The Southern Baptist leaders wrote, in part, "We believe our current denominational engagement with these issues has often been too timid, failing to produce a unified moral voice." Coming from this very traditional American center of religious authority, this was an important prophetic voice in the conversation about where we're all heading in the tumbling and turning of cultural and social tidal waves these days. And, while phrases like these that may sound disturbing, Yale University's Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies James Gustave Speth shows us - loud and clear toward the end of his new book - that this tumbling just might turn out to be good news. That's because his eloquent book about our environmental crisis begins by outlining "next steps" that we all need to consider in a whole range of sectors in our society: politics, business, education and so on. But then, he comes to his final section: "Seedbeds of Transformation." He writes: "Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the transitions required can be achieved only in the context of what I will call the rise of a new consciousness. For some, it is a spiritual awakening - a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself. But for all it involves major cultural change and a reorientation of what society values and prizes most highly." This book is a non-traditional choice for small-group study in congregations, but I think you'll find it a very thought-provoking (and discussion-provoking) choice. Speth is a scholar, but he writes as a gifted teacher. This book, too, is a prophetic challenge. Let's listen, learn and explore our new roles and responses.