THOM HARTMANN'S "INDEPENDENT THINKER" REVIEW OF THE MONTH

July 2008 -- Thom's First Father/Son Review

"The Bridge at the Edge of the World"

By James Gustave Speth

Reviewed by Thom and Justin Hartmann

The world’s population, CO2 emissions, and pollution rates are in an almost vertical climb. Half of the world’s tropical and temperate forests are gone. Eighty percent of the world’s fisheries have been decimated. Since the Industrial Revolution over 20,000 species have gone extinct at rates not seen in 65 million years (since the dinosaurs disappeared). Half the wetlands and a third of the world’s mangroves are gone. Twenty percent of the corals are gone and another 20 percent are severely threatened. And the list goes on... These are the current trends and figures concerning our global environmental health. If our culture leaves our environmental policies and practices at the current rate and status, there will be no habitable planet for our grandchildren… period.

The Dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, James Gustave Speth, wrote the book The Bridge at the Edge of the World because he’s worried about our future and he’s right. We should all be very worried. He writes:

"Our home planet is now dangerously near a ‘tipping point.’ Human-made greenhouse gases are near a level such that important climate changes may proceed mostly under the climate systems own momentum. Impacts would include extermination of a large fraction of species on the planet, shifting of climate zones due to an intensified hydrologic cycle with effects on freshwater availability and human health, and repeated worldwide coastal tragedies associated with storms and a continuously rising sea level."

Speth shows us that the primary factor in today’s environmental decline is our economic system. Our particular breed of capitalism, integrated and linked in to the world markets, is unprecedented in its ability to produce goods. Therefore, as we tap into the earth’s finite resources at accelerated rates we also produce waste byproducts at the same increased rates. Moreover, economic assessments of growth and the American gross domestic product (GDP) do not include many of the costs of all this manufacturing and waste. Sustaining people and sustaining nature have taken a back seat unfettered economic growth, which is ever increasing. For example, it took all of history to get to the 7 trillion-dollar world economy of 1950; now we grow by that amount every decade.

Speth also shows that political oversight, currently, has failed or is non-existent with respect to the environment. This is evidenced by neglect of "non-market environmental costs," and the use of subsides that remove market signals and lack correcting mechanisms.

(Read the Full Review)