How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth

"Speaks seldom-heard truths about economic growth, environmental destruction, poverty, and equity that hold the key to human survival and well-being. An important book."

—David Korten, author of The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and When Corporations Rule the World

A best seller 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. Bringing to bear more than twenty years of experience as an environmental journalist, Kempf describes the invincibility that many of the world’s wealthy feel in the face of global warming, and how their unchecked privilege is thwarting action on the single most vexing problem facing our world.

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."

About the Author

Herve´ Kempf

Hervé Kempf was born in 1957 in Amiens, north of Paris, in France. After studies in economics, history, and political science, he became a journalist. Since 1988 he has specialized in environmental and ecological reporting. He created the environmental magazine Reporterre, and has written for scientific and economic newspapers. He has worked with Le Monde, the most influential French newspaper, since 1998, where he is the Environmental Editor and covers ecological topics, notably climate change and biodiversity. Le Monde now has an entire section devoted to environment and science. Traveling worldwide for his reporting, Kempf makes his home in Paris.

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