Book Review: "The Bridge at the Edge of the World. Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability"
by James Gustave Speth

Yale University Press, 2008.

Review by Martin Murie

This book is a rich field of proposals for what must be done. "It is unimagineable that American politics as we know it will deliver the transformative changes needed." And, "First, the new environmental policy must be broadened now so that environmental concern and advocacy extend to the full range of relevant issues." It is encouraging to find an insider who steps forward to say that top-down solutions won't do the job, that "bottom up" is the way to go.

Chapter 8 offers an analysis of "the Corporation." Here we find a brief history of corporations, how they mistakenly gained "personhood" with full Bill of Rights protections. The strict limitations of "greening" of corporations is also outlined. It is a useful chapter, but Speth's text is an excellent model of ambiguity at the razor wire and barbs of the fence where warning signs are visible: Don't Step Across. He doesn't step across, choosing instead to analyze how corporations and market economics can be reformed. The result is a far too optimistic report.

Reforms have had their chance, more than a hundred years of populist agitation, but the corporate beast keeps rolling on, devastating the planet and its creatures.

Speth spends little time analyzing the glaring fact that we are in a war economy that places us four-square across the path we have to take. War has always carried the burden of hatred directed against members of our own species. It's horrors are now with us seven-fold. The prime task right now is to resist the slaughtering of people. That is a fundamental principle. We have to stop murdering each other.

Resisting wars is also, inevitably, a fight against demeaning of human dignity and freedom. History can be a guide: treatment of Japanese citizens during WWII, treatment of leftists during the Cold War, hatred levelled at Muslims today.

A huge convergence of democratic movements will, if it arrives in time, save us. It will not be non-profits following mainstream pathways, nor will it be environmental outfits whose boards are loaded with rich people integrated into the very elite "business as usual" crowd, here and in other nations that Speth vigorously criticizes. Nor will it be cosmetically greened corporations. It will be a massively aroused citizenry demanding that governments break their cozy relationships with corporate devastation. We face a complex triad of disaster: climate change coinciding with economic downturn accompanied by vicious warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have to recognize that oceans and continents can not withstand the continuing onslaught of private conglomerates bent on growth at any cost that includes killing people.

To build People Power we need to take another look at sustainability as a goal. It strikes me as a rather limp goal because it does not target the necessary revolutionary shift in the way we imagine ourselves as part of nature, and the equally revolutionary tasks of re-creating styles of living that will topple for good the current corporate drive to grow forever. "Sustainability" is now a word used to justify market-driven and technology-obsessed policies that drive rampant capitalism. The popular conviction that we have to break is that sustainability, profit and unlimited growth are compatible. They are not and there is now abundant evidence that goals wrapped in that cloak bring us closer to the cliff edge, so near you can hear the wind moaning across the rocks.

Agreement with Seth's goals is the easy part. How to realize those goals is not. We have to flesh out the means. They are complex. Having lived from the earth's bounty for centuries, we are now at a crossroads where it is absolutely essential to give generous regard to ecological and social demands.

"The immense danger now facing the human species, it must be understood, is not due principally to the constraints of the natural environment, whether geological or climatic, but arises from a deranged social system wheeling out of control, and more specifically, U.S. imperialism. That is the challenge of our time." (John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review, July-August, 2008).

There is nothing like experience on the streets, in recruiting stations, military bases and gatherings of rulers, and other sites where proteters are not welcome and where what to do and what not to do are paramount and pressing. Those are learning places. Once people, regardless of age, are in motion they are forced to pay attention to actual happenings. Young dogs and old dogs can learn new tricks. We make mistakes, that's part of our record, part of the process. The actual building of bridges is hands-on work in grassroots territory, speaking and listening.



James Gustave Speth, "The Bridge at the Edge of the World. Capitalism, the Environment and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability"
by Yale University Press, 2008.