Humanity in the twenty-first century is facing what might be described
as its ultimate environmental catastrophe: the destruction of the
climate that has nurtured human civilization and with it the basis of
life on earth as we know it. All ecosystems on the planet are now in
decline. Enormous rifts have been driven through the delicate fabric of
the biosphere. The economy and the earth are headed for a fateful
collision--if we don't alter course.
In The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth environmental
sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a
radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that
the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in
capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of
public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge
ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining
the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic
relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within
capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion.
Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and
technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental
changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social)
problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis
relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned
with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the
economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in
moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable
human development.
