How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth

By Herve Kempf, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted November 22, 2008.

On top of that, the development of free papers that depend solely on advertising further increases the pressure on widely distributed paid newspapers, many of which have entered the stables of big industrial groups. It's not certain that the information possibilities generated by the Internet, although immense -- and for as long as these remain open -- will be adequate to counterbalance the weight of the mass media should it wholly become the voice of the oligarchy.

Nevertheless, not all journalists are totally enthralled yet, and they could be galvanized around the ideal of freedom.

The third, wobbly force is the left. Since its social-democratic component became its center of gravity, it has abandoned any ambition of transforming the world. The compromise with free-market liberalism has led the left to so totally adopt the values of free-market liberalism that it no longer dares -- except in the most cautious terms -- to deplore social inequality. On top of that, the left displays an almost cartoonish refusal to truly engross itself in environmental issues.

The left remains pickled in the idea of progress as it was conceived in the nineteenth century, still believes that science is produced the same way it was in the time of Albert Einstein, and intones the chant of economic growth without the slightest trace of critical thinking. Moreover, "social capitalism" rather than "social democracy" is undoubtedly the more apposite term.

Nonetheless, can the challenges of the twenty-first century be addressed by the currents of tradition other than the one that identified inequality as its primary motive for revolt?

This hiatus is at the heart of political life. The left will be reborn by uniting the causes of inequality and the environment -- or, unfit, it will disappear in the general disorder that will sweep it and everything else away. And yet, let us be optimistic. Optimistic, because there are ever more of us who understand -- unlike all the conservatives -- the historical novelty of the situation: we are living out a new, never-seen-before phase of the human species' history, the moment when, having conquered the Earth and reached its limits, humanity must rethink its relationship to nature, to space, to its destiny.

We are optimistic to the extent that awareness of the importance of the current stakes becomes pervasive, to the extent that the spirit of freedom and of solidarity is aroused. Since Seattle and the protests against the World Trade Organization in 1999, the pendulum has begun to swing in the other direction, toward a collective concern about the choices for the future, seeking cooperation rather than competition.

The somewhat successful, although still incomplete, battle in Europe against GMOs, the international community's continuance of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001 despite the United States' withdrawal, the refusal by the peoples of Europe to participate in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the general recognition of the urgency of climate-change challenge are signs that the wind of the future has begun to blow. 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.

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Herve Kempf is the environmental editor of Le Monde, France's most influential newspaper and the author of the new book, How the Rich Are Destroying the Earth.

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