Sisyphus on a Roll: Society Faces the High Price of Capitalism

• Author: Oliver Houck
• Pages: 81-84

81

Sisyphus on a Roll:

Society Faces the High

Price of Capitalism

By Oliver Houck

The Bridge at the E nd of the World: Capitali sm, the Environment ,

and Crossing Fro m Crisis to Sustainability, by James Gustave Speth,

Yale University Press. 320 pages.

From the November/ December 2008 issue of The Environm ental Forum.

How do we get out of this mess? Gus

Speth’s new book tackles the larg-

est of all environmental questions,

whether humans can reconcile their occupa-

tion of this planet with the rest of its resources

and living things. Back in 1980 t he Council

on Environmental Quality, under his direc-

tion, issued a report entitled “Global 2000”

predicting the very climate-changing future

now before us and recommending, inter alia, a

tax on carbon fuels and a treaty on greenhouse

gases as a way to stave it o. Neither happened,

of course. A quarter century later Speth pub-

lished Red Sky at Morning, which along with

other books formed an avant-garde posse in

search of a mechanism to divert the world

from what they perceived to be its self-destructive course. For the most part,

these changes haven’t happened yet either.

Speth’s latest book, e Bridge at the End of the World: Capitali sm, the

Environment, and Crossing f rom Crisis to Sustaina bility, steps back to reas-

sess the situation. W hat is new is h is identication of the problem, today’s

enemy, and the ar ray of evidenc e and argument he assembles in support of

his argument. For its sources a lone, this is a book you mig ht want to k eep

handy as we did, in t he old days, a copy of t he desk encyclopedia, this one