"Ingenuous comrades, there are bad men on the Earth. If you want to be an ecologist, you have to stop being a dummy."
from Hervé Kempf's "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet".
In 2006, Le Monde environmental editor Hervé Kempf’s article, "New Suspicions about GMO" (translated and republished at Truthout) was nominated for a Project Censored award for covering an important topic neglected by the mainstream press. Earlier this year, Truthout reported the publication of Kempf's new book, "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet." I was intrigued, all the more so as a few readers asked when the book would be available in English, and asked Mr. Kempf to send me a copy of his book as well as for permission to translate the Preface (see below). My own appreciation of this completely original and fundamentally necessary little book - a scant 125 pages of text - follows. That review precedes a short online discussion with Hervé Kempf, while a translation of the Preface to "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet" appears at the end of this feature, along with a number of links to related subjects.
Although familiar with much of the information Kempf marshals in "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet," I was nonetheless amazed by the long and elegant arc of his argument, his ability to discern and convey a crystalline pattern in phenomena as diverse as elevated PCB levels in the sediment of "pristine" Alaskan lakes and the increase in length of billionaires' yachts. The book's central thesis - that the "oligarchy," a global stateless class composed of the hyper-rich and the "new Nomenklatura," is responsible for our species' headlong rush to environmental destruction, both indirectly, through the rest of society's attempts to imitate and emulate their wasteful habits of conspicuous consumption, and directly, through their control of the levers of power, all presently fixed at the "Catastrophe" setting - is buttressed by twenty pages of footnotes and direct citations from sources as varied as Adam Smith and James Lovelock; the scientific monograph, "Effects on the Marine Environment of Ocean Acidification Resulting from Elevated Levels of CO2 in the Atmosphere" and Alexis de Tocqueville.
MORE
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031507E.shtml
The Rich Stand Accused
By Louis-Gilles Francoeur
Le Devoir
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807G.shtml
Comment les riches détruisent la planète (Broché)
de Hervé Kempf (Auteur)
http://www.amazon.fr/Comment-riches-d%C3%A9truisent-plan%C3%A8te-Herv%C3%A9/dp/202089632X
from Hervé Kempf's "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet".
In 2006, Le Monde environmental editor Hervé Kempf’s article, "New Suspicions about GMO" (translated and republished at Truthout) was nominated for a Project Censored award for covering an important topic neglected by the mainstream press. Earlier this year, Truthout reported the publication of Kempf's new book, "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet." I was intrigued, all the more so as a few readers asked when the book would be available in English, and asked Mr. Kempf to send me a copy of his book as well as for permission to translate the Preface (see below). My own appreciation of this completely original and fundamentally necessary little book - a scant 125 pages of text - follows. That review precedes a short online discussion with Hervé Kempf, while a translation of the Preface to "How the Rich are Destroying the Planet" appears at the end of this feature, along with a number of links to related subjects.
Although familiar with much of the information Kempf marshals in "How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet," I was nonetheless amazed by the long and elegant arc of his argument, his ability to discern and convey a crystalline pattern in phenomena as diverse as elevated PCB levels in the sediment of "pristine" Alaskan lakes and the increase in length of billionaires' yachts. The book's central thesis - that the "oligarchy," a global stateless class composed of the hyper-rich and the "new Nomenklatura," is responsible for our species' headlong rush to environmental destruction, both indirectly, through the rest of society's attempts to imitate and emulate their wasteful habits of conspicuous consumption, and directly, through their control of the levers of power, all presently fixed at the "Catastrophe" setting - is buttressed by twenty pages of footnotes and direct citations from sources as varied as Adam Smith and James Lovelock; the scientific monograph, "Effects on the Marine Environment of Ocean Acidification Resulting from Elevated Levels of CO2 in the Atmosphere" and Alexis de Tocqueville.
MORE
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031507E.shtml
The Rich Stand Accused
By Louis-Gilles Francoeur
Le Devoir
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010807G.shtml
Comment les riches détruisent la planète (Broché)
de Hervé Kempf (Auteur)
http://www.amazon.fr/Comment-riches-d%C3%A9truisent-plan%C3%A8te-Herv%C3%A9/dp/202089632X