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How the Rich Are Destroying the Planet: A Review

By Leslie Thatcher

Thursday 15 March 2007

"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.

The first stage in Kempf's argument is to adduce the irrefutable evidence of an accelerating ecological catastrophe as humanity's use of the planet's resources overshoots the Earth's carrying capacity: While, according to one researcher Kempf cites, humanity's resource use was at 50 percent of the Earth's biocapacity in 1950, by 2003, it had reached 120 percent - consuming resources faster than the Earth can reproduce them. Foretastes of the ultimate catastrophe are suggested by avian flu worries, the destruction of New Orleans by the combined impact of Hurricane Katrina and infrastructure failures before and after the storm, and by increased mortality associated with the 2003 heat wave in Europe. Each environmental "problem" is linked to all the others; their synergy and imbrication propel us "in the direction of unstoppable destruction" and preclude any idea of separate crises, "solvable independently of one another." Why, Kempf asks, when the situation is so clear and alarming, does it remain so stubbornly intractable to change? He concludes that "if nothing happens even though we're entering an ecological crisis of historic gravity, it's because those who have power in the world want it to be this way."

Kempf goes on to document the return of widespread poverty and economic precariousness to the rich world and the globalization of poverty in spite of economic growth and some reduction of poverty in China and India. However, economic growth and greater agricultural productivity are achieved at the expense of environmental degradation and, finally, there is a vicious "synergy between the global ecological and social crises: they respond to one another, influence one another and worsen correlatively." And the poor are the first victims of environmental degradation everywhere.

In spite of a distinct coolness of tone and a controlled reliance on statistics and citation, Kempf's depiction of "The Powerful of This World" echoes Old Testament prophetic outrage. He quotes Peter Drucker on the destructiveness of unbridled executive compensation, St. Augustine on government ("If there is no justice, what are kingdoms, but vast systems of robbery?"), "Forbes, "The Economist,' and the "Financial Times" to create a portrait of a predatory, self-perpetuating elite that has become wealthy "not through success in production, but through constant redistribution of collective wealth" (think Halliburton or Blackwater senior executives and shareholders) and that lives "... separated from the plebians. They are not aware of how the poor and wage-earners live; they don't know and don't want to know." No sense of the public good or civic virtue moves "this predatory and greedy controlling class, wasting its rents, misusing its power, (it) congeals as an obstacle on the way. It bears no proposal, is animated by no ideal, delivers no promise ... is blind to the explosive power of obvious injustice. And blind to the poisoning of the biosphere that growth in material wealth provokes, a poisoning that means a degradation of the conditions for human life...."

None of this would matter so much, Kempf suggests, were it not for insatiable human rivalry in ostentation. Globally, wealth is an indicator of status and the social stimulus of emulation and imitation creates limitless "needs." Drawing on Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Classes," Kempf suggests that production is adequate, but consumption is excessive as oligarchs vie with one another in sumptuary competition and every social stratum beneath does the same. The "alibi" that the oligarchy uses to maintain its grip is economic growth and the myth that a rising economic tide lifts all boats - a market theory that has been broken ever since the disconnect in the direct correlation between growth and employment: "Because the pursuit of material growth is the only way the oligarchy can make societies accept extreme inequalities without bringing those inequalities into question. In fact, growth creates a surplus of apparent wealth that allows the system to be lubricated without changing its structure." Immaterial growth would not degrade the environment the way material growth does: in spite of technological progress, growth degrades the environment faster than technological fixes that reduce that degradation do. And, since justice demands that the consumption of the poorest be increased, "the rich have to consume less." Kempf does not say so explicitly, but that last requirement would appear to apply to me and almost anyone reading these words online.

Although the oligarchy may be blind to the public weal, it is vividly aware of what is necessary to maintain and perpetuate its own privileges. We may have great difficulty believing it, but "the global oligarchy wants to get rid of democracy and the public freedoms that constitute its substance." Kempf cites a chilling passage from a nineteenth century social observer to suggest how social control techniques, rather than the crude methods of a Hitler or a Stalin, could be quite effective in muting democratic freedoms:

"The kind of oppression that threatens democratic peoples does not in any way resemble what preceded it (...) I want to imagine what aspect despotism could take on in the world: I see an innumerable crowd of men, similar to one another and equal, who gyrate unceasingly to obtain small and vulgar pleasures for themselves with which they fill their souls. Each one of them, isolated at some remove from the others, is like a stranger to the destiny of all the others: his children and his personal friends constitute the entire human species for him: as for the remainder of his fellow citizens, he is right next to them, but he doesn't see them; he touches them and doesn't feel them; he exists only within and for himself and, although he still has a family, one may at the least say he no longer has a country. Above all these men rises an immense tutelary power that alone takes care of assuring their enjoyment and watching over their fate. It is absolute, elaborate, regular, calculating, and mild. It would be like paternal power, if - like it - its goal was to prepare men for virile maturity; but, on the contra'y, it seeks only to limit them irrevocably to childhood; it likes its citizens to be happy, as long as they dream of nothing other than being happy." (Alexis de Tocqueville)

Since the collapse of the former USSR, it appears that capitalism no longer needs democracy - so antithetical to the oligarchy's objectives. Terrorism is the latest alibi to tighten security, criminalize dissent, expand surveillance and imprison the poor. "The hyper-rich will attempt to maintain their excessive advantages by force as they did after Hurricane Katrina, when armed forces were sent - not to help the drowning poor - but to hunt down looters.

"An ironic twist of history could even be an authoritarian government's use of ecological necessity as a pretext to persuade the people to accept a restriction of freedoms - without, however, touching [socioeconomic] inequality."

However difficult the political decision to "accept humanity's self-moderation" may appear to be, Kempf maintains his optimism in that possibility. He urges us to get rid of several received ideas:

belief in growth as the solution to social problems

belief in technology as the solution to ecological problems

the inevitability of unemployment ("a construct whereby capitalism keeps workers docile and salaries down")

the necessary alliance of Europe, which embodies a universal ideal and the demonstrated ability to unite diverse states, and North America, "the obese power"
He encourages us to build on existing strengths:

the public freedoms and concern for the public good that still characterize the system itself

a mass media which may have "treacherously" supported the oligarchy in the recent past up until now, but which is capable of being once again a vehicle of real information and empowerment.

the "Left" - which could be reborn by joining the causes of inequality and ecology

nascent global solidarity movements.

Kempf is neither a cranky conspiracy theorist nor a bitter ascetic, but a wide-awake dreamer with a Gallic joie de vivre and faith in liberté, égalité, fraternité. His latest book is an important work of social-scientific syncretism that merits wider distribution.

Original article posted here.