How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levelsthey are accelerating, dramaticallyand so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic impoverishment, and toxification. In this book Gus Speth, author of Red Sky at Morning and a widely respected environmentalist, begins with the observation that the environmental community has grown in strength and sophistication, but the environment has continued to decline, to the point that we are now at the edge of catastrophe.
Speth contends that this situation is a severe indictment of the economic and political system we call modern capitalism. Our vital task is now to change the operating instructions for today’s destructive world economy before it is too late. The book is about how to do that.

The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

Business & Money

James Gustave Speth

Economics

Yale University Press

"We desperately need a new American Dream," says Speth, "a dream of an America where the pursuit of happiness is sought not in more getting and spending, but in the growth of human solidarity, devoted friendship, and meaningful accomplishment; where the average person is empowered to achieve his or her human potential; where the benefits of economic activity are widely and equitably shared; where democracy and civic participation flourish at all levels; where the environment is sustained for current and future generations; and, where the virtues of simple living, community self-reliance, good fellowship, and respect for nature predominate. These traditions do not always prevail today, but they are not dead. They await us, and indeed they are currently being awakened across America." Looking at Christianity's role, Denton sees both complicity in the destruction of the natural world, and the positive role it could still play. "Faith is entirely personal and individual, but it can also be collective and communal. Faith can mobilize whole communities into action, to ends which are both practical and which bring glory to God â and which transform our world in the direction of a sustainable future, one better choice at a time."

Imagine a Joyful Economy

Religion & Spirituality

Peter Denton

Christian Books & Bibles

Wood Lake Books

A new art form has evolved in the pages of Orion over the last thirty years. Call it the literature of ecological urgency. No longer content to settle for diminutive steps that don't add up, the authors in this collection are calling for paradigmatic change. Tackling such subjects as corporatism, consumerism, toxic chemicals, even environmentalism itself, these pieces share a common message: if our culture fails to adequately address the challenges of our age, things could get very bad for people and for nature. The Orion essays collected here are not just a call to action, but a call to bold and brave action commensurate with the level of transformation that is required of humanity at this moment in time.

Change Everything Now

Winona LaDuke

James Howard Kunstler

Rebecca Solnit

bill-mckibben

Sandra Steingraber

Derrick Jensen

Jeffrey Kaplan

Janisse Ray

Curtis White

The Orion Society

Global Environmental Challenges: Transitions to a Sustainable World

Orient Blackswan

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Books by James Gustave Speth