http://www.counterpunch.org/ruiz02052009.html

Stan Cox's "Sick Planet"

Beyond Green Capitalism

By CARMELO RUIZ-MARRERO

Plant geneticist Stan Cox, senior research scientist at the Kansas-based Land Institute, explains in his brilliant book "Sick Planet" how two industries that are supposed to give life, agribusiness and the health sector, are doing the exact opposite: they destroy the environment, poison our bodies and turn disasters of their own making into opportunities for profit and growth to boot.

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The author concludes that one cannot conceive- much less build- an ecological society without there being a broad consensus that the current economic system, founded on never ending growth, cannot be part of a new society. We must understand that all economic growth is destructive and that therefore we cannot have both capitalism and a habitable planet, says Cox. He goes on to warn that if we do not achieve such an understanding, any proposal or solution to the ecological crisis will be a pretentious and futile exercise, with a high entertainment value but with absolutely no usefulness in the real world.

In conclusion, "Sick Planet" is a very modest book, for it simply invites the reader to question the inevitability and desirability of capitalism in a sick and shrinking planet.

(This review was originally published in Spanish in the Puerto Rican weekly Claridad on November 28 2008)

Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero, a self-described renaissance hack and impractical humanist, is a Puerto Rican journalist, environmental educator and author. He is a Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, a Fellow of the Oakland Institute, and directs the Puerto Rico Project on Biosafety (http://bioseguridad.blogspot.com/). Whenever he is not writing or working at a call center, he distributes farm produce for something that resembles a CSA. Ruiz-Marrero, a compulsive blogger, blogs away at: http://carmeloruiz.blogspot.com/