Reviews past efforts to repair environmental damage and documents the shortcomings of the eco-revolution.

Making Peace with the Earth outlines how a paradigm shift to earth-centred politics and economics is our only chance of survival and how collective resistance to corporate exploitation can open the way to a new environmentalism."--pub. desc.

Without immediate action to combat global warming, we face losing 5 to 20 per cent of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our biosphere is in jeopardy: increased desertification, deforestation, air and soil pollution, dwindling biodiversity, water crises and the degradation of the oceans. A new approach to our economy is needed, one that fosters less material forms of production, reduces superfluous consumption and wastes less raw material. We have to create and implement new styles of development that, without halting growth, spare the planet and preserve biodiversity. It is time, as this volume proposes, for humanity to make a new pact, a 'natural contract', of co-development with the planet. UNESCO is actively involved in this debate, as reflected in its 21st Century Talks series, which open a forum for discussion on key issues of the future.--Publisher's description.

This book tells the story of a new historical dialectic in the world between two parallel processes--construction and destruction. The author proposes that a constructive global collective consciousness began in the nineteenth century, and humanity has since progressed toward the achievement of a more just and peaceful world. Outworn and destructive mindsets--the root causes of war such as racism, nationalism, religious strife, gender inequality and extremes of wealth and poverty--have now been fully exposed and delegitimized. Unfortunately, those who have profited from these divisive attitudes will not give up without a fight. Amidst the blinding haze generated by the accelerating collapse of outworn mindsets and institutions, this book brings into focus the forward march of the constructive process toward peace, and the powerful role each of us can play in its realization.

Become one of the few spiritual seekers who are at peace with being on this planet

The roots of the present ecological crisis, Foster argues, lie in capital's rapacious expansion, which has now achieved unprecedented heights of irrationality across the globe. Foster demonstrates that the only possible answer for humanity is an ecological revolution: a struggle to make peace with the planet. Foster details the beginnings of such a revolution in human relations with the environment which can now be found throughout the globe, especially in the periphery of the world system, where the most ambitious experiments are taking place. From publisher description.

Without immediate action to combat global warming, we face losing 5 to 20 per cent of the world's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Our biosphere is in jeopardy: increased desertification, deforestation, air and soil pollution, dwindling biodiversity, water crises and the degradation of the oceans. A new approach to our economy is needed, one that fosters less material forms of production, reduces superfluous consumption and wastes less raw material. We have to create and implement new styles of development that, without halting growth, spare the planet and preserve biodiversity. It is time, as this volume proposes, for humanity to make a new pact, a 'natural contract', of co-development with the planet. UNESCO is actively involved in this debate, as reflected in its 21st Century Talks series, which open a forum for discussion on key issues of the future.--Publisher's description.