The Vulnerable Planet Summary

In The Vulnerable Planet: A Short Economic History of the Environment, John Bellamy Foster provides new insights into close relation between global environmental crisis and society economic system with profound historical and economic evidence, particularly highlighting the era from Industrial Revolution to colonization.

Throughout this 168-page book, the author thoroughly investigates and gives succinct analysis on why and how the private-profit-oriented global economic system destroyed the Mother Earth’s indigenous habitat. Not only that, but he also rejects cliché and individualistic approaches that merely tinkers with the problem, instead, strongly suggests a “fundamental reorganization of production on a social basis” on the way to actualize

Firstly, this book describes the process of changes in nature from an economic point of view. People all are aware of the environment issue and how critical it is but at the same time, money and economic values are something that people could never give up. The book ranges widely over problems of the exhaustion of non-renewable resources such as coal and fossil fuels, and the increasing pollution of the land like the destruction and loss of the soil, which is due to agriculture, and the problems of human health, which result from all these changes. Those changes are very familiar subject to people living in 21st century. However, the author puts the blame severely on the capitalistic economic system, and its aim at personal profit above all. Then, he gives examples of where huge companies loot the old-growth forests or the tropical forests, which have been home to uncountable, precious flora and fauna. While they take for private profit what were the collective treasures of humankind, they constantly produce pollutants and expect the public to pay for their mess. One terrible example is the British nuclear complex at Sellafield, where 300 accidents occurred, including a highly polluting fire in 1957. It continuously releases nuclear waste into the Irish Sea, resulting in marine ecosystem pollution includes hazardous radioactive substance (128). Secondly, in usual case, history on economy depicts changes in certain system by focusing on the economists who has brought about the changes. Nevertheless, John Bellamy Foster, an eco-socialist, diachronically analyzes the history of human, society and nature at the same time, showing how human activities, specifically the activities of capital formation for personal profit, destroyed the ecosystem. It is an impressive narrative style to see how the three perspectives worked together, rather than just focusing on human-centered view,