Facing Catastrophe: Food, Politics, and the Ecological Crisis

The modern ecological crisis, now visible in its many symptoms across the global landscape, appears as a looming nightmare, revealing more clearly with each passing moment the utterly destructive character of globalized corporate power.? Revisiting the famous Marxist injunction "socialism or barbarism", Facing Catastrophe focuses on how the crisis threatens the natural habitat more severely than even most environmentalists today are prepared to recognize.? That threat encompasses climate change but extends beyond to include shrinking natural resources (above all land and water), food and agricultural challenges, addiction to economic growth, geopolitical conflict and resource wars, and the assault on nonhuman beings.? This unprecedented challenge has inspired, more accurately forced, new ways of viewing not only economic development but political action, cultural norms, natural relations, and social change.? One conclusion is that unless new modes of production and consumption are globally adopted - and soon - the planet is sure to follow a path toward catastrophe.? Carl Boggs urges an ecological radicalism bold enough to move beyond a long record of historical failures, from liberalism to social democracy, Communism, and anarchism as well as mainstream environmental reformism.