Its macroscopic portrait of how the haves and the have-nots exist in our rapidly deteriorating ecosystem boggles the mind. Athanasiou writes in a measured and exhaustively researched prose, yet his book is a major portrait of human dysfunction and pending apocalypse that every social thinker, revolutionary and environmental activist should read. Everyone else should read it also. Athanasiou outlines the causes and effects of the world's market economy and all the damage it does. The litany is ferocious, atrocious and astonishing.
Most human populations are victims of the voracious beast, humankind.
The United States, which is but 6 percent of the world's population, controls 50 percent of the planet's wealth. These tremendous inequalities foster environmental and social instabiities driving us toward planetary suicide. He describes how development is based on every sort of crime against the natural and the human world. It has long been understood that the rich on earth will destroy the earth, yet we refuse to acknowledge the situation. In particular, this book is a call to environmental activists, who should know better, but who, for the most part, don't.