Steven Cohen has produced a remarkable and well worth reading example of environmentalism which marries solid research with sopherific optimism. Don't get me wrong, this book is something everyone who loves the environment should pick up immediately. Anyone who loves the planet regardless of being left or right should pick this up. Why? Simply the stats and examples are so precise and comprehensive that it reads like a text book for a future society. This is how to do it, this is what you have to do, almost step by step. You can't argue with this research and exactness.

The problem, if there is one, is that the premise of the book appears to be that all you need to do is put the right technology and policies in place and before you know it we are ready for the future. The problem of inequality barely scratches the surface of this work. Waste is profitable, creating scarcity and having a strangle hold on resources is profitable and makes a small number of people powerful. Its not that we can't fix the environmental problems, its not simply a matter of following Steven Cohen's blue print.

Whether Kissinger actually said it or not there is some truth to the statement, "Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world." Capitalism is not about stuff, its a zero sum game of power, and in that game the environment bedamned.

Political Economic control and its concomitant sabotage on the shared wealth and resources of the planet is whats stopping the environmental crisis from being solved. That said, if we are able to solve tackle inequality of power and wealth, we should then pick up Steven Cohen's book to see how to fix the planet.