Book Review 'Catastrophe Alarm!: What to do Against the Deliberate Destruction of the Unity between the Human Being and Nature?' (Spanish Version)
Uqbah Iqbal*
Researcher, History Programme, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Malaysia
Submission: October 30, 2017; Published: November 10, 2017
*Corresponding author: Uqbah Iqbal, Researcher, History Programme, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Malaysia, Tel: 60196916990; Email: uqbah@siswa.ukm.edu.my
How to cite this article: Uqbah Iqbal. Book Review ‘Catastrophe Alarm!: What to do Against the Deliberate Destruction of the Unity between the Human Being and Nature?’ (Spanish Version). Int J Environ Sci Nat Res. 2017;6(3): 555685. DOI: 10.19080/IJESNR.2017.06.555686
Mini Review
Written by Stefen Engel, no doubt that the question of the environment has reached public consciousness. The worry of the situation on the natural environment is growing worldwide. No politician, media professional, businessman or trade unionist who is serious can no longer allow you to ignore this question. Too many ecological catastrophes break out at the local level and regional and harass humanity. In public opinion, the impression is created that the question of the environment would be in good hands under the dominant sectors and their governments. But in reality, since it emerged the ecological crisis at the beginning of the 1970s, they did not have the will nor were they capable of do something effective against. Instead, humanity advances unchecked; yes, even at an accelerated pace, towards a global ecological catastrophe. This has the potential to annihilate the bases of all human existence. The responsibility for this development lies first of all in international super monopolies, which today dominate all production and trade world, as well as politics, economics and science in all countries.
A new ecological awareness has been awakened. However, its level is far from being enough to understand with all consequence the existential danger for humanity. The attention of public opinion is unilaterally focused on particular factors of the crisis ecological, such as the impending climate catastrophe. At the same time other problems, not less dramatic, such as the growing ozone hole, the destruction of ecosystems of oceans or forests, are cornered or minimized. But, above all, they are ignored to a great extent the interrelations and reciprocal effects. Is it conceivable that only convincing arguments can lead those responsible for the capitalist profit economy to stop this development? Is it conceivable that monopolies dominant internationals suddenly relinquish their unique power or their exorbitant profits, just to save the environment? This will not happen! With full awareness of the deadly risks they lead to Earth towards the ecological catastrophe! Nowadays, the conditions of capitalist competition demand from the international monopolies, on pain of perishing, that lead to the extreme overexploitation of being human and nature. The so-called environmental issue has long been an issue extremely political. What reason to exist has a social order whose complete being rests on a basis that threatens the human being and nature? Instead of undertaking something substantial against this threat, the dominants have established, in order to manipulate all of humanity, a whole system of imperialist and petty-bourgeois environmentalism. Through appeasement, lies, dissimulation and fictitious solutions they try prevent the active resistance of the masses or decompose it.
This book leaves no doubt that humanity cannot give up the question of the environment to the dominant social system. Well, if so, it will sink into capitalist barbarism! On the basis of a multitude of concrete analyzes, the book comes to the knowledge that the humanity is now in the midst of the progressive transition towards ecological catastrophe global. The solution of the question of the environment today demands a transforming struggle of the society. Only an international socialist revolution can solve the social and ecological question. Only in a socialist society, without exploitation of man by man, the human being and nature constitute a fruitful unit. Only in a communist society without classes, the "humanization of nature" and the "naturalization of man" will reach a relative end, such as formulated by Karl Marx.