This book is not meant to amuse capitalists any bit. But then capitalism has come under the scanner yet again, after the trials and tribulations that the recent global recession has brought down upon unsuspecting masses of the world. Now, it is for everyone to witness what a no-holds-barred rampage of capitalism can do to the global economy. Building on the same doomsday scenario, author Stan Cox has minced no words in concluding through his book that the way global development is panning out, the day is not far when we have to choose between earth's survival and capitalism. Paradoxically any delay in such decision-making will exponentially reduce the time we have at our hand for making such a decision.
The author has dealt very succinctly how two of the biggest industries of the modern world — healthcare and food — are adversely impacting the global environment by default and sometimes by design. According to him the only motive of big corporations is augmenting their profits, for which they have come up with ingenious ways of driving up consumption in these two sectors while paying scant regard (save for occasional mandatory lip service) for the ecological impact of their insatiable greed for capturing more resources and, hence, bigger profits. His account of concepts like disease mongering, agro-terrorism, trickle-down economics, etc., are both amusing and disturbing at the same time. He leaves no doubt in the readers' minds that behind all these ills someway or other unrestrained growth of capitalism is to be blamed.
Although the concerns mentioned in this book are global in nature, Cox has used vivid examples from epicentre of today's financial earthquake, America, and a country that is rapidly going down the same self-destructive road — India. Although all the examples are relevant few more interspersed perspectives from China, Middle-East, Europe and Africa would have made the work truly global in nature.
The author has also dealt in parts the tug-of-war going between the developed and the developing countries for assuming the responsibilities for mitigating and hopefully reversing the degradation of the environment. While he has been scathing in his comments on the ideological position assumed by the developed world in this regard, he has also warned the developing countries not to repeat the historical mistakes made by the developed countries by blindly following their capitalistic model of growth. This topic (from the perspective of healthcare and food sectors) could have been dealt in greater detail to give more relevance to the subject at hand.
Through Sick Planet, Cox has slowly but very assuredly bulldozed the widely held notion that effective capitalism and resource efficiency alone can reconcile limitless growth with ecological sustainability. He has used the ideas of Marx, Georgescue-Roegen and Jevons quite often throughout the book to show how vacuousness of capitalism and its ability to bring about all pervasive growth. He has not left even the smallest shred of doubt in the readers' mind where his ideological sympathies lie.
As Cox has spelt out clearly at the outset itself, this book doesn't intend to provide any quick-fix solution to the problems raised, although one would not have minded that. But he does an excellent job of what he set out to do through this book — to trace a locus for the ecological impact of the healthcare and food industries.
Sick Planet is published by Harper Litmus (2008, Pages: 219 Price Rs 295)
Book Reviews 
Although the concerns mentioned in this book are global in nature, Cox has used vivid examples from epicentre of today's financial earthquake, America, and a country that is rapidly going down the same self-destructive road — India. Although all the examples are relevant few more interspersed perspectives from China, Middle-East, Europe and Africa would have made the work truly global in nature. 
