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The author argues that originally concern about the destruction of the ecosphere rested on an awareness of the damaging technologies which sustained the lifestyle of the rich world. There was an emphasis on the unsustainability of development based on a permanently expanding economy and the need to address the abuse of resources and extravagance of the North at the expense of the South. Now, and particularly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the rich world has successfully exported its development paradigm and managed to attribute climate change to ‘anthropogenic activity’ thereby making everyone appear equally culpable for degrading the planet. In the process, discussion has moved from the need to curb consumption to the necessity of changing energy sources.

In this article, the authors examine Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath on the people of New Orleans from a historical materialist perspective. In their analysis, the authors discuss Katrina in relation to capitalism's overall devastating consequences for the ecosphere as well as the global division of labor and its racialized social relations. They further suggest that the racialization of Hurricane Katrina needs to be situated within the disciplinary practices of capital and its process of valorization through unsustainable capital-fueled growth and development, overproduction, resource depletion, and ecosystem destabilization and destruction.

Reduction targets for a desired degree of climate protection are negotiated at the international circuit. Concrete measures for reaching such targets are implemented at the national and city levels. Demonstrated here for electricity use in the commercial sector of the City of Muenster is a “Win-Win Strategy” which, if correctly done will result only in winners. Specifically, it is shown that electricity use between 1990 and 2005 in a Trend Scenario would increase by ca. 25 %, while in the Climate Protection Scenario it could decrease by ca. 23 % due to savings and substitution measures. The benefits, costs, and net gains are computed for different price developments. For a favored variant, the net gain to customers is ca. 66 M DM and that of the city utility – acting as an investor/contractor – is ca. 44 M DM over the period 1996–2021. The monetary savings are calculated by individual uses and user categories. The calculated benefit-loss developments show favorable payback times ranging from 11 to 14 years for the total commercial sector or 2 to 5 years for individual objects. Rough estimates show that over the next 10 years the “Win Win Strategy” could provide 256 additional jobs in the commercial electricity sector of Muenster, and about 700 000 new jobs when projected for Germany as a whole. Additionally, studies show that implementing the electricity efficiency potential in five Western European countries by 2020 could save between 20 and 50 Bil.(billion) ECU, whilst the need for some 90 additional 1000 MW power plants could be avoided. If current commercially available efficiency technologies were used to reach a standard of living equal to that in W. Europe in the late 1970s, the Third World final energy demand would be ca. 1 kW/cap, and in the First World perhaps a little greater. The energetic limit of the ecosphere is estimated to be ca. 1.5 kW/cap at the current world population. Finally, the policy options discussed here can help tap this huge available energy efficiency gold mine by the North and the South alike. The function of the “Win Win Strategy” is to help supply the funds for paving the way toward a sustainable future.

Bible and biology agree: Human beings cast the biggest shadow over the future of nature. At the end of the millennium we face a choice: We can continue to overuse and exploit our ecosphere or we can exercise tender “dominion” in the world, as God's agents here.