Inequity feeds the ecological crisis
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Posted on December 6, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
Browsing the NY Times Business section today, I found this article about the growing gap between rich and poor globally and in this country. The facts are disturbing: the richest 1% of the world’s population holds 40% of the world’s assets. Meanwhile, 50% of the population holds a mere 1.1%.
The US continues to have a lion’s share of these inequities, holding 32.6% of the worlds wealth while being just 4.7% of the world’s population.
Just good luck? Hardly. This kind of wealth amasses and concentrates as the rich invest and gain greater and greater profits for themselves, often buying up the very assets of the poor in poor countries who do not have the economic power to compete.
Within the US, just 1% of our population holds 32% of the nation’s wealth.
Okay, what does this have to do with our ecological crisis? One thing is that the wealthy are the biggest consumers and the biggest polluters. Owning 3 or 4 mansions uses up a whole lot more fossil fuel than a poor hovel in Brazil. So does all that flying around to business meetings, corporate headquarters, the beach house, the mountain house, the ski weekend, international conferences, etc.
Meanwhile, those who rake in the profits from the energy industry benefit from fossil fuel production and consumption. Lowering either is not in their econoimc interests (remember, these are the folks that run the executive branch of the government right now).
Meanwhile, the poor — who are the vast majority of our world — are never able to come up with the means to change their lives. We can’t even get wealthy countries to adequately fund education initiatives around the globe, or things like empowerment of women and access to reproductive services, proven to be effective tools in reducing poverty.
In the US, we cut taxes for the rich so that they can invest more and grow the economy, as the predominant economic ideology goes. And their share of our ecological crisis grows along with their share of the wealth.
Meanwhile, look at what has happened to the poor of New Orleans. While the rich get on with their lives, invest in new ones, we cannot muster the resources or the concern to work with those who do not have the means to recover from a crisis like Katrina, who have lost everything, to help them get about re-starting their lives with a modicum of dignity and hope.
This matters to this blog and to my project because this says a great deal about how prepared we are to address the ecological crises that we now face. Doing it will require new ways of organizing global economic life, including limits on the amassing of wealth and more taxes on wealth, to help fund the programs necessary to save the planet without placing the burden of that project on the poor. The onus of responsibility lies with those who consume the most, and therefore produce their inordinate share of the greenhouse gases that are leading us to climate catastrophe. They are also those who are driving the crisis of ‘overshoot,’ expecting that somehow we will find the second planet needed to continue this level of consumption, or that some billions of people will die off and solve the problem.
Like it or not, this is why poverty is an issue integral to resolving the ecological crisis. We cannot address the one without addressing the other. We in the US don’t like hearing this, but this discourse regarding wealth and poverty is long overdue. Carbon taxes to provide funds for development of alternative energy course, taxes on luxury consumption, limits on development, prohibitions on destroying precious wetlands and forests for houses and resorts for the affluent, taxes on wealth, social programs targeting poverty, including restoring education to our education system, and health to our health system — all of this is necessary.
So is re-creating government agencies that can deliver needed services in the face of “un”natural disasters caused by climate change and to develop plans to relocate communities facing inundation from the rising seas.
All of this is necessary. And all of this requires rethinking our whole approach to wealth and these growing disparities. This would not be the first time that huumanity had to create a whole new economic regimen, and we must be brave enough and bold enough to do that now.
Meanwhile, here is a reflection on this very theme from 10 years ago by the marvelous Vandana Shiva. I offer it as a source of reflection and inspiration.
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