As part of its Ford Foundation supported Inequality Project, The Guardian is providing a provocative glimpse of Oxford geographer Danny Dorling’s important research into inequality and the environment. It should be required reading for anyone interested in the complexities surrounding causes and potential solutions to the environmental crisis. Read the article here.
No surprise that the US comes out worst on practically all counts — worst levels of inequality, worst levels of overconsumption, waste, and per capita carbon emission.
A few excerpts:
“In economically unequal countries the pressure to buy items to keep up with your peers, with “people who count”, is enormous, especially when it comes to clothes, fashion, new cars and other status symbols. We are encouraged to be aspirational, to better ourselves, not for the greater good, but for selfish reasons – ultimately to be able to get all that stuff. A good job is no longer one which benefits society, but one that pays you well.”
[. . .]
“Everything is connected. People are fatter in the US because they eat more food; because they sit in cars more often and for longer; because they are exposed to more advertising and eat more and buy more cars as a result; because they live in greater fear of crime and so are afraid of not driving; and because they are surrounded by other obese people and therefore don’t feel so unusual if they are also fat.
“But behind all of these factors lies the basic difference in how human beings are ranked. Rank them sky high by paying them many times more than other people, and they can become so conceited that they more easily treat others who are less well-off poorly, with no respect and with little empathy. When pay differentials are less and no-one’s income is out-of-this world, people realise they have far more in common with others. They then argue for cycle routes, pavements, good public transport, and to be able to afford to live near where they work.”
[. . .]
“It is only since the late 1970s that the 25 rich countries focused on in this article have begun to diverge widely in their levels of economic inequality. Because they have done so, a set of natural experiments has been set up which today allows research into the effects of these differences.
“The preliminary conclusion, based on these natural experiments, is that the more economically equitable countries tend to perform better across a wide range of environmental measures. Once we know what the driving forces are, and become fully aware of the damage that is done by inequality in environmental as well as social terms, we will know how necessary it is to embrace change.”
Of course, all the correlations studied by Dorling are complex, and the causalities uncertain. The article discusses a few of the complexities; the charts show others. Critics will no doubt reveal more.
Perhaps most important, in terms of its public impact, is that Dorling’s work is ultimately optimistic: as societies become more equal, he suggests, environmental problems become easier to grasp. That the trend has been otherwise for the last 40 years is a reminder that we need to figure out what has been most definitive of these last four decades.
Some would say the answer to that is easy: neoliberalism. But which of its forms specifically? And how best to challenge them?
see what you make of
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Through the environmental crisis the Earth is reacting to human behavior and is warning us – perhaps beseeching us – to respond. To understand and confront the root causes of this exploitation and inequality most ‘modern’ individuals are required to question their most fundamental beliefs.
Equality is important for every country, the equality keeps importance in terms of health, and contentment has been clear for some years. But it is also good for the environment. https://www.assignmentmaster.co.uk/btec-assignment/. The proof (which is still rising) suggests the most imbalanced prosperous countries give more to weather change via contamination than their equal counterparts do.
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