A hardheaded book that confronts and outlines possible
solutions to a seemingly intractable problem: that helping the poor
often hurts the environment, and vice versa. Can we fight
poverty and ...inequality while protecting the environment? The
challenges are obvious. To rise out of poverty is to consume more
resources, almost by definition. And many measures to combat
pollution lead to job losses and higher prices that mainly hurt the
poor. In Unsustainable Inequalities, economist Lucas
Chancel confronts these difficulties head-on, arguing that the
goals of social justice and a greener world can be compatible, but
that progress requires substantial changes in public policy.
Chancel begins by reviewing the problems. Human actions have put
the natural world under unprecedented pressure. The poor are least
to blame but suffer the most-forced to live with pollutants that
the polluters themselves pay to avoid. But Chancel shows that
policy pioneers worldwide are charting a way forward. Building on
their success, governments and other large-scale organizations must
start by doing much more simply to measure and map environmental
inequalities. We need to break down the walls between traditional
social policy and environmental protection-making sure, for
example, that the poor benefit most from carbon taxes. And we need
much better coordination between the center, where policies are
set, and local authorities on the front lines of deprivation and
contamination. A rare work that combines the quantitative skills of
an economist with the argumentative rigor of a philosopher,
Unsustainable Inequalities shows that there is still hope
for solving even seemingly intractable social problems.
