(Larger Image)
|
The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment's Number One Enemy
by Jack M. Hollander
Product Group: Book
Publisher: University of California Press (2003-04-02)
ISBN: 0520237889
EAN: 9780520237889
Dewey Decimal #: 333.7
Binding/Media: Hardcover - 251 pages
Edition: 1
SKU: 00-J44F-FLO1
Condition: Very Good
Comments: Appears to be a new book. Dust jacket shows shelf wear, otherwise would be listed as like new. Expedited shipping available.
|
Editorial Reviews
|
Product Description
Drawing a completely new road map toward a sustainable future, Jack M. Hollander contends that our most critical environmental problem is global poverty. His balanced, authoritative, and lucid book challenges widely held beliefs that economic development and affluence pose a major threat to the world's environment and resources. Pointing to the great strides that have been made toward improving and protecting the environment in the affluent democracies, Hollander makes the case that the essential prerequisite for sustainability is a global transition from poverty to affluence, coupled with a transition to freedom and democracy. The Real Environmental Crisis takes a close look at the major environment and resource issues-population growth; climate change; agriculture and food supply; our fisheries, forests, and fossil fuels; water and air quality; and solar and nuclear power. In each case, Hollander finds compelling evidence that economic development and technological advances can relieve such problems as food shortages, deforestation, air pollution, and land degradation, and provide clean water, adequate energy supplies, and improved public health. The book also tackles issues such as global warming, genetically modified foods, automobile and transportation technologies, and the highly significant Endangered Species Act, which Hollander asserts never would have been legislated in a poor country whose citizens struggle just to survive. Hollander asks us to look beyond the media's doomsday rhetoric about the state of the environment, for much of it is simply not true, and to commit much more of our resources where they will do the most good-to lifting the world's population out of poverty. Illustrations: 21 b/w illustrations
|
Customer Reviews
|
Interesting but deeply flawed
Rating  (1)
Date: 2010-07-22
The "get rich, save the environment" thesis that Hollander advances is seductive but deeply flawed and incongruent with contemporary empirical research. It is a valid assertion, of course, that poverty and localized environmental degradation and change are tightly linked. But, what Hollander fails to recognize is that those countries that have exhibited upward mobility and economic development have increasingly relied upon natural resource assets from the less developed countries, thus off-shoring or displacing many of the environmental burderns of upward mobility. In turn, it is poverty AND affluence that contribute to global environmental change in the modern world--the latter a significant contributor to the latter. Hollander's empathy for the world's poor is admirable, but unless one has a clear conception of the underlying factors that contribute to uneven development in the modern world economy, including the ecological dimensions, it is easy to fall into the trap of conceptualizing poverty as the single, overarching driver of environmental degradation and change.
|
|
Top-Notch Contribution, Incomplete but Very Much on Target
Rating  (5)
Date: 2009-06-16
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
AMAZON has managed to eradicate virtually all of the voters for non-fiction by labeling them fans. This is so dumb I just shake my head. To find my buried reviews that summarize books in a useful way, use the online free bibliography at oss.net/PIG; just add the three w's.
I got this book at the same time as Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death and consider both to be very worthwhile. As much as I and others mocked The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World for its data manipulation and unsupported conclusions, I have to say that the push-back has been important, and I am particularly impressed by the devastating critique in the other book (Eco-Imperialism) on the lack of integrity among the non-profits who strive to force their agenda on the public without ethical substance.
The author focuses on challenging the assumption that affluence in the Third World will destroy the environment, and I have a note, "a thoughtful, remarkable review."
As with other books, DDT surfaces here as the poster issue for claims that it is bad for the environment versus claims that it is good for humanity.
I respect the core point on page 10: "The real enemies of environmental progress are poverty and tyranny, not technology and global markets." The author was ahead of his time, publishing in 2003, in 2004 the High Level Panel agreed with him and made poverty THE #1 threat to humanity above infectious disease, environmental degradation, and seven other threats. See A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility--Report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change.
There are some great turns of phrase. The author characterizes the current debate as "grains of truth embedded in a sea of exaggeration."
I am totally impressed by the author's emphasis that for the five billion poor, the crisis is local and the threats within the threat of poverty are:
01 Hunger
02 Dirty water
03 Disease
04 Scarcity
05 Lack of Education
06 Social inequality, especially of women.
On #5, the UN IT folks just announced the opening of a free online university, which is a great start, now we just need for South Africa, China, India, and perhaps Chile to start call centers that offer all the poor education one cell call at a time. [And today Nokia announced a cell phone powered by ambient electro-magnetic waves in the atmosphere, i.e. it can continue running without having to be charged, a huge essential for the poorest of the poor).
On #6 I share the author's view that educating women and empowering women is a major aspect of assuring our future. I was much impressed by A Half Penny on the Federal Dollar: The Future of Development Aid and his emphasis on how the best return on investment for any aid dollar is from the education of women.
The author focuses on technological innovation (e.g. the Nordic hand-held device without energy needs that can filter feces water to produce clean drinkable water) and economic efficiency--this book does not mention corruption or "true costs" but the author is on track.
He is optimistic because of what we know and despite what we do not know, and I also am sharing his optimism as I see books like Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World and Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.
He briefly discusses how poverty should be freedom of choice not only in economic terms, but in relation to political and other domains, as espoused by (he quotes) Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate.
He spends a lot of time arguing that population growth is not inevitable and is not the doomsday scenario, capping this with a quote from the UN that suggests that population growth will be static by 2100, accompanying this with a compelling graphic that shows that affluence is the best way to end unreasonable or out of control population growth.
In the food section he extols the benefits of biotechnology while ignoring the crimes against humanity, such as Monsanto selling seed that kills its offspring so that the seed has to be bought again.
From this book I draw out the urgency of ending the sequestration of technology such as is now prevalent among many patent systems that do not have a "use it or lose it" clause in their schema.
There are good discussions of the oceans as the vital commons of the future, of global warming (Al Gore is starting to take a lot of hits for being facile with the truth), on water (water wars, women and water management, underpricing of water negating its efficient use), and on renewable energy.
While the author credit innovation with bringing the price of renewable energy down to a tenth of what it was, his knowledge is a bit dated as presented in this book, and I would add that similar gains have been made with respect to the desalination and purification of water from the sea, down from $10 a cubic meter to under 50 cents a cubic meter.
Moore's Law is going to apply to environmentally-relevant technologies, in my view.
He provides a thoughtful conclusion and lists seven goals on page 194:
01 Freedom and democracy are core foundations for the eradication of poverty
02 Gender equality is essential (I would actually return to matriarchies)
03 The poor must receive the education and the tools (I add: free cell phones, education by the call as espoused by the Earth Intelligence Network)
04 New wealth must be created in sustainable equitable manner that lifts the poor.
05 Massive effort is needed to cut diseases in half
06 World economy must become truly global, instead of current predatory neo-colonialism
07 Foreign aid needs to be targeted at the poor (see my briefing at oss.net/HACK, add the w's).
See also:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
|
|
What Americans don't know
Rating  (4)
Date: 2008-11-23
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Fascinating and well written. Americans should realize how blessed they are to be wealthy enough to have relative luxury: "clean" air, water, etc. There is still much to do for poor Americans and for the developing nations. How we achieve a better standard of living for the world will not be due to tearing down wealthy nations, but rather lifting up the poor ones out of their poverty.
|
|
Well Researched But Poorly Argued
Rating  (2)
Date: 2008-08-04
1 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Mr. Hollander provides many well researched and compelling facts about the contribution of poverty to environmental degradation and the state of the global environment. However, many times through the book his facts and theories stand in direct contradiction to each other. For example, one of his most basic premises of his thesis is the necessity of democratic government, yet he repeatedly cites China as both a wild success and dismal failure depending on the current point he is trying to prove. This often creates a situation where it is difficult to discern exactly what he is advocating.
By addressing different issues in individual chapters the book is written with an easy to read layout, but as a by product it often fails to address how many of these issues are inter-related.
Also unfortunately for Mr. Hollander, many of the facts which he has cited from research conducted up until 1999 have since been updated to disprove some of his theories (such as the incidence of a rising number of hungry people since 2003, and the well documented spike in oil prices).
Overall, the book adds a valuable perspective in a debate that is increasingly becoming one-sided, but his lack of a cohesive well-rounded argument makes it difficult to view this book with as having any serious scientific clout.
|
|
Optimistic but one-sided reframe of planet's plight
Rating (2)
Date: 2007-06-23
1 out of 9 customers found this reveiw helpful
Rich western nations have done a lot to preserve natural habitats and clean up their air and water. People in poor countries are too busy surviving to worry about the environment, and even if they did, lack the resources to make a difference. This book takes these observations as the basis for a broader hypothesis - the answer to our global environmental crisis lies in the fostering of global affluence. As people get richer the problems of the environment will on the whole sort themselves out. For instance only in the affluent nations have we seen the brakes go on the exponential rise in human populations. The book could also be taken as an antidote to the pessimism that surrounds aspects of the environmental movement. Hollander is relentlessly optimistic. He downplays many of the things that environmentalists worry about like peak oil, the dangers of GM food (a force for good), global warming (current changes may not be secondary to human industrial activity) and over-population (we can feed 10billion with better yields and better distribution).
The problem with Hollander's thesis is that in its optimism it leaves a lot of important considerations unexplored. The word affluence is used throughout but never clearly defined or unpacked. For instance historically the affluence of some tends to depend on the poverty of others. We can't all be affluent - even in the US 15% of its citizens live in "official" poverty. Also though affluence tends to improve local environments it can have the opposite effect at distant out-of-sight locations. Though rainforests get chopped by desperate subsistence farmers they get even more chopped by big firms growing feed crops to raise beef for sale in affluent nations. The polluting industrialists of China are making goods for markets in affluent countries. Hollander concludes "The world's fossil fuel supplies are plentiful. They will neither run out nor become scarce in the foreseeable future". While this may be true for coal it is not true of oil (Hollander doesn't mention important evidence like the artifical hike in purported reserves by OPEC nations in the 1980s) - yet oil is the central commodity underpinning the author's version of Western affluence (including cheap transportation and abundant food).
It is good to be reminded of the environmental dangers of poverty but Hollander is at his best explaining the investments that countries like the US have made in preserving their forests (healthier now than anytime in the last 100 years) and wildlife (implementing the Endangered Species Act has cost billions). The author seems to have quite narrow vision despite his global agenda - I imagine him as happily affluent in a beautiful retirement house in the hills of northern California. But the book feels overly devoted to this ideal with statements such as "earth is not short of cropland - it short of affluence". Only on the topic of road congestion does a sense of pessimism creep in - even hydrogen-powered cars take up space. The book contains surprisingly little direct argumentation around poverty and focuses more on reframes of standard western environmental anxieties such as the role of nuclear, water security and depletion of fish stocks.
It is hard to get excited about affluence, abundance yes, but not affluence. And we need abundance of many things, not only material things, some of which are found in equal or greater abundance amongst the poor.
|
|
|
|
|