When I started teaching a course on the Political Economy of the Environment at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, little had been written that made the connection between environmental quality and economic inequality. Happily, this has changed over the years. The books recommended here mark the rise of a new environmentalism founded upon recognition that our impact on nature is interwoven closely with the nature of our relationships with each other.
I wrote
Economics for People and the Planet: Inequality in the Era of Climate Change
Robert Bullard’s book opened many eyes and minds to the stark realities of environmental injustice and environmental racism.
Originally published at the dawn of the new millennium, Dumping in Dixie remains fresh and relevant today.
This book helped give birth to an environmentalism that does not partition the world into sacred groves for the rich and sacrifice zones for the poor, but instead fights for clean air and water in the places where people live, work, and play.
To be poor, working-class, or a person of colour in the United States often means bearing a disproportionate share of the country's environmental problems. Starting with the premise that all Americans have a basic right to live in a healthy environment, Dumping in Dixie chronicles the efforts of five African American communities, empowered by the civil rights movement, to link environmentalism with issues of social justice. In the third edition, Bullard speaks to us from the front lines of the environmental justice movement about new developments in environmental racism, different organizing strategies, and success stories in the struggle for environmental…
Gender is a major axis of disparities in power and wealth.
In this pioneering book, Indian economist Bina Agarwal mapped women’s access to land in South Asia, lifting up the key role of rights to natural resources in human well-being.
Her account of the Bodhgaya movement, a struggle by peasant women against inequity and patriarchy in the 1970s and 1980s, has special resonance for me because I Iived there and saw firsthand the cruelties of semi-feudal landlord rule.
This is the first major study of gender and property in South Asia. In a pioneering and comprehensive analysis Bina Agarwal argues that the single most important economic factor affecting women's situation is the gender gap in command over property. In rural South Asia, the most significant form of property is arable land, a critical determinant of economic well-being, social status, and empowerment. But few women own land; fewer control it. Drawing on a vast range of interdisciplinary sources and her own field research, and tracing regional variations across five countries, the author investigates the complex barriers to women's land…
Universal property – property that is inalienable, individual, and belongs in equal measure to all – is a game-changing idea whose time is coming.
Introduced alongside conventional (private and state) property, it can serve the twin goals of reducing inequality and protecting the environment.
For example, by treating the biosphere’s limited capacity to recycle carbon emissions as universal property, and charging for use of this resource, we can both protect climate stability and provide universal basic income via climate-protection dividends.
Peter Barnes has been a leading voice for universal property, following in the footsteps of Tom Paine and Henry George. Do yourself a favor: read this thought-provoking book, and share it with your family and friends.
Fifty million years ago, alligators lived north of the Arctic Circle.
We humans evolved in a much cooler world. Today Earth’s climate is changing radically, to our own peril, as we spew long-buried carbon into the sky by burning fossil fuels.
In this sophisticated yet readable book, Peter Dorman lays out the political economy of climate change, explaining why to address this unprecedented threat we must redress the inequalities of wealth and power that plague modern society.
The bad news is that this will be hard work; the good news is that it is possible. Dorman’s book is atour de force, a sobering call to action graced with rays of hope.
Climate change is a matter of extreme urgency. Integrating science and economics, this book demonstrates the need for measures to put a strict lid on cumulative carbon emissions and shows how to implement them. Using the carbon budget framework, it reveals the shortcomings of current policies and the debates around them, such as the popular enthusiasm for individual solutions and the fruitless search for 'optimal' regulation by economists and other specialists. On the political front, it explains why business opposition to the policies we need goes well beyond the fossil fuel industry, requiring a more radical rebalancing of power. This…
Economist Eloi Laurent’s book is a long-overdue introduction to the political economy of the environment.
In contrast to standard environmental economics textbooks that disregard interpersonal conflict by analyzing aggregate costs and benefits – disembodied from those who experience them – Laurent embeds our treatment and maltreatment of nature in our treatment and maltreatment of other people.
This book puts sustainability across generations and justice within them at center stage, where they belong.
Too often, economics disassociates humans from nature, the economy from the biosphere that contains it, and sustainability from fairness. When economists do engage with environmental issues, they typically reduce their analysis to a science of efficiency that leaves aside issues of distributional analysis and justice.
The aim of this lucid textbook is to provide a framework that prioritizes human well-being within the limits of the biosphere, and to rethink economic analysis and policy in the light of not just efficiency but equity. Leading economist Eloi Laurent systematically ties together sustainability and justice issues in covering a wide range of topics,…
Whenever we encounter pollution and natural resource depletion, we can ask three basic questions:
Who wins: Who benefits from the activities that are degrading the environment?
Who loses: Who suffers from the resulting environmental harms?
Who decides: Why are the winners able to impose environmental costs on others?
Thinking about these questions helps us to see that safeguarding the environment is not just about protecting nature from humans. It’s also about protecting the people who bear the costs of environmental abuses from those who benefit from the same abuses. The bottom line: to secure a healthier planet we need to ensure that people have the power to defend their right to a clean and safe environment.
I’ve always been fascinated by group dynamics, large and small. Why things functioned well, why they didn’t. It’s possible my ability to empathize and use humor as a consensus-builder is the reason I was elected president of a homeowners association, a music production association, and even an agricultural group. Books were not particularly involved in this fascination! But in recent years, experiencing the breakdown of civility and trust in our political and cultural discourse, I’ve taken a more analytical view of the dynamics. These books, in their very different ways, have taught me lessons about life, understanding those with different beliefs, and finding ways to connect and move forward.
We’ve all experienced the overwhelming level of political and social divisiveness in our country. This invisible “virus” of negativity is, in part, the result of the name-calling and heated rhetoric that has become commonplace among commentators and elected leaders alike.
My book provides a clear perspective on the historical and modern-day causes of our nation's divisive state. It then proposes easy-to-understand solutions—an action plan for our elected leaders and citizens as well. Rather than a scholarly treatment of a complex topic, the book challenges us to take the obvious steps required of those living in a free democracy. And it…
Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation
Lyle Greenfield's "Uniting the States of America―A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation" is a work of nonfiction and opinion. Incorporating the lessons of history and the ideas and wisdom of many, it is intended as both an educational resource and a call-to-action for citizens concerned about the politically and culturally divided state of our Union. A situation that has raised alarm for the very future of our democracy.
First, the book clearly identifies the causes of what has become a national crisis of belief in and love for our country. How the divisiveness and hostility rampant in our political…
