Earthly Goods: Environmental Change and Social Justice Book

A lot of the environmental movement as it exists presently is caught up in promotion of low-resource, off the grid lifestyles and voluntary poverty. Not surprisingly, a lot of environmentalists handwringing about the impact it will have on the planet if the developing world successfully adopts a Westernized lifestyle. I'be even heard some well-meaning but ill-informed folks suggest that we shouldn't try to improve global poverty or world poverty at all, because the deaths caused reduce the overpopulation strain (!!). In many cases the sensibilities of this movement also block advances like nuclear power and GMO crops.

Jack Hollander blows those ideas out of the water with what the evidence actually shows-as people become more affluent, they demand greater environmental standards from their governments. Furthermore, many environmental losses, such as endangered species poaching and forest destruction, are a direct result of people at a subsistence level trying to survive. Even the overpopulation problem and high birth rates can be partially attributed to parents trying to ensure that they have surviving children in the face of Widespread childhood disease and death.

The policy recommendations Hollander recommends are eminently sensible, and include interventions for public health, universal voting access, and improved agricultural techniques, including GMOs. I can't speak to whether Hollander would identify as an effective altruist today, but it at least seems likely he'd be supportive of interventions like direct cash transfers.

Mostly where this book falls flat, and the reason I gave it 3 stars instead of 4, is that the data on climate change and related technologies has changed a lot since 2003. Hollander is, in the book, very much of the opinion that climate science and global warming is still contested. It is much less contested today, on the brink of 2016, when global warming is taken much more seriously as a catastrophic risk to humanity. Similarly, he is much more optimistic about fuel cells as a source of transportation energy than contemporary engineers are. Still, this is a good read if you are interested in becoming a more effective advocate for both global poverty and the environment.