by EcoReason
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What is poverty?
Perhaps it has less to do with material possessions and more to do with access 0
Posted 3 years, 8 months ago
This week's New Yorker carries an excellent essay by John Cassidy discussing the history and evolving standards of poverty in the United States, and some of the different ways in which poverty can (and should) be measured.
Most interesting and relevant to some of our discussions is the idea of "relative poverty." If we hold most of what we call poverty in the U.S. up against the 1 billion dispossessed that Mike Davis writes about in his new book Planet of Slums, we find that most Americans are incredibly wealthy. Even if we… Read More
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Poverty and environment redux 0
Posted 3 years, 8 months ago I commend Grist's editors for this landmark series. Their efforts, along with the many great writers who have contributed, have helped exemplify one of the central themes of environmental justice:Environmentalism in the absence of people (as both political participants and right-endowed members of the Earth community) has led to worse social and ecological conditions by concentrating the negative impacts of industrial civilization on the disempowered, while not solving the core ecological issues it set out to fix.
If this is correct, then environmental justice offers a very serious and very useful critique of our environmentalist agenda.
If, as reformers,… Read More
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