Book Review: The Real Environmental Crisis

Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment’s Number One Enemy

By: Jack M. Hollander

In today’s political forum, the damage the United States and other developed countries are inflicting upon the environment is constantly cited as the main reason for a multitude of global initiatives and programs. However, are worldwide treaties and agreements the most effective way to preserve the environment? Is the American economic system to blame for the world’s biggest environmental problems? What is the best way to preserve and protect our environment while growing the world economy in order to lift millions out of poverty? Jack M. Hollander, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, explores these complex questions and gives some much needed perspective when it comes to the environment in The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environment’s Number One Enemy.

Hollander’s thesis, which he supports with varying degrees of success, is easy to understand. In his own words, “Poverty is the world’s most critical environmental problem. Reducing poverty throughout the world should be a top priority for environmentalists…affluence and the technological innovation it enables are among the most important ingredients for achieving a future sustainable global environment.” These contentions directly contradict the views of most of the worldwide environmental movement that it is the wealth and over consumption of rich counties, especially the United States, that endanger the worldwide environment.

Hollander points out that the enormous amount of American economic growth in last half-century has made it possible to reverse the negative environmental impact of industrialization. In the United States, the air and water are cleaner than they have been in the last fifty years, the forested area is the highest in three hundred years, and technological innovation has allowed Americans to restore previously polluted lakes and streams. The wealth of America has enabled its citizens to devote significant resources to preserving the environment because the vast majority of Americans can provide themselves with the necessities of life without harming the environment.

A citizen of a Third World country may care about the environment, but they have the more important short-term goal of feeding their families and bringing themselves out of poverty. As a result, the environment suffers in these countries while developed nations such as Japan and the United States can afford to invest or spend billions on environmental improvements and conservation. Hardly anyone in Sub-Saharan Africa or South America puts environmental preservation as a priority in their lives. However, in America, the richest country on the planet, billions of dollars are raised and spent every year for a dizzying array of environmental causes.

One of the examples Hollander uses to support his thesis is the highly publicized environmental problem of the destruction of the South American rain forest, especially the rain forest surrounding the Amazon River in Brazil. Farmers in Brazil, while aware that clear-cutting will destroy the rain forest in the long-run, must grow crops in order to provide for their families. The soil found in the rain forest is not fertile enough to grow, for extended periods of time, commercial crops, so poor Brazilians quickly clear-cut vast tracts of rain forest. This problem does not exist in America because American farmers have the wealth to purchase and invest in methods and machinery that enables more crops to be grown on small pieces of land.

While most conservatives will agree with Hollander on his overriding conclusion that environmental problems can be successfully combated by creating wealth and affluence, some of his praise for big government solutions and expanded involvement by The United Nations in the decision making process of poor countries will give some pause. For example, his solution to the lack of transportation infrastructure in the developing world is a larger international aid budget. Left out of this discussion is the propensity for Third World dictators to take international aid and use it to strengthen their hold on power, rather than make the lives of their people better.

Hollander also has a tendency to go off on tangents that seem to undermine his own conclusions. For instance, while claiming that wealth creation is the best way to save the environment, Hollander, in his discussion on energy, states that “several billion people remain without basic energy services they need and to which they have a human right.” This kind of rhetoric is usually attributed to socialist or communist ideals that keep the average person poor, rather than opening up opportunities for him or her to create wealth. Conservatives and other free-market supporters realize that the most effective way to create wealth in the long term is a capitalist system that allows people to provide for their own energy needs. Redistribution by enforcing a “right to energy” will keep people poor, not allow them to accumulate the wealth needed to preserve and sustain the environment. Hollander does not seem to recognize that the only proven way to create the long-term wealth necessary to provide for the poor is a capitalist system.

Nevertheless, The Real Environmental Crisis is an informative read and a breath of fresh air when compared to doomsday predictions put forth by liberals and the mainstream media. The world is not on the verge of disaster, but it will take a concerted effort from both the developed and Third World nations to make sure that everyone on the planet is rich enough to become an environmentalist.

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~ The Conservative Guy