SOCIAL JUSTICE
Beyond Social Inequities Toward Social Justice
The fallacy of infinite growth on a finite planet
Central to the dominant anthropocentric worldview is the mindset of constant growth that sees planet Earth as a blank tablet for human expansion and regards human innovation as the solution to any crisis. According to this cornucopian mindset, there are no limits to human expansionism because the free market will overcome any setbacks to spreading wealth across humanity and ”raising all ships.” But free market ideology is demonstrably false, as the many cascading crises of recent decades, from burgeoning inequality to climate change, illustrate in painful abundance.
In addition, the spoils of Earth plunder are not divided equally among us. The centuries-long history of a growth-based economic system is rooted in the colonial takeover of native people, lands, and resources. The colonialist mindset persists, driving the flow of materials and energy from Global South to Global North, where it feeds the bloated wealth of the few at the expense of the many.
Naomi Oreskes discusses the harmful ideology of free-market fundamentalism in this podcast episode.
The mindset of perpetual growth has come to encircle the globe and is assumed to be the remedy for poverty, inequality, and social injustice. In actuality, however, economic growth has been widening the gap between the poor and wealthy, and deepening inequality, for decades. Growth mentality champions an ever-expanding population, to provide more and more consumers to buy commodities and cheap labor to make them.
Yet the fundamental fallacy that unlimited growth is possible on a finite planet persists. This fallacy is revealed not only in the devastation of ecosystems and climate breakdown, but in the dire conditions of human communities (and ultimately of all humanity) that rely upon those ecosystems and a livable climate.
Poverty and compromised wellbeing
For people living close to subsistence in the developing world, population pressures translate directly into scarcity, as forests are cleared for farmland, water sources are depleted, and animals are killed for meat or by habitat fragmentation. Population pressures also makes vulnerable people turn to desperate measures simply to secure a livelihood, a phenomenon that will only worsen as “green” technology demands more and more vanishing trace minerals to build its batteries and infrastructure.
Communications manager Kirsten Stade discusses the fallacies of “green growth” in this article.
As the global middle class grows toward 5 billion by 2030, population pressures translate into different challenges for people moving into the world’s megacities. Unemployment, substandard housing, crumbling infrastructure, and inadequate schools and health facilities compound the miseries of growing populations crammed into urban areas with inadequate clean water or sanitation. Such conditions are evident throughout the world even now, and can only worsen as population growth results in large numbers of poorly educated youth with few socioeconomic prospects to support them. Such conditions fuel violence and conflict, complicate good governance, and worsen people’s lives and especially the lives of women and children.
Population growth jeopardizes human health
Dr. Camilo Mora discusses the impacts of human activity on climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemics.
The growth in human numbers—combined in many parts of the world with crowding, poor hygiene and healthcare, pollution, and close interaction between people and animals—has produced ideal conditions for pandemics. Massive rural-to-urban migration in developing countries is leading to sprawling underserved communities that lack basic sanitation and clean running water.
At the same time, encroachment by people into previously wild habitats has led to the spread of new diseases to humans, as deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and the bushmeat trade bring humans into contact with wildlife and zoonotic disease.
Environmental injustice
Our expanding human footprint exacts a heavy toll not only on nonhuman animals and nature, but on a large portion of humanity not fortunate enough to live at the top of the wealth pyramid. While those at the top arrived there by consuming an inordinate share of Earth’s bounty, the rest are left to eke out an existence on the depleted remainder.
Executive director Nandita Bajaj discusses the harmful impacts of continued population growth on social, reproductive, and environmental justice.
Meanwhile, the poorest must contend with the majority of waste produced by all that consumption, with most factory farms, landfills, trash incinerators, coal plants, and toxic waste dumps located amid the poorest and most politically disempowered communities. These communities have also contributed the least greenhouse emissions, but will suffer the worst impacts of rapid climate change.
Many of those impacted will become climate refugees. Two out of every five people in the world live within 100 kilometers of the coast, and tens of millions will be forced to flee their homes with rising sea levels over the coming decades. Droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme weather will send additional millions on the move, especially as many of the places that will suffer most from climate upheaval are also areas of high fertility.
Climate refugees will justly seek safe harbor in countries less afflicted and better resourced. It is thus a matter of urgent environmental justice to attain the small family norm everywhere, and especially in the Global North, in order to build capacity to welcome refugees.
In the last two decades, military expenditures have been globally rising, including military budgets and contracts, arms production and transfers, expansion of autonomous weapons systems, and nuclear warhead placements and upgrades. The wars of Ukraine and Gaza, as well as rising military tensions in Southeast Asia, the broader Middle East, and elsewhere, have dominated the news.
Humanity can no longer afford military buildup and its inevitable wars nor take solace in the myth of nuclear deterrence. There are 8 billion people and growing on a planet in the midst of climate breakdown and mass extinction. The most basic resources human beings need for life—arable land and freshwater—are maximally exploited and polluted.
Hundreds of millions of people will be dislocated in this century by extreme weather, conflicts, threat of famine, and freshwater shortages. In the midst of escalating tensions of today’s polycrisis, a spark from any direction can set off an inferno.
Our call for global demilitarization
PB board director Dr. Eileen Crist’s co-authored article in Counterpunch about a call for nuclear disarmament and demilitarization.
Humanity can no longer afford military buildup and its inevitable wars nor take solace in the myth of nuclear deterrence. There are 8 billion people and growing on a planet in the midst of climate breakdown and mass extinction. The most basic resources human beings need for life—arable land and freshwater—are maximally exploited and polluted. Hundreds of millions of people will be dislocated in this century by extreme weather, conflicts, threat of famine, and freshwater shortages. In the midst of escalating tensions of today’s polycrisis, a spark from any direction can set off an inferno.
Besides the unthinkable danger of World War III, trillions of dollars invested into global militarism must be reckoned against the urgent demands of accelerating global heating, rising public healthcare costs, mounting refugee crises, species extinctions, reparations for wronged humans and nonhumans, and basic needs for education, pensions, family planning, and other social services.
The socio-ecological upheavals here and coming forecast profound precarity and suffering. We are called to rethink all our institutions and investments. Simply put, we can no longer afford any war or preparation for war, let alone nuclear conflict. We call on humanity to recognize the precious opportunity of this historical moment to abolish the military machine. The complex social and ecological equation of the 21st century will be difficult enough to solve without it. With ongoing global militarism, however, the odds are stacked heavily against us.
Our vision for social and planetary justice
William Rees, ecological economist and PB advisor discusses the need to confront overshoot by challenging the ideologies of human exceptionalism, technological fundamentalism, and endless economic growth.
We envision a future where humankind shares equitably in modest enjoyment of our ecospheric bounty, at a level that allows the flourishing of all human and nonhuman peoples.
Such a model of human life will require redistribution of the enormous wealth that is currently hoarded by the few, but redistribution still leaves the planet in overshoot, where even if humanity consumed resources more equitably nonhuman nature pays the full price of devastation. A thriving future for all demands shrinking our population to a level that allows much of nature’s wealth to remain in its original hands.
There is a lot that governments can do to address social inequality and environmental injustice, starting with progressive taxation that discourages wealth accumulation and the continual exploitation of the Earth. Redirecting subsidies from extractive, exploitative industries to programs that protect and restore social and ecological integrity will be key.
Addressing enormous wealth inequality will require economic growth across much of the world where humanity has largely lived without, as it will require massive contraction of consumption and production patterns in places where excess has been the norm. Ultimately, our economy and our population must achieve a steady state that is equitable and in balance with what the Earth provides. Our material and spiritual needs can be met through deep interconnection with the web of life that surrounds us and sustains us.