Human nature, eco-footprints and environmental injustice

Abstract

Extreme poverty has been reduced, but 40% of the world's population still live on less than two dollars per day and 850 million people remain underfed. Meanwhile, the rich enjoy unprecedented levels of consumption, and obesity is a significant public health problem. The standard solution to poverty is economic growth but evidence that humanity has exceeded the carrying capacity of Earth undermines this approach. This paper explores the distal causes of the crisis. This paper argues that biophysical unsustainability is an inevitable “emergent property” of the interaction of techno-industrial society and the ecosphere with deep roots in fundamental human nature and that the problem is being reinforced by prevailing conceptual frames and cultural norms. With increasing land and resource scarcity in the twenty-first century, the expanding eco-footprints of the wealthy will increasingly displace the poor. To avoid eco-violence and the descent into chaos, the world community must acknowledge the true human nature of our collective dilemma and act to override innate behavioural predispositions that have become maladaptive in the modern era. Since the problematic drivers act beneath conscious awareness, the overall purpose of this paper is to help bring them to consciousness on grounds that they must be understood if they are to be controlled. Paper presented at the Seminar on Inequality and Sustainable Consumption, University of East Anglia, 4–6 July 2006.