Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
The limits to increasing inequality as a defensive measure
Although rarely stated explicitly, the conduct of many comparatively privi-
leged groups, including many states and alliances, reflects a view that the
best way to ensure security against a threatening and resentful outside force
is to
intensify
inequality. This strategy holds whether between palace and
commoner, gated community and slum, or nation and enemy. The strategy
is ancient, plausible and often rational, over the short term. It buys time. Yet,
at repeated scales and different times, excessive inequality has proven a poor
strategy for wealthy individuals and populations.
Attempting to improve security by increasing inequality is limited. Even-
tually, it will provoke opposition, resentment, and when circumstances
allow, hatred, resistance and attack. It also incurs tremendous opportunity
and transaction costs, as evidenced in the current war on terror through
security, travel restrictions, and anxiety. Eventually it must become rational
to
reduce
inequality. Yet this too incurs risks, especially if residual resentment
remains high.
Excessive inequality does more than increase the risk of revolution and
terrorism. It also erodes sustainability by widening the separation between
decision-makers and the adverse effects that their decisions hold for poor
and powerless populations. What is important is a greater degree of
global
democracy, so that wealthy populations become more accountable for the
adverse effects that their decisions cause. For example, decision-makers
would be far more likely to reduce fossil fuel consumption if they knew that
they and their descendants had to live on a low-lying Pacific Island, at risk of
drowning because of climate change.
Conclusion
The World Scientists' 'Call for Action' signed by over 110 Nobel Prize
winners (Union of Concerned Scientists 1997) lamented the 'woefully inad-
equate' progress made in response to the World Scientist's Warning to
Humanity, made in 1992. This earlier warning argued that
… human beings and the natural world are on a collision course … If
not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the
future that we wish for human society … Fundamental changes are
urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring
about.
