In “The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environments Number One Enemy,” Jack Hollander hopes to teach environmentalists that the key to protecting Planet Earth both locally and globally lies in understanding that wealthier nations and peoples improve environmental quality rather than degrade it. This runs contrary to the rhetoric of many environmental organisations.
Where Hollander really brings some fresh air to the wealthier is healthier front is on the subject of energy policy:
While Hollander is correct in much of his approach and theory, he is not ambitious enough in identifying how to make the poor rich, says reviewer J. Bishop Grewell. Furthermore, says Grewell, Hollander struggles with how much government development assistance can do and how much progress must simply come from within the poorer nations. The tangible need to do something, anything, seems to prevent him from asking whether doing something might be worse than doing nothing, says Grewell.
Source: J. Bishop Grewell, Book Review, A Better Earth, April 2005; based upon Jack M. Hollander, The Real Environmental Crisis: Why Poverty, Not Affluence, Is the Environments Number One Enemy, University of California Press, 2003.
For text: http://www.abetterearth.org/article.php/1035.html
For more on Environmental Education: http://eteam.ncpa.org/policy/Environmental_Education/
FMF Policy Bulletin/ 24 May 2005
