Andrew Simms 
Ecological Debt 
Global Warming and the Wealth of Nations

Millions of people in the West are running up huge ecological debts: from the amount of oil and coal that we burn to heat our houses and run our cars, to what we consume and the waste that we create, the impact of our lifestyles is felt worldwide.



Whilst these debts go unpaid, millions more living in poverty in the majority world suffer the burden of paying dubious foreign financial debts. Ecological Debt explores this great paradox of our age. Highlighting how and why this has happened, it also shows what can be done differently in the future.



Now updated throughout, this is a passionate account of the steps we can take to stop pushing the planet to the point of environmental bankruptcy.

Tabella dei contenuti

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. A Short Walk to Venus

2. The Chemist’s Warning: a Short History of Global Warming

3. The Heaven Bursters: Tuvalu and the Fate of Nations

4. The Great Reversal of Human Progress

5. Ecological Debt

6. The Carbon Debt

7. Rationalising Self-destruction (Or Why People Are More Stupid Than Frogs)

8. The Car Park at the End of the World

9. Pay Back Time: the Law, Climate Change and Ecological Debt

10. Data for the Doubtful: the Lessons of War Economies

11. The New Adjustment

12. Minerva’s Owl

13. In the Footsteps of Stanley

14. Tick Tock Climate Clock

15. The Duck’s Choice

16. How to Live on an Island

Notes

Index

Circa l’autore

Andrew Simms is an analyst, campaigner and co-director of the New Weather Institute. He is a research associate at the Centre for Global Political Economy at the University of Sussex and Fellow at the New Economics Foundation. Over several years he has written groundbreaking reports on issues ranging from debt, trade, aid, and big business, to biotechnology and climate change. He is the author of Ecological Debt (Pluto, 2005).