From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

3 POVERTY AND WEALTH A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY ECONOMICSThe global ecosystem simply cannot sustain additional billions ofpeople all trying to live like wealthy Americans, even if they subsequentlymove on to a less resource-intensive, post-industrial lifestyle.According to an estimate by the UN’s Human Development Report,ifall of the world’s people generated greenhouse gases at the same rateas Canada or the USA, we would need nine planets to absorb theimpact. 18Added urgency comes from improved understanding of the nonlinearnature of environmental change. Environmental processes arerife with thresholds, or ‘tipping points’. When thresholds are crossed,environmental change can become catastrophic and even irreversible.Cod stocks in the Grand Banks off Canada still show few signs ofrecovering more than 15 years after their sudden collapse and theclosure of the fishery in 1992. Scientists now believe that a 2°C riseabove pre-industrial levels in average global surface temperatures isthe threshold at which dangerous effects on geophysical and biologicalsystems would become likely (see Part 4).Changing the model of development is a huge task, not leastbecause any new paradigm must avoid ‘kicking away the ladder’ fromcountries and communities still struggling to emerge from poverty. Itis both politically and morally untenable to say ‘the Indians must nothave fridges and cars’ when rich countries have them in abundance.Instead, a balance must be found that reduces the environmentalintensity of rich economies, guarantees fairer access to the world’sresources between rich and poor, and preserves the environment.The good news is that sustainability has become, within a fewdecades, one of the burning issues of the age, high on the agendas ofworld leaders and publics alike. But the politics are daunting. Thepowerful actors who run the economy – corporations, investors, andgovernments – must be convinced to act in concert and, in manycases, against their own short-term self-interest.ASSESSING DEVELOPMENTAL IMPACTSAs employed by policy makers, both neoclassical and Keynesianeconomics fail to take non-monetary aspects of development andwell-being into account. By incorporating unpaid labour, damage tonature, and other essential elements, conventional economic analysis115