Reading Response From "Environmentalism of the Poor"

       On page ix of the introduction Martinez-Alier points to environmental solutions emerging from a change in our economics. While I agree with a need to change our economic structure along with our environmental attitudes, changing economics in order to change environmental politics is a task that is tantamount to our nation's difficult transition from the period in which we had an economy based on slavery to the period of Reconstruction. In many ways we still exploit people to meet the same ends that slavery existed to. Beyond simply sweat shops producing cheap goods, we are also exploiting land rights, mineral rights, and other aspects of the troubled economics of the third world. We now generally turn a blind eye to those effected by our economic misdeeds, because they are not in our own backyards anymore, they are thousands of miles away, maybe even across an ocean, speaking different languages, living lives that seem to hardly resemble what we can relate to. Yet, we are dependent upon those people for the way of life we are familiar with, lest we endure some reconstruction of our current way of life.

        At our current level of understanding and confusion over environmental and economic practices being intertwined, clarifying rhetoric is essential – just as it was to rally people around the abolition of slavery. While The Environmentalism of the Poor might not be the most far reaching variety of rhetoric, it does seem to be an important piece of the foundation necessary for environmental-economic rhetoric to grow. Though The Environmentalism of the Poor is a bit utopian or, perhaps, a bit too “all encompassing” in its considerations on economic and environmental changes, it is rich with great ideas on economic and ecological intersections. Even with the daunting scope of this book there are certain simple takeaways that I feel make this book really important.