Ecological Debt The Health of the Planet and the Wealth of Nations

Imagine opening a bank letter at breakfast to find that instead of your normal overdraft, you had an ecological debt that threatened the planet. If the whole world wanted to live like people in the United Kingdom we would need the resources of three planets like Earth. If the United States was our model the number would be five.



Simms shows how millions of us 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.



The book explores a great paradox of our age: how the global wealth gap was built on ecological debts, which the world's poorest are now having to pay for. Highlighting how and why this has happened, he also shows what can be done differently in the future - and what steps we can take to stop pushing the planet to the point of environmental bankruptcy.

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



Notes



Index