ABSTRACT
Environmental degradation is everyone’s problem, but it’s especially a problem for the poor, and for obvious reasons. There is a two-way relationship between environment and inequality. So while environmental degradation contributes to inequality, inequality can also contribute to environmental degradation. The interesting thing is that in societies with a reasonable degree of social cohesion, social-control mechanisms may, and often do, actually work. The point is that in societies with a high degree of social cohesion, people can work together and solve some of these problems better than they can in societies with less social cohesion and more inequality. Interestingly, more efficient cook stoves also help alleviate inequality because the people who bear the cost of gathering the wood and spend a very large fraction of their time doing so are women. Distributional concerns need to move front and center in environmental and resource economics, especially given America’s high inequality–both of outcome and of opportunity.
