ABSTRACT
The affluent Westerner and the impoverished Southerner are contemporary extremes in geography as well as recent history. Arguably they depend on each other: As Marshall McLuhan famously wrote in 1964, “affluence creates poverty” – the poor are poor because the rich are rich; wealth depends on the exploitation of others. The concept of national wealth is central to political economy and economics generally, and is generally attributed to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. 'Inclusive wealth’, according to the Report, includes three types of productive assets – capital, human and natural. The environmental Kuznets curve is a construct named for him, rather than ascribed to him, that emerged during the 1990s and which crucially addresses the relationship between affluence and environmental damage. The philosopher Clive Hamilton believes that there are forces that tell us it is our fault and that it is up to each of us to save the environment through our own personal habits of consumption.
