ABSTRACT
Environmental responsibility is proportional to the size of the group: the proletariat is more responsible for environmental degradation than entrepreneurs because workers are more numerous than capitalists. Social class is significantly related to the functioning of systems of transportation, production, and distribution, and hence to environmental issues. The focus on the shared responsibility of everyone has hidden the existence of environmental classes, that is, a social relationship in which the environment has been exploited principally for the benefit of some humans at the expense of others. The biological medium, and more generally the ecological medium, transmits a social relationship between environmental classes. The natural environment carries the social relationship between contributors to and victims of environmental degradation like space carries the gravitational relationship between the Sun and planet Earth. In general, environmental degradation comparisons with developed countries have the potential to aggravate North-South conflict on all fronts, led by the young and fed by the frustrations of the poor.
