ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the thesis of this book that climate change and social inequality are intimately connected because: a) most greenhouse gas emissions are produced by the wealthiest nations and the mechanisms of their production and release profit the wealthiest, most elite sectors of those nations; b) it is the world’s two billion poorest people, with the fewest resources, who are most directly feeling the adverse effects of climate change and are the most challenged in being able to deal with them; c) the prevailing narrative about adapting to climate change excludes the world’s poorest people; and d) the predicament of the poor is a product of their historic damaging relationships with wealthier sectors of society. This thesis is framed by political ecological theory. The chapter introduces the concept of “planetary health” as the fifth stage in the historic evolution of the modern population health paradigm. From the perspective of planetary health, the well-being of human communities is multiply linked to the environment and to other species.
