Category: Economics

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Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

This non-fiction book tries to explain how poverty exists in the USA and why the number of people living in poverty does not decrease. It was published by Crown/Random House in March 2023. My daughter read this book and recommended it to others. It is a topic that I find interesting, though disturbing.

Poverty, as I define it, is not having enough money to have a decent life standard. By that I mean being able to afford sufficient food, a roof over one’s head (and one’s family’s heads), and the regular costs of staying alive, such as energy and clothing. If you live below the poverty line, you do not have enough money to do the above and something gets left out of the equation.

During my life I have had different levels of income. I grew up in a middle class family with one parent working for wages. We did not have a lot of money, but there was summer camp for me, music lessons for both my sister and I and holidays away from home. There was never a lack of food, and my parents owned the house that we lived in.

When I started living on my own, I worked in a shoe store and had a very low wage, but I wanted an apartment of my own, which cost me half of the money I earned. Thankfully, after a couple of months my wages went up and I had a bit more money for food and activities. But my first furniture was all taken from my parents’ home. I did not think of myself as poor, but I would have been on the threshold. Over the years I got better paid jobs, partly because I took more education at night school. One reason for me getting more education was seeing 50-year old women getting paid the same wages as me, that is minimum wage, and knowing that I should be able to do better for myself.

When my husband and I moved to Norway, we had to live very cheaply as we had no regular income. We lived on love and my ability to make the little money that we had stretch to cover house rent, food and electricity bills. There was no telephone or car the first five years of our life in Norway.

However, after a while, as we got more education in Norway and learned the language, we were able to get jobs that paid a living wage. When our two children were young, we did not have a lot to live on, but an inheritance allowed us to buy a house and with steadfastness and patience we now have a good life as retired people.

Many people may have periods in their lives when they are relatively poor, for example when studying full-time or when children are small and one parent is looking after them. However, this book by Matthew Desmond puts the light on how many people in the USA are systematically kept poor in spite of political efforts to reduce poverty. It can be a very disturbing book to read as it shows how everyone in the country contributes to keeping the poor poor. I was never poor like the examples that the author gives.

Organization of the Book

The book starts with a prologue, has 9 chapters and an epilogue. My summary is meant to show you what the book includes and I would encourage you to read the book and understand the examples that the author uses. He uses examples from different areas of the USA and makes comments about how things are different in other countries, especially European countries which have much lower poverty rates. I recently read a letter in the Norwegian national newspaper where the author was wanting us to think about who was actually paying for the “cheap” t-shirt one could buy. She too was concerned about poverty and those not making a decent income.

Chapter 1: The Kind of Problem Poverty Is – In this chapter, the author explains what poverty is for those who experience it – getting evicted from your apartment, not having enough food for three meals a day, not being able to pay the bills, etc. If you’ve never experienced real poverty, this chapter can be an eye-opener for how others experience life.

Chapter 2: Why Haven’t We Made More Progress? – Why does poverty continue to exist in the USA, in spite of attempts to lessen it. What has worked? What hasn’t worked over the decades? Why does a rich country like the USA have so many millions of its citizens still in poverty? Other countries have a much lower percent of their populations experiencing poverty.

Chapter 3: How We Undercut Workers – When we buy cheap goods, somebody has been paying for us to get it cheap. Many workers are grossly underpaid. Even working full-time may not give a person, or their family, enough to live on. Minimum wage may not be enough to live on. We all need to think about how we contribute to this problem by wanting to buy cheap things.

Chapter 4: How We Force the Poor to Pay More – From expensive rental housing to exorbitant interest rates on pay-day loans, the poor are forced to use a lot of their low wages just to get from pay-day to pay-day. Hopefully you have never had to experience this sort of exploitation, but it exists everywhere. The rich get richer by stealing from the poor.

Chapter 5: How We Rely on Welfare – I found this a very interesting chapter as the author shows how the rich take advantage of government handouts, which are often called “welfare” when given to the poor. But the government also gives welfare benefits to the middle class and wealthy people with things such as tax deductions for interest payments on mortgages. Tax avoidance and tax breaks, primarily used by the rich, is a type of welfare as the government “gives” money to the rich. It also reduces the amount of funds that governments have to create buffer programs for the poor and for upholding the infrastructure of the country. There were some very interesting examples in this chapter.

Chapter 6: How We Buy Opportunity – As mentioned above, I may have had periods in my life where I was relatively poor, but it was always a very temporary situation and most of my life I have had a middle class life. The author explains in this chapter how this works, or doesn’t work for the poor.

Chapter 7: Invest in Ending Poverty – The author does not think that it would actually take that much to end poverty, especially the type of poverty that people can never get out of. He shows where the money could come from and how it could be used.

Chapter 8: Empower the Poor – This chapter gives examples on what could be done to help the poor have a better life, including having better health and better education for children.

Chapter 9: Tear Down the Walls – Integration between the different levels of income would benefit everyone. However, many want to build walls around themselves to keep the less fortunate out. The author would like us to tear down these walls and gives examples of how this can be done. I have read other books which confirm that large differences in incomes is detrimental for everyone, both rich and poor.

My thoughts on poverty

I recently read a book about the rich, Limitarianism, so this book was a good contrast by looking at the opposite end of the income scale. There have been many suggestions as to how to end poverty over the decades. First of all, the poor need sufficient money to get out. Many have suggested a minimum monthly allowance that allows people to have an apartment, have sufficient food to eat, have healthcare and schooling. Living in Norway, where there is a welfare system that tries to do this, has given me insights in how much of poverty can be avoided. People that have a regular income from the government, in spite of poor health, will usually use most of their income and the money keeps circulating (which is what keeps the economy going).

I feel lucky to have lived in Norway for over 40 years as in Norway, people have a health care system that covers everyone. Though dental care for adults is not covered, it is for children. Getting the health care that is necessary, improves one’s life, especially if one has any long-term illnesses. Poor health as a child usually means that the child does not get a good education and therefore does not get a good job.

In Norway, schooling, even at university level, does not charge large fees. So to get an education, one may have to pay for school books and other supplies, but the tuition is mostly free. The key to getting a decent job is getting an education, whether it is a hands-on job such as carpentry or plumbing, or an academic job such as teacher or doctor. Though many people may be poor while they get this education, and one may have periods of one’s life where it is difficult to make ends meet, the chances of getting out of poverty are good.

Who are the poor in Norway? Young people that are studying. Immigrants that don’t have the knowledge skills to get a job that pays well. Those who have health problems, both physical and mental problems. Those who have problems getting a full-time, well-paid job because they are looking after children. Those who have not been able to get an adequate education. So, yes, there are poor in Norway, but for some it will be a temporary stage of their life. For others, there is at least a system that will help most of them live a reasonable life, even if they cannot afford many extras.

The last year or so in Norway, prices have risen immensely and this affects the poor the hardest. Headlines about families needing food hand-outs from volunteer organizations is the most distressing for me to read about. It means that those at the lowest income levels are getting trapped into poverty by a society that doesn’t care enough about them. Governments are usually run by the relatively rich and they don’t understand how the poorest people have economic problems. Things have to change so that those who have the lowest incomes do not starve or are taken advantage of. There will always be differences in income, but those at the lowest level should be able to make ends meet.

I would like you to think about your interaction with the poor. How much do you support a society that systematically underpays many of its workers? What could you change in your life? What do you buy? Who do you vote for? What volunteer organizations do you support? All of these can make differences in other people’s lives. We do not need to support the rich who take advantage of all the rest of us. I hope you reflect on this problem in our world today.

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“Not the End of the World” by Hannah Ritchie

Subtitle: “How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet”, published by Chatto & Windus, London, 2024

This is a newly published book and my husband read it first. He gave me all sorts of interesting information from the book as he was reading it, so I decided to read it myself. It has taking me a while to read it, as I find the author is a bit wordy, though interesting to read. Her message is that the problems that the world faces are not hopeless and that lots is going well with the world. Reading the media can be discouraging as they want to publish sensational stories, rather than the facts. But there is still lots going right and more to do.

The book is composed of an Introduction, 8 Chapters and a Conclusion.

Introduction

Hannah Ritchie is a relatively young person born in 1994 and she feels that she grew up in a media environment that tells “kids that they are going to die from climate change”. It might be a heat wave, a wildfire, a hurricane, a flood or mass starvation. This has created a great deal of anxiety. Young people are hesitant to have children. Many feel helpless, but the author wants to use this book to show that things are not as bad you might think. We haven’t solved all of the problems, but many things are better than they used to be.

She credits much of her change of mind to watching a television show with the Swede, Hans Rosling, showing how the world has gotten healthier and healthier. I wrote a bit about Hans Rosling in my blog, Gapminder, Hans Rosling was very concerned about how much of what we think we know about the world is actually wrong. With this new information, Hannah Ritchie changed the way she thinks about the state of the world and this book is a result of that change of thinking.

Hannah Ritchie is Head of Research at Our World in Data which is based at the University of Oxford, England. She feels that her job is to make use of what we already know, get that information out to the public and help people realize that things are not as bad as we might think. The world needs optimism in order to work with the problems that are facing us today. To do this, we need to know what is going right and what we need to work on next. She feels that “we can be the first generation to achieve a sustainable world”.

She has 6 things she would like us to keep in mind:

  • 1 We face big and important environmental challenges
  • 2 The fact that our environmental issues aren’t humanity’s largest existential risk doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work on them
  • 3 You will have to hold multiple thoughts at the same time
  • 4 Non of this is inevitable, but it is possible
  • 5 We cannot afford to be complacent
  • 6 You are not alone in this.

Hannah Ritchie is very concerned about “how we got to now”, “where we are today”, what to do next and “things to stress less about”. Each chapter takes up one problem, and I’m going to give you a very brief summary of the main points of each chapter. If you want to know more, you’ll have to read the book yourself.

Chapter 1 Sustainability – A tale of two halves

First of all the author maintains that the world has never been sustainable, and then she goes on to define what sustainable means: “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The author believes that both halves of this definition ( the present … the future) have never been satisfied at the same time, except in very small groups of people.

About the present, she writes that “there is no better time to be alive than today,” and lists 7 things that have been greatly improved in recent years:

  • child mortality is lower
  • fewer mothers die in childbirth
  • life expectancy has increased
  • there is much less hunger and malnutrition
  • access to clean water, energy and sanitation has improved
  • more children get basic education
  • extreme poverty has been reduced.

However when writing about future generations she writes that there are seven areas that we need to work on and these seven topics comprise the remaining chapters in the book.

  • air pollution
  • climate change
  • deforestation
  • food production
  • biodiversity loss
  • ocean plastics
  • over-fishing.

Chapter 2 Air Pollution – Breathing clean air

Many places in the world still have very poor air quality and there are lots of historical examples of cities and industrial areas with air so polluted that it was difficult to breathe. Air pollution, in general, is caused by burning things, which generates small particles in the air. Over the centuries we have burned different things to provide heat, light and energy, but the main ones have been wood, coal, crops, oil or gas.

There are many examples of how air pollution has been tackled and the battle has been won. London’s air is much cleaner than it was a hundred years ago. Acid rain, which I remember as a big problem in Norway in the 1980s is no longer a major problem. In the 1970s there were holes in the ozone layer that was causing great concern, and there was international agreement to fix the problem.

Air pollution is falling in many places but there are still millions that die from air pollution every year. What do we need to get air pollution even lower?

  • Give everyone access to clean cooking fuels
  • End winter crop-burning
  • Remove sulphur from fossil fuels
  • Drive less; cycle, walk and take public transport
  • Ditch fossil fuels for renewables and nuclear

Chapter 3 Climate Change – Turning down the thermostat

This is one topic that gets in the media regularly. Already average temperatures are rising everywhere, some places more than others. How much the temperature will rise depends on what we do, or don’t do. Most of the discussion revolves around how much carbon dioxide is in the air. Carbon dioxide emissions come primarily from two main sources: burning fossil fuels and changing the use of land, for example, cutting down trees.

The author writes that total emissions are still rising, but that emissions per person have already peaked. In other words, things are on the brink of getting better. Many countries have already reduced their emissions as well as growing their economies. There are alternatives available and they are getting cheaper. Committing to change is the first major step for any country. Work needs to be done on how we produce energy, how things and people are moved around the world, what we eat and how it is produced, reduction of food waste, and reduction of over-consumption.

In addition we need to pull people out of poverty so they are less vulnerable to the effects of climate change. We need to improve the resilience of our crops to drought, floods and a warming world. We need to adapt our living conditions to deal with sweltering heat.

Chapter 4 Deforestation – Seeing the wood for the trees

Deforestation is not a new problem. Humans have been cutting down trees for centuries. Today’s rich countries lost their forests a long time ago. In some places, the forest is being allowed to grow back, but in many places the forest is being removed to create agricultural land. So deforestation and how we produce our food are linked together.

The author writes again that eating less meat, especially beef, would be good for the environment. Raising animals for their meat is a big driver of deforestation and is an inefficient way of producing food for humans. Crop yields can be improved with better seeds and better fertilization habits.

Chapter 5 Food – How not to eat the planet

Though in the past there was always a struggle for most people to get enough food, now the world produces enough food to give everyone at least 5 000 calories a day. In recent decades a lot has been done to reduce hunger. Though hunger and famine still exist, they are political and social in nature.

The use of artificial fertilizers, improved seeds, better irrigation and machinery have increased crop yields on agricultural land. We are able to produce more food on less land. However, much of the food that is produced is used to feed livestock and to fuel cars. This is not sustainable. Eating meat is a very inefficient way of making tasty food. I learned this back in the 1970s, when I learned about how meat was raised, using food that humans could use for themselves. Since then I have reduced the amount of meat that I eat to perhaps once a week. I actually prefer eating vegetarian dishes.

The main problems that producing food creates is in how much land is used. As the amount of land increases for agriculture, we lose forests with their biodiversity; greenhouses gases are produced, particularly from raising animals; there is a great demand on fresh water; and there is an over-use of pesticides which leads to water pollution.

The author recommends that to have a sustainable world we should eat less meat, improve crop yields in all parts of the world and waste less food with better storage and refrigeration. She does not think that eating local food or organic food which has lower crop yields per hectare will help. Plastic packaging lowers total food waste and is therefore good.

Chapter 6 Biodiversity Loss – Protecting the world’s wildlife

In the past, humans have hunted large mammals and many have been extinct for a long time. Agriculture has changed ecosystems. However whenever we meddle with ecosystems, things may not change the way we want them to. “You can never merely do one thing.” There is an intricate web of prey, predator and ecological connections.

The biggest threat to wildlife is connected to how we feed ourselves, and also how our population leads to urbanization, disease, pollution, etc. In order to protect what is left we need to have well-managed protected areas. We need to limit deforestation by being better at growing crops on the land that is already in use and we need to slow global climate change which is also changing ecosystems.

Chapter 7 Ocean Plastics – Drowning in waste

Plastic is a wonder material as it is sterile, waterproof, versatile, cheap, useful and easy to shape or mold. It makes things lighter. It prevents food waste. Most plastics can only be reused once or twice. The problem is how we dispose of plastic. Only a very small fraction, perhaps 0.3%, of the world’s plastics ends up in the oceans.

Rich countries have good waste-management systems. Most of the plastic in the oceans comes from Asia, where waste plastic gets into the rivers and ends up in the ocean. What is needed is better waste management, even in poor countries. Landfills must be sealed on top so that things don’t blow or wash away. There should be fines for fishing vessels that lose or dump waste. Floating debris can be intercepted in rivers before it ends up in the ocean. We need to clean up our beaches and shorelines.

Chapter 8 Overfishing – Pillaging the oceans

We really don’t know how many fish there are in the oceans. Some fish stocks are doing well, and some aren’t. Two thirds of the global fish stocks are being managed sustainably, and fish farming produces more fish than is caught wild. So things are not hopeless.

The problem of overfishing is reduced by implementing strict fishing quotas. This requires management and research to know what quotas the different fish stocks will tolerate.

The author takes up the problem with whaling which reduced the number of whales in the oceans drastically. In 1967, a global moratorium on whaling has helped whale stocks increase again.

Conclusion

In general the author feels that we know what to do to combat the problems mentioned in the book, and there are many countries doing it already. These problems are interconnected and much is connected to how we feed ourselves. Changes in how and what we eat will be necessary to reduce the impact on the world. Who you vote for, how you spend your time, and who you donate your money to are all ways that individuals can influence the changes that need to come. “We are not doomed. We can build a better future for everyone.”

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Gapminder.org

When I think of the changes that have happened in my lifetime, I often think of television, jet planes, computers, the Internet and electric cars. These are the things that have affected my life the most. However, when we think about how others’ lives have changed in the last 70 years, there are more important topics to think about. For example, what is the life expectancy of people living in India? How many children are vaccinated against common childhood diseases, such as measles? How have these figures changed in your lifetime and in mine?

I first came across Hans Rosling (1948-2017) a Swedish statistician and doctor, when I was teaching high-school English in Norway. He has made several videos that help explain how inadequate our view of living conditions in other countries is. I think the most important thing I have learned from watching his videos is that we have come a long way in solving some of the largest problems in the world. His statistics encourage optimism that we can make the world a better place.

Gapminder was founded in Stockholm in 2005 by Ola Rosling, Anna Rosling Rönnlund, and Hans Rosling. They developed interesting ways to visualize statistics and make it easier to understand the statistics and how they have changed over the years. Gapminder is an independent Swedish foundation with no political, religious, or economic affiliations.

This video illustrates how we often get the facts wrong. The link is to a Gapminder video and a TedTalk from 2014 held in Berlin: How not to be ignorant about the world, is about 19 minutes and features both Hans Rosling and Ola Rosling. Please note that this video is now almost 10 years old, so the numbers will have changed and things will have improved even more since then.

Another example: the book I wrote about last, Limitarianism, was concerned about the differences between the rich and the poor, but what is your understanding about how many rich there really are in the world. Look at this short video at the Gapminder website and see how Hans Rosling explains it. I find that he is very good at explaining things that we might not have understood correctly. Had you understood that most people have an income in the middle range? There are some extremely poor, and some extremely rich, but most aren’t.

Gapminder’s mission is to “fight devastating ignorance with a fact-based world view everyone can understand.”

Now look at a third video about how income relates to life expectancy and enjoy the bubble diagrams that Gapminder is known for.

Gapminder’s Projects

Gapminder has three main projects. The first one (“Find your misconceptions”) is to help educate people so that their knowledge is kept up-to-date. If you are reading this, you have lived a few years and things have changed since you went to school. Depending on your age and how long it is since you went to school, your knowledge about the world may be out of date.

Their second main project (“Understand a changing world”) show how the numbers have changed over time. In general, things improve. Humans are good at making things better.

Their third main project (“See the reality behind the data”) or “Dollar Street” is a large collection of pictures to show what the terms extreme poverty and poverty mean and what the differences are. We often understand things better with pictures.

Using their three projects, I would like to encourage you to explore the Gapminder.org website. I especially recommend looking at “Dollar Street”.

What would you like to learn about today?

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Limitarianism by Ingrid Robeyns

After not writing a blog for a long time, I have decided that I would like to share some of the things that I have been reading about, as I am concerned about the state of the world. This is something that I have always been interested in, especially since I first studied economics in my early 20s. Over the years since then, that is, over about 50 years, I have read various books and articles about the state of the world. I still have this interest and I would like to share some of the things that I have learned.

This blog is primarily about the book pictured below. As with many books, the author covers a limited topic and one must remember that the world we live in is complex. Many problems in the world have been solved and in later blogs I will come back to some of the things that we have actually managed. We must not be pessimistic, but we must also be aware of what problems there still are to solve. We must take ideas from many authors and researchers and put them together into our own view of the world, which is also influenced by where we live, how we have earned our living, the people we have known and what sort of childhood we had. I am currently retired, in my 70s, and was a high-school teacher for over 30 years. I have lived in Norway since 1980, but grew up in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

I would like to recommend this book which explains one of the problems that we are facing in the world today. I found the prose easy to read. There was some jargon, but not so much that I couldn’t understand what the author was getting at. Ingrid Robeyns lives and works in the Netherlands and works at the Utrecht University. She is concerned about inequality and injustice in the world. Her training is in philosophy and economics and in 2012 she decided to work on answering the question: “Can a person be too rich?” This book, a result of her research, was published in 2024 by Allen Lane (Penguin Books) and has been dedicated “To all activists who are fighting against injustice”.

The concept of limitarianism is that nobody needs an excessive income or to accumulate excessive wealth. When one is poor, getting a higher income improves one’s standard of living, but when one is wealthy, a higher income doesn’t really change one’s lifestyle at all. The author discusses how limiting extreme wealth is both a moral issue and an economic issue. She quite realizes that this idea is not easy to put into practice, but she would like people to become more aware of how this idea of limiting wealth would help everyone.

I agree with the author that inequality in the world has been increasing, as the poor stay poor, but the rich get richer and richer. Extreme poverty in the world has decreased in recent decades, but in relatively well-off countries, such as Norway where I live, there is still a proportion of the population where people do not have enough income to meet basic needs, including having sufficient food to eat. Local governments do not get enough income to pay for the services that they are expected to provide. Public investment in infrastructure, such as schools, healthcare and transportation are under-funded. And yet, the rich amass huge amounts of money and then feel that they have to store their money in tax havens and even move out of Norway to countries where they feel that their wealth is treated better, that is, not taxed as much. Why do they not want to contribute to the country that has helped them amass their wealth?

What is it that Ingrid Robeyns is really trying to promote in her book? She feels that there are too many super-rich people, that either avoid taxation or evade taxation, so that governments have less money than they need to provide the services to their population so that everyone can have a reasonable life. There should not only be a minimum wage, but there should also be a maximum wage. In addition, neither individuals, companies nor institutions should be allowed to accumulate extreme wealth. Wealth over a certain limit should be returned to the country in which it was “earned”.

In the last chapter, the author includes several ideas about what could be done, but also realizes that her suggestion of limiting people’s wealth is not something that will be accomplished easily or within a few years. However, it is something that activists should be working towards.

This book is meant to make you think about your own place in the world, and also about the people who live in the world with you. Will you make any changes in your life? What? When? This is highly individual. Below is a summary of the 10 chapters in the book.

Chapter 1 How Much is Too Much?

The author discusses her reasons for the limits that she suggests.

Chapter 2 It’s Keeping the Poor in Poverty While Inequality Grows

When the super-rich, the upper 1% or 0.1% of society do not share their wealth, it means that the distance between the rich and the poor increases. Because the rich don’t mix with the poor, the rich don’t understand the problems that the poor face. I feel that too many politicians, those who are making the rules and policies that we live under, have no understanding of what it means to not have enough. There are many authors who have written about inequality, but Ingrid Robeyns tries to show the reader about what happens to the top group.

Chapter 3 It’s Dirty Money

Not all wealth has been created by honest labor. Much inherited wealth was generated centuries ago based on slave labor. Some wealth is stolen, such as leaders in countries that steal the income generated from the country’s natural resources that belong to all in the country. Some wealth is created from criminal activities. The author gives some interesting examples of how wealth is generated or actually stolen from the poor.

Chapter 4 It’s Undermining Democracy

Having money means having power, both economically and politically. The wealthy have been undermining democracy by getting the rules changed to favor themselves. This is a serious problem in many countries where only the wealthy end up with the political jobs of making the laws in a country and administering these laws.

Chapter 5 It’s Setting the World on Fire

Climate change and global warming are being worsened by the super-rich who are not concerned about anyone but themselves. They can survive the changes and it is the poor who suffer the most. The author explains how the super-rich are contributing more than their share to this particular problem.

Chapter 6 Nobody Deserves to be a Multimillionaire

Personally, I think everyone deserves to have three decent meals a day, but I have to agree with the author that being a multimillionaire is not something that anyone “deserves” or has earned. Usually the super-rich have underpaid the people that work for them. In my opinion, the workers in any company “deserve” decent wages and living conditions.

Chapter 7 There’s So Much We Can Do with the Money

When the super-rich don’t pay their fair share of the taxes, then that money is not available to keep the infrastructure in a country in good health. Think of education, highways, healthcare and a lot more that governments provide for their country.

Chapter 8 Philanthropy is Not the Answer

There are rich people that share their wealth after they have spent years accumulating it. But letting the rich decide where their “extra” money should go, does not necessarily mean that the money gets used wisely. This chapter gives some examples of what happens, and also what doesn’t happen.

Chapter 9 The Rich will Benefit, Too

Being rich does not make people happy. Having less, may let them have a better life. The author is particularly concerned about children who grow up with rich parents, but are starved of the things that matter to children, including love and attention.

Chapter 10 The Road Ahead

Here Ingrid Robeyns comes with lots of suggestions on what can be done to make limitarianism more feasible and how it can be combined with other ideas to make the world a better place for everyone to live in.

I hope I have encouraged you to read this book, but even if you don’t, I hope my comments have made you think.

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The Climate Book – An Overview

Created by Greta Thunberg and published by Allen Lane /Penguin Books in November 2022.

Greta Thunberg was born in 2003 in Sweden. In 2018 she started a school strike for the climate outside the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm. Since then she has traveled to many places in the world and spoken at many gatherings. She is a person that cares about the planet Earth.

The book is divided into five parts. Greta Thunberg writes an introduction to each part and some comments in between. All her articles are written on blue paper which is to symbolize the blue planet that we live on. In addition there are many experts in various fields to write articles about the science involved in this problem. There is a lot of information in this book which has 446 pages. The main purpose, in my opinion, is to get the reader to think about their own lifestyle, to acquire some knowledge of the problems and perhaps make changes in their own life.

In this first blog I am going to give an overview of what the book covers. In later blogs I will be going into some of the issues that are taken up in this book.

I recommend reading this book, though it can be a bit heavy reading. I am reading it in very small doses and so it is taking several months to get through it. Perhaps it is best this way as then I have time to reflect on the different topics as they are taken up.

Part One How Climate Works

The science of how our climate works is explained in this part. The fact that our climate is changing, and that our weather is getting more extreme, is not debatable. But do you understand how it all fits together? This part of the book is to help the reader get a basic understanding of the science behind it all.

Greta Thunberg has written three articles for this part:

  • To solve this problem, we need to understand it
  • The science is as solid as it gets
  • This is the biggest story in the world

In addition there are six articles:

  • The Deep History of Carbon Dioxide by Peter Brannen
  • Our Evolutionary Impact by Beth Shapiro
  • Civilization and Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert
  • The Discovery of Climate Change by Michael Oppenheimer
  • Why Didn’t They Act? by Naomi Oreskes
  • Tipping Points and Feedback Loops by Johan Rockström

Part Two How our Planet is Changing

The science behind the changing climate has been known for a long time. I live in a place where most people think that it is fine if the weather was a bit warmer. But warming is not the problem everywhere. More extreme weather which causes storms and floods, rising sea levels and air pollution are all part of the problem. I found these articles interesting as they explain problems that other parts of the world are experiencing.

Greta Thunberg has written three articles for this part:

  • The weather seems to be on steroids
  • The snowball has been set in motion
  • It is much closer to home than we think

There are 21 articles in this part, most of them are quite short, about two pages, though some are longer. These are experts in their fields giving information on what is actually happening.

  • Heat, by Katharine Hayhoe
  • Methane and Other Gases by Zeke Hausfather
  • Air Pollution and Aerosols by Bjørn H. Samset
  • Clouds by Paulo Coppi
  • Arctic Warming and the Jet Stream by Jennifer Francis
  • Dangerous Weather by Friederike Otto
  • Drought and Floods by Kare Marvel
  • Ice Sheets, Shelves and Glaciers by Ricarda Winkelmann
  • Warming Oceans and Rising Seas by Stefan Rahmstorf
  • Acidification and Marine Ecosystems by Hans-Otto Pörtner
  • Microplastics by Karin Kvale
  • Fresh Water by Peter H. Gleick
  • Wildfires by Joëlle Gergis
  • The Amazon by Carlos Nobre, Julia Arieira and Nathália Nascimento
  • Boreal and Temperate Forests by Beverly Law
  • Terrestrial Biodiversity by Andy Purvis and Adriana De Palma
  • Insects by Dave Goulson
  • Nature’s Calendar by Keith W. LArson
  • Soil by Jennifer L. Soong
  • Permafrost by Ôrjan Gustafsson
  • What Happens at 1.5, 2 and 4 degrees C of Warming? by Tamsin Edwards

Part Three How It Affects Us

When the climate changes, it can affect our water and food supplies. It can affect our health. We are not all equally affected but usually the poor are hit hardest. This part helped me better understand how others are being affected, those who live in other parts of the world.

The three articles by Greta Thunberg are:

  • The world has a fever
  • We are not all in the same boat
  • Enormous challenges are waiting

In addition there are 17 articles:

  • Health and Climate by Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
  • Heat and Illness by Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera
  • Air Pollution by Drew Shindell
  • Vector-borne Diseases by Felipe J. Colón-González
  • Antibiotic Resistance by John Brownstein, Derek MacFadden, Sarah McGough and Maruicio Sentilland
  • Food and Nutrition by Samuel S. Myers
  • Life at 1.1 degrees C
  • Environmental Racism by Jacqueline Patterson
  • Climate Refugees by Abrahm Lustfarten
  • Sea-level Rise and Small Islands by Michael Taylor
  • Rain in the Sahel by Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim
  • Winter in Sápmi by Elin Anna Labba
  • Fighting for the Forest by Sonia Guajajara
  • Warming and Inequality by Solomon Hsiang
  • Water Shortages by Taikan Oki
  • Climate Conflicts by Marshall Burke
  • The True Cost of Climate Change by Eugene Linden

Part Four What We’ve Done About It

It has been quite depressing reading about what has actually been done, as it is so little. Emissions are increasing. Governments and businesses are avoiding the changes that are necessary. Some of these articles are about some of the fancy ideas that are being tried, but aren’t necessarily working.

The five articles by Greta Thunberg are:

  • How can we undo our failures if we are unable to admit that we have failed?
  • We are not moving in the right direction
  • A whole new way of thinking
  • They keep saying one thing while doing another
  • This is where we draw the line

In addition there are 22 articles:

  • The New Denialism by Kevin Anderson
  • The Truth about Government Climate Targets by Alexandra Urisman Otto
  • The Persistence of Fossil Fuels by Bill McKibben
  • The Rise of Renewables by Glen Peters
  • How Can Forests Help Us? by Karl-Heinz Erb and Simone Gingrich
  • What about Geoengineering? by Niclas Hällström, Jennie C. Stephens and Isak Stoddard
  • Drawdown Technologies by Rob Jackson
  • Our Imprint on the Land by Alexander Popp
  • The Calorie Question by Michael Clark
  • Designing New Food Systems by Sonja Vermeulen
  • Mapping Emission in an Industrial World by John Barrett and Alice Garvey
  • The Technical Hitch by Ketan Joshi
  • The Challenge of Transport by Alice Larkin
  • Is the Future Electric? by Jillian Anable and Christian Brand
  • The Cost of Consumerism by Annie Lowrey
  • How (Not) to Buy by Mike Berners-Lee
  • Waste around the World by Silpa Kaza
  • The Myth of Recycling by Nina Schrank
  • Emissions and Growth by Nicholas Stern
  • Equity by Sunita Narain
  • Degrowth by Jason Hickel
  • The Perception Gap by Amitav Ghosh

Part Five What We Must Do Now

If we are to prevent the earth becoming severely affected, we have to do an awful lot more than is being done. There are still too many people in places of power who are not doing what it takes to prevent global warming on a significant scale.

There are four articles by Greta Thunberg:

  • The most effective way to get out of this mess is to educate ourselves
  • We now have to do the seemingly impossible
  • Honesty, solidarity, integrity and climate justice
  • Hope is something you have to earn

In addition there are 17 articles:

  • Individual Action, Social Transformation by Stuart Capstick and Lorraine Whitmarsh
  • Towards 1.5 Degrees C Lifestyles by Kate Raworth
  • Overcoming Climate Apathy by Per Espen Stoknes
  • Changing Our Diets by Godon Eshel
  • Remembering the Ocean by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
  • Rewilding by George Monbiot and Rebecca Wrigley
  • Practical Utopias by Margaret Atwood
  • People Power by Erica Chenoweth
  • Changing the Media Narrative by George Monbiot
  • Resisting the New Denialism by Michael E. Mann
  • A Genuine Emergency Response by Seth Klein
  • Lessons from the Pandemic by David Wallace-Wells
  • A Just Transition by Naomi Klein
  • What Does Equity Mean to You by Nicki Becker, Disha A. Ravi, Hilda Flavia Nakabuye, Laura Verónica Muñoz, Ina Maria Shikongo, Ayisha Siddiqa and Mitzi Jonelle Tan
  • Women and the Climate Crisis by Wanjora Mathai
  • Decarbonization Requires Redistribution by Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty
  • Climate Reparations by Olúféemi O. Tálwò
  • Mending Our Relationship with the Earth by Robin Wall Kimmerer

I have a paper copy of the book which uses 446 pages to share these articles, some pictures and graphs and an index. There is a web site for looking up where the references come from.

At the moment I am reading Part Four and will share my reactions and more detailed comments about each part of the book in future blogs. I am enjoying the book and it is making me think about the conditions in the world. We are all very quick to criticize what others do, but I want to work out what I can do in my life. I cannot change other people, but I can change the way I live and what I do.

I hope you will also read this book and work out ways that you too can be part of the solution and not just part of the problem.

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Living in a welfare state

Meik Wiking lives in Denmark, a country that is often rated with the happiest people.  In his book, The Little Book of Hygge, he tries to give examples of how the Danes keep themselves happy.  He mentions, but doesn’t go into, how living in a welfare state makes people happy.

“Interestingly, there is wide support for the welfare state.  The support stems from an awareness of the fact that the welfare model turns our collective wealth into well-being.  We are not paying taxes, we are investing in our society.  We are purchasing quality of life.  The key to understanding the high levels of well-being in Denmark is the welfare model’s ability to reduce risk, uncertainty and anxiety among its citizens and to prevent extreme unhappiness.” (Meik Wiking, The Little Book of Hygge, Penguin 2016, p. 13)

This small comment in a book made me pursue these thoughts. Over the years I have read many books and watched many talks that indicate that living in a more equal society is good for everyone.

Helen Pearson gave a talk at TED2017 where she discusses how to bring up children. “I came across a little secret that we have in Britain. It’s helped me become more confident about how I bring up my own children, and it’s revealed a lot about how we as a society can help all children.” (https://www.ted.com/talks/helen_pearson_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_human_development/transcript)

What is the secret that she is talking about? Choose your parents very carefully; don’t be born into a poor or struggling family.  But of course, we don’t actually choose our parents, so what can be done about this? She goes on to discuss  how parental interaction with their children (listening to them, reading to them, doing things with them) influences whether the children do well when they are grown up.  But what about children who are unlucky and grow up in home that is not supportive?  Why should a child suffer because they weren’t able to choose the right parents?

We all have basic human needs that need to be satisfied, which include food, housing, clothing and social relationships. Most people in Europe and North America can no longer grow enough food to feed themselves and their family. This means that people must buy their food. The same goes for clothing and housing.

But where does the money come from?  Many people have jobs that give them enough income to cover their needs and a lot more.  But what about those who can’t work, for whatever reason?  I was just reading a book about raising children and  the author commented that children will do as well as they can and that they prefer to do well. I would also like to propose that people want to have a job and support themselves, if they can find a job that suits them.

Not everyone is born with the same advantages, as Helen Pearson tells us.  I know people who have been born with poor health and have had great problems holding down a full-time job, not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have the stamina for a full-time job.  Some people are born handicapped, perhaps poor eye-sight, poor hearing or an inability to do intellectual work. People with manual jobs may get poor health early in life.  These are the people that a welfare state can help.

In economic terms, there have been studies done that show that if everyone gets a basic income, those who can work, will work.  This basic income can provide a buffer, so that it is easier to change jobs, take time off work to have children, to look after oneself and at least work part-time.  Some people need a helping hand over a longer period of time, others for only a short time.

What happens to the money that the state gives to those who receive pensions, basic income or temporary support?  People spend the money.  The money gets recycled into the national economic system.  Some of the money goes to buying goods such as food and clothing.  Some of the money will go to renting housing or buying one’s own place.  Much of the money gets recycled via various types of taxes so that some of the money ends up back in the government’s coffers.

What are the benefits of the welfare state?  The main benefit is that there is a safety net available for everyone.  If something goes wrong, you won’t starve to death.  If you lose your job, you can get unemployment income while you look for a new job.  If you get sick, your medical bills are paid.  If you have a child that has a disability and needs full-time care at home, you will get a basic income so that one parent can be at home with the child.  Education is free so that children from disadvantaged homes can also get an education that suits them, whether it is a trade education or an academic education. These are just a few examples.

In their book, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, (Penguin 2010), Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett document that the costs of inequality in a country include poorer mental health, higher drug use, lower life expectancy, more obesity, teenage births, more violence and lower social mobility. Countries that are welfare states are more equal.  They even out these inequalities and everyone has a better life.  One only has to look at the news about shootings at schools in the USA to realize that the inequality there is hurting everyone.

I live in Norway, which like Denmark, is a welfare state.  I pay my taxes willingly, knowing that when I need to get help, help is there to be gotten.