3 Matching Annotations
  1. Dec 2023
  2. Mar 2023
      • Title
        • Impacts of meeting minimum access on critical earth systems amidst the Great Inequality
      • Abstract
      • Paraphrase

        • The Sustainable Development Goals aim to improve access to resources and services, reduce environmental degradation, eradicate poverty and reduce inequality.
        • However, the magnitude of the environmental burden that would arise from meeting the needs of the poorest is under debate—especially when compared to much larger burdens from the rich.
        • The ‘Great Acceleration’ of human impacts was also accompanied by a ‘Great Inequality’ in using and damaging the environment.
        • To correct the great inequality, the authors define ‘just access’ to minimum energy, water, food and infrastructure.
        • The penality incurred for achieving just access in 2018, with existing inequalities, technologies and behaviours, would have produced 2–26% additional impacts on the Earth’s natural systems of climate, water, land and nutrients—thus further crossing planetary boundaries.
        • These hypothetical impacts, caused by about a third of humanity, equalled those caused by the wealthiest 1–4%.
        • Technological and behavioural changes thus far, while important, did not deliver just access within a stable Earth system.
        • Achieving these goals therefore calls for a radical redistribution of resources.
      • Comment

  3. Jun 2022
    1. Between 1914 and 1980, inequalities in income and wealth decreasedmarkedly in the Western world as a whole (the United Kingdom,Germany, France, Sweden, and the United States), and in Japan,Russia, China, and India, although in different ways, which we willexplore in a later chapter. Here we will focus on the Western countriesand improve our understanding of how this “great redistribution”took place.

      Inequalities in income and wealth decreased markedly in the West from 1914 to 1980 due to a number of factors including:<br /> - Two World Wars and the Great Depression dramatically overturned the power relationships between labor and capital<br /> - A progressive tax on income and inheritance reduced the concentration of wealth and helped increase mobility<br /> - Liquidation of foreign and colonial assets as well as dissolution of public debt