From the mid-nineteenth until the mid-twentieth century, environmentally unregulated industrial capitalism produced outsized environmental risks for poor and working-class Detroiters, made all the worse for African Americans by housing and job discrimination. Then as the auto industry abandoned Detroit, the banking and real estate industries turned those risks into disasters with predatory loans to African American homebuyers, and to an increasingly indebted city government. Following years of cuts in welfare assistance to poor families and a devastating subprime mortgage meltdown, the state of Michigan used municipal debt to justify suspending democracy in majority-Black cities. In Detroit and Flint, austerity policies imposed under emergency financial management deprived hundreds of thousands of people of clean water, with lethal consequences that most recently exacerbated the spread of COVID-19. Toxic Debt is not only a book about racism, capitalism, and the making of these environmental disasters. It is also a history of Detroit's environmental justice movement, which emerged from over a century of battles over public health in the city and involved radical auto workers, ecofeminists, and working-class women fighting for clean water. Linking the histories of urban political economy, the environment, and social movements, Toxic Debt lucidly narrates the story of debt, environmental disaster, and resistance in Detroit.

Essays exploring questions of what we owe—to corporations, to governments, to each other, to the past, and to the future. From personal finance and consumer spending to ballooning national expenditures on warfare and social welfare, debt is fundamental to the dynamics of global capitalism. The contributors to this volume explore the concept of indebtedness in its various senses and from a wide range of perspectives. They observe that many views of ethics, citizenship, and governance are based on a conception of debts owed by one individual to others; that artistic and literary creativity involves the artist’s dialogue with the works of the past; and that the specter of catastrophic climate change has underscored the debt those living in the present owe to future generations. “A welcome range of new perspectives on what has become a central issue for contemporary debate.” —Anthropological Notebooks

"Sales no. E.91.I.17"--T.p. verso. Includes bibliographical references (p. 245-273) and index.

Imagine opening a bank letter at breakfast to find that instead of your normal overdraft, you had an ecological debt that threatened the planet. If the whole world wanted to live like people in the United Kingdom we would need the resources of three planets like Earth. If the United States was our model the number would be five. Simms shows how millions of us in the West are running up huge ecological debts: from the amount of oil and coal that we burn to heat our houses and run our cars, to what we consume and the waste that we create, the impact of our lifestyles is felt worldwide. Whilst these debts go unpaid, millions more living in poverty in the majority world suffer the burden of paying dubious foreign financial debts. The book explores a great paradox of our age: how the global wealth gap was built on ecological debts, which the world's poorest are now having to pay for. Highlighting how and why this has happened, he also shows what can be done differently in the future - and what steps we can take to stop pushing the planet to the point of environmental bankruptcy.

The global economy has experienced four waves of rapid debt accumulation over the past 50 years. The first three debt waves ended with financial crises in many emerging market and developing economies. During the current wave, which started in 2010, the increase in debt in these economies has already been larger, faster, and broader-based than in the previous three waves. Current low interest rates mitigate some of the risks associated with high debt. However, emerging market and developing economies are also confronted by weak growth prospects, mounting vulnerabilities, and elevated global risks. A menu of policy options is available to reduce the likelihood that the current debt wave will end in crisis and, if crises do take place, will alleviate their impact.

Reveals the role of conservation in economic success, comparing the costs of artificial environmental controls naturally performed by mature trees while calling on governments to identify the money-saving contributions of nature.

This volume is the scientific report of a research project that aimed to clarify the concept of ecological debt, and to study its relevance and applicability in Belgian and international policy.

Ecological debt : archeology and meaning of the concept - Erosion of a paradigm - Financial debt and ecological debt - Free market environment - To measure or not to measure the ecological debt? - Findings and challenges.

New edition of this highly acclaimed guide-- 'Creative and compelling.' Guardian 'Essential reading.' Head of the IPCC 'A new phrase has entered the language.' Anita Roddick This is the second edition of Andrew Simm's highly regarded guide to climate change and some possible solutions.

The single most important shackle on the Third World is the debts owed to the richer countries - amounting now to over $1.4 trillion. The original loans were mostly put to uses of very dubious benefit to the countries concerned, and the repayments, which despite the hand-wringing and concern the North is insisting on, are stripping those countries of their assets and impoverishing their people and environments.