Geography 1500F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Teak Furniture, Parental Leave, Indigenous Rights
14 Nov 2016
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Critique 1: averages obscure everything: context and nuance are important. Talking about consumption per person across a whole country or region hides huge differences within the country or region. The kind of consumption also matters: some suggest separating luxury consumption (e. g. teak furniture) from subsistence consumption (e. g. fuel wood) Ipat points the finger of blame at all the wrong places. Invest in health and education: promote women"s empowerment in society. Affluence: adopt policies that redistribute wealth. Pollution limits with mandatory reporting; emissions standards for vehicles; rigorous environmental impact assessments. Critique 3: culture is missing: culture includes values, beliefs, social norms. Ipat implies that everyone makes consumption choices with a similar degree of environmental impact: but huge variation in values and ways of living means this is not true. Critique 4: ipat"s predictions are wrong: acute, global resource scarcity has not occurred. Food production has kept pace with population growth. Prices of key commodities have remained surprisingly stable over time (?)
