Ebook: Carbon Colonialism: How rich countries export climate breakdown

Around the world, leading economies are announcing significant progress on climate change. World leaders are queuing up to proclaim their commitment to tackling the climate crisis, pointing to data that show the progress they have made. Yet the atmosphere is warming at a record rate. Arctic sea ice is reaching record low levels. Climate-linked poverty and precarity are rapidly increasing. Why, then, are the green achievements of the rich world not matched by the reality on the ground? As this book argues, the complexity of our globalised economy allows our worst environmental impacts to happen out of sight and out of mind. Rich nations’ environmental footprints are now primarily generated overseas, where limited regulation makes it increasingly easy to conceal. The result is a system of carbon colonialism, in which emissions, waste and environmental degradation are exported from rich countries to poor ones as the price of economic growth.