The Plundered Planet.

• Author: Hartley, Scott E.
• Position: Further Reading - Book review

THE PLUNDERED PLANET

Paul Collier

(United States: Oxford University Press, 2010), 243 pages.

In his latest book, Paul Collier expands upon his previous work, The Bottom Billion, framing the climate debate and its impact on the world's poorest denizens. More than an author, he is a translator of terms, deconstructing economic and ethical notions and finding an Aristotelian mean between extremes. His lucid book articulates a middle path between environmentalists and economists, between "ostriches" who favor plunder and "romantics" who favor preservation. His work highlights the imperative that society move away from "gesture" (headline seeking) policies and toward a more nuanced perspective where man is a custodian, not a curator, of nature.

Collier articulates our societal biases using apposite dichotomies. In ethics, universalism purports that nations and generations objectively optimize for high utility-based outcomes, whereas the concept of propinquity resigns itself to the allure of the familiar, the near and the present. Propinquity underscores the reality that nations predominately care about what is geographically proximate, and people favor what is temporally relevant. If intertemporal propinquity exists, it can explain our propensity to favor the present and discount the future.

Collier explains environmental degradation with economics by analyzing the incentives and market inefficiencies between public and private...