Poor People, Poor Planet: The Psychology of How We Harm and Heal Humanity and Earth

Abstract

Right now millions of desperately impoverished people are starving in Africa, Asia, and other lands as climate change has accelerated drought and depletion of their water resources, land quality, and access to basics for survival. Right now thousands more find themselves displaced from their homes after severe storms, raging rivers, or rising seas have devastated their communities or wildfires have burned their lands, destroying their houses, crops, and livelihoods. Right now extreme heat waves are testing both the mental and physical health of the most vulnerable among us, including the malnourished, the elderly, the young, and the isolated. What is unfolding in our environment and among our citizens is about human behavior-the complex psychology and network of relationships and institutions we build to carry out what we value and believe to be right and just (Swim et al. 2011). The human mind is behind this-the thinking that climate change and resource depletion are not a problem; that vast swaths of poverty and inequality are not relevant to our existence; that economic growth can continue unabated and solve all of our problems; that our present course is fine because our current social, economic, and political structures are the right ones by which to operate our world. Evidence to the contrary-the millions of impoverished children dying each year; the polluted water, land, and air in our communities; the disappearing rainforests; the acidified oceans; the farmlands poisoned with petrochemicals; the accelerating species extinction-is minimized or rationalized, or simply ignored. This brief chapter intends to describe the vital interconnections among our social, economic, and political realities as they play out in our individual and structural psychologies. If we are to choose alternatives so we can continue to thrive on an inhabitable planet-there remains HOPE for that still-then we must attend to the psychology that is preventing us from doing so. We also must revise the psychology that has barely cracked the door to how we can operate differently than we have for too many life-destroying years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)