Environmental abuse is not only about how humans treat the nonhuman world but also about how they treat each other. Whether referring to climate change, threats to biological diversity, nuclear waste, or depleted fish stocks, some people benefit from the environmental abuse, while others disproportionately suffer from the consequences.

The grand social and ideological systems that people construct for themselves invariably carry large consequences, for the environment no less than for more strictly human affairs. Among the swirl of ideas, policies, and political structures of the twentieth century, the most ecologically influential were the growth imperative and the (not unrelated) security anxiety that together dominated policy around the world. … By 1970, however, something new was afoot.