Whose crisis, whose future? Towards a greener, fairer, richer world

摘要

We are living in a prison. This is the bold claim made by Susan George in her latest book. Each 'wall' of the prison represents an individual global problem. We are trapped in the midst of a crisis that is being propagated by the global elite, the 'Davos class', our prison guards. The rest of the population feel powerless against these elite players and insignificant as agents of change. The purpose of the book is to therefore cast, 'a cold eye on the regime of neoliberal globalisation under which we live and seek to explain how we've become incarcerated' (p. 1). Over the course of five chapters, George investigates the global problems that represent the 'walls' of our prison: the financial crisis; poverty and inequality; the distribution of basic resources; and conflict. Interestingly, the environment and climate change are not granted their own separate chapter. George, quite pointedly, weaves them into the other four. She claims that, these issues 'too often