Jordan Peterson has suggested the fastest way to have a sustainable world is to make “poor people as rich as possible,” saying they are not “resource efficient” because their main priority is feeding their families.
During a four-hour interview on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Peterson said efforts to ensure the planet remains habitable must start from the bottom up, including changing how people from lower-income backgrounds source food and other essentials.
Peterson told Rogan that when people are worried about “where your next meal is coming from” they are not as focused on whether their food is environmentally friendly or sourced ethically.
The clinical psychologist cited slash-and-burn agriculture—a farming method where vegetation in a plot of land is cut down and burned in order to produce more fertile soil—as an example of an unsustainable practice.
“The fastest way to make the planet sustainably green and ecologically viable is to make poor people as rich as possible as fast as we possibly can,” Peterson said.
“The thing about poor people is that they’re not resource efficient. They use a lot of resources to produce very little outcome, so that’s a problem.
“But even more importantly, when you’re insecure on a day-to-day basis, you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, you’re not paying attention to the broader environment around you,” he added.
