Nathanael Johnson, a talented food writer at Grist, a non-profit environmental news and commentary site based in Seattle, has published a thoughtful special series of eight articles around a question seldom looked at squarely in the eye—that is: How can we eliminate absolute poverty from the world without destroying the environment in the process?

Helpfully, Johnson provides some solutions and best practices, and draws out some principles from them, showing how humanity just might protect people and the planet both. Unusually for an environmentalist, he recommends we ‘put people first’

Excerpts from his new series follow (emphases added), but readers are encouraged to go to the Grist site and read the whole series. The landing page where you’ll find links to all eight articles in the series is here.

‘. . . The escalator out of poverty runs on fossil fuels and forests. There’s overwhelming evidence on this point.