David Wallace-Wells ... had "compelling reasons to revisit this secret page of history." He was particularly interested in challenging traditional historical accounts that either ignored these devastating famines or profoundly distorted their political and economic causes.

Capitalist markets will not solve pandemics nor the climate crisis.

BY Jag Bhalla

A Deliberate Policy

Whig historians [The term “Whig historians” refers to an approach to history that interprets the past as an inevitable progression toward modern values, including liberty, democracy, and scientific rationality] generally justify the colonial era by advancing what David called “arrogant rhetoric about the benefits, in terms of lives saved, of steam transportation and modern grain markets.” But this was a grave error in judgment. Millions died not because they lived in the “frozen corners of world history,” but “at the very moment they were being forcibly integrated” into the modernity of global markets.

This carnage occurred during the “golden age of liberal capitalism,” which played a murderous role (through a “theological application […] [of its] […] sacred principles”). Much of this narrative, however, is passed over in silence in Wallace-Wells’s brief analysis. It is important to understand these facts, because the same capitalist doctrines that caused these past catastrophes continue to operate today.

They continue to hinder our response to the climate crisis.

Cruelty Without Guilty Parties

“Three global food crises” occurred between 1876 and 1902, Davis writes, resulting in between 32 and 61 million deaths from famine in India, China, and Brazil. Robert Knight, editor of the Bombay Times, believed that those responsible for India’s official famine policy (or the cover-up of its effects) under British rule were guilty of “mass murder.” Davis explicitly blames “commodity markets and price speculation […] as well as the will of the state.” In all but one of the countries studied, “absolute scarcity […] was never the problem.”

In India, the British elite oversaw “enormous grain exports to England while the country was in the grip of a terrible famine.” The resulting carnage was a “political tragedy that could have been avoided,” not a natural disaster. The culprits were not anonymous forces, but political and commercial choices made by identifiable individuals (he cites three viceroys: Lyton, Elgin, and Curzon). Greed prevailed over morality. This risk persists even today.

Here is how Wallace-Wells presents Davis’s conclusions: “Environmental disasters strike those who have been made most vulnerable,” and “The El Niño phenomena of the 19th century [were] as much a test for global political economy as a parable of ecological fragility.” He expects 2027 to be a similar (though lesser) test. But reading his account, which doesn't name any culprits, it's easy to overlook the role played by market greed and the political choices that created these vulnerabilities. This practically amounts to ignoring the most important lesson Davis is offering us today: deference to markets can have morally shocking consequences.

Wallace-Wells does mention "imperial cruelty," but again, his abstract language would benefit from being more concrete. The British leaders in India put their own interests and their beloved free market before the lives of the poor. They imposed the Anti-Charity Contribution Act, prohibiting private aid (which risked influencing market prices). The only aid permitted was in horrific labor camps, like Madras, where daily rations had a lower caloric content than those given to prisoners at Buchenwald.

It would cost $93 billion a year to eradicate world hunger, while annual global spending amounts to $120 billion on ice cream, $490 billion on cosmetics, and $600 billion on landscaping.

David cites a British report on one of their holocausts: the famine was “due to rising prices rather than a food shortage.” The work of Amartya Sen has shown that this statement is generally true: famines are often not due to a lack of available food, but to a “failure of rights” or insufficient purchasing power. Those who defend this theory are right to say that markets can accomplish extraordinary things by exploiting information that no individual possesses (as Friedrich von Hayek demonstrated). But the only information that markets use is prices and purchasing power.

If the poor cannot generate sufficient purchasing power, then market participants don't even perceive what they need to survive. In this respect, market dynamics structurally relegate the needs of the poor to the background. Unless their purchasing power is guaranteed to be sufficient for their survival, markets can exacerbate suffering instead of alleviating it. This contributed, as Davis writes, to the absurdity of the fact that "while Asia was starving, the United States harvested the largest wheat crop in world history […] and […] burned a surplus of worthless wheat."

To understand why this is not a problem that has passed, one need only consider the example of "vaccine apartheid" during the COVID pandemic, where for-profit business leaders thwarted efforts to act responsibly and save lives. For example, Oxford University’s initial goal of granting non-exclusive, royalty-free licenses for its COVID vaccine was abandoned. Following intervention by Bill Gates and his foundation, among others, the license was granted exclusively to a for-profit company. Once again, just six years ago, our leaders prioritized profit over protecting the lives of the world’s most vulnerable. We must find solutions to many problems, whether they are profitable or not. Isn’t that what decency demands?

But there are other examples of morally questionable market distortions, such as the global food system. We produce more than enough calories to feed the entire world, yet nearly eight out of every ten hectares of the world’s farmland is used to fatten meat for the wealthy and their pets. Unlike these beloved pets, 2.4 billion people suffer from food insecurity (one in three people), and 150 million children suffer from stunted growth due to malnutrition. Yet, the grains grown for biofuels could "feed 1.9 billion people every year."

This avalanche of avoidable suffering is compounded by the atrocities of stock market speculation. Some of the world's wealthiest individuals and institutions (such as hedge fund managers or the endowments of prestigious universities) gamble on food commodity markets. The end result is that greedy predators enrich themselves by depriving the world's poorest babies of food.

Researchers have demonstrated, for example, that between 2007 and 2010, the increase in global grain stocks would have been enough to feed 440 million people for a year. This grain was hoarded rather than consumed due to speculation. Half of the five million annual deaths of children under five worldwide are due to malnutrition. Such speculation on food prices is akin to a "white-collar war crime" in which criminals in suits enrich themselves by committing murder remotely through markets (these crimes, moreover, continue in peacetime).

To clearly understand why we cannot rely solely on markets to establish morally justified collective priorities, one need only consider the UN estimate that the cost of eradicating world hunger amounts to $93 billion per year. Yet, annual global spending on ice cream amounts to $120 billion, on cosmetics $490 billion, and on landscaping $600 billion. Is this choice of priorities dictated by the economic market ethical?

Wallace-Wells doesn't address frankly enough the question of whether, in the context of an ever-worsening climate crisis, the pro-market orientations of our current political class will be less morally reprehensible than those of the corrupt viceroys or the proponents of "vaccine apartheid" mentioned above. To assess the risks, let's examine the position of his colleague Ezra Klein on climate change.

In an opinion piece entitled "Your Children Are Not Doomed," Klein clearly expresses his moral concern about the fate of the world's poor: "We will have plundered the future of billions of people to satisfy our present appetites." He clearly perceives the dilemma between the basic needs of the poorest and the comforts of our lifestyle, but ultimately believes that their suffering cannot be allowed to hinder a "policy of ever-increasing consumption." More specifically, this is aimed at his readership, drawn from the global elite who possess substantial resources (the median income in the United States places Americans in the "93rd percentile worldwide," and a large majority of New York Times readers earn far more than this median income). Restricting the consumption of the wealthiest could mitigate the harm suffered by the poorest globally, but for Klein, lifestyle constraints would constitute a politically unrealistic "sacrifice."

Parallels can be drawn between these priorities and those of the villains described in *Late Victorian Holocausts*, most of whom called themselves liberals, pursued pro-market policies, and placed profit or self-interest before alleviating the suffering of people considered, in reality, disposable. Thus, these old-school liberals of *The Economist* wrote that it was unwise to encourage “the lazy Indians […] [to believe] that it is the duty of the government to keep them alive.” Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, asserted: “It is a mistake to spend money to save a bunch of Negroes.”

Meanwhile, many ordinary Britons were appalled. *The Times of London* lamented that “the Viceroy has intervened to suppress the impulses of charity.” A relief fund was established thanks to millions of small contributions, which Viceroy Lord Lytton described as a “real nuisance.” Even today, the risk of such a gap between popular decency and elite cruelty remains.

Life expectancy in Nigeria is fifty-four years, which is only 3% of the average Briton’s “life expectancy of resources.”

Generally speaking, Klein is concerned, commendably, with suffering he considers morally revolting. But he seems to pay more attention to the plight of chickens or hypothetical digital beings of the future than to the climate devastation threatening poor populations worldwide.

It may be difficult to accept, but carbon budgets have limits, and our consumption choices, when they are not carbon-neutral, exacerbate climate damage. This severely tests the liberal principle of non-harm. Are we free to continue engaging in consumption that increases the burden on the planet's most vulnerable populations? Certainly not. Liberals who claim to uphold humanitarian values ​​should act accordingly. Otherwise, they reveal their true tactical priorities: they only appear altruistic when they stand to gain something. This benevolence without reciprocation is neither genuine nor generous nor noble.

Klein’s use of economic vocabulary in his moral reasoning is revealing: “The suffering [of farm animals] is not factored into the price of meat.” Fine, but much of human misery is also not “factored into” the typical lifestyle of New York Times readers. To define the global resource elite, one could refer to those in the top 10% of global income (over $66,000). Is there an acceptable price to pay for the shorter, more impoverished lives of the world’s poorest people? Life expectancy in Nigeria is 54 years (2024), which is only 3% of the “lifespan resource expectancy” of the average Briton (their former colonial oppressor).

Meanwhile, the wealthiest 1% of the world’s population, readers of The New York Times, earn in nine days more money than the poorest 1% will earn in their entire lifetime. Approximately 7.2 billion people live below—and I mean far, far below—the U.S. federal poverty line ($43.70 a day). For comparison, the global median income is about $7.60 per person per day. This means that four billion people live on less than one-fifth of the U.S. poverty line. These colossal resource injustices are rooted in persistent colonial and racial disparities and fail to account for the future climate impacts (on those least responsible).

The Dark Side of Progress

Once again, markets can accomplish wonders that would be foolish to ignore. But relying primarily on markets is often not at all the appropriate way to fulfill one’s moral obligations. Worse still, conflating market logic with moral logic leads to blatant and immoral distortions, prioritizing a supposed solidarity that guarantees we benefit (this is the dark side of certain so-called “win-win” approaches).

According to the latest Global Inequality Report, financial flows from poor to rich countries “represent roughly three times the amount of development aid.” And 3.4 billion people live in countries where external debt servicing exceeds spending on health or education. This is not a moral form of “assistance.” It is staggering selfishness. And since it perpetuates avoidable suffering, it can hardly be called benevolence.

As historian Priya Satia writes, many colonizers sincerely believed they were doing good by carrying out a “civilizing mission,” but it was actually a form of “consciousness management.” Today, a similarly fallacious argument is to present markets as an effective way to reduce global poverty. This claim contains a tiny grain of truth, but the reality is that it is a pernicious and self-serving illusion. Global extreme poverty has decreased, but the threshold used is roughly one-twentieth of the US poverty line; therefore, this is not something to celebrate unreservedly.

Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty, states that with current market-driven methods, “it will take 200 years to eliminate poverty below the $5-a-day threshold.” It would take eight generations to bring the world’s poor down to one-eighth of the American poverty line (and many more centuries to fully catch up). Is this morally acceptable progress? Should we really celebrate it, as one World Bank president did, calling it “one of humanity’s greatest achievements”?

The picture becomes even bleaker when we compare our own individual gains with those of the world’s poor. We are encouraged to believe that we all somehow have a right to improve our standard of living, as if this were a sacred principle of our politics. But is this really a morally defensible position, given the extremely unequal distribution of resources, as evidenced by the recent increase in average annual earnings of $4,178 for the top decile of the world’s population, while the bottom decile receives only $9.25 in additional income per year?

Under our current approach, the already wealthy earn 450 times more than the poorest (the ratio of annual income gains for the richest 1% to those for the poorest 10% is two thousand to one). And this much-vaunted progress in the fight against poverty, thanks to global trickle-down effects, is so minimal that we could double it if people in the top decile reduced their consumption by just one glass of cheap wine at a restaurant or two cups of office coffee per year (if these funds could be redistributed globally).

None of this makes moral sense, even though even small-scale global redistribution would make a considerable difference. However, the inherent moral ugliness remains largely obscured. Klein and Wallace-Wells, as leading proponents of a supposedly benevolent liberalism, should reconsider its moral implications, given these glaring, gigantic, and dehumanizing disparities.

I noted earlier that Davis used the terms “theological” and “sacred” to describe how 19th-century liberals viewed markets. It is instructive to consider what today’s liberals regard as equally inviolable. As Marlene Laruelle, a scholar of illiberal regimes, recently wrote, the success of post-liberal politics may well “bring to light the implicit theology inherent in liberalism.” As Laruelle observes, “Liberal orders, too, rest on sacred commitments: the equal moral worth of persons, the dignity of conscience […] or whatever other element liberals would like to define as essential.”

The ecological burden imposed on the most vulnerable and on future generations is on the verge of becoming “the greatest injustice in history.”

One sometimes gets the impression that, for many liberals, nothing is sacred except improving their own standard of living. John Locke, a precursor of liberalism, foresaw the dangers of considering only oneself sacred. He wrote in his journal that man “would be a god unto himself, and that the satisfaction of his own will would be the sole measure and the sole end of all his actions.” Locke rejects this idea as contrary to reason, because we do, in fact, have moral obligations. But what obligations do today’s liberals recognize beyond improving their own lifestyles? Where does Klein stand regarding climate trade-offs?

The ecological burden imposed on the most vulnerable and on future generations is on the verge of becoming “the greatest injustice in history,” as Dr. James Hansen, a former NASA climatologist, writes. It's a staggering claim, considering the horrors and atrocities of history, but it's plausible. Fossil fuels are already causing damage today on a scale comparable to that of the transatlantic slave trade or the Holocausts (Nazi and colonial). The UN estimates the total number of slaves who were victims of the slave trade at fifteen million (and this doesn't account for all the damage, such as that suffered by their descendants), but researchers estimate that air pollution from fossil fuels alone kills five million people worldwide each year.

The reliability of these estimates isn't so crucial, since it's not millions of people, but billions who will be affected by the sheer scale of the chaos caused by the failure to reduce carbon emissions quickly enough. Davis estimates that famines in India, caused by British policy, resulted in between twelve and twenty-nine million deaths (a figure exceeding the six million victims of the Nazi Holocaust), but this number will likely also pale in comparison to the devastating effects of climate change.

One of the main aims of Davis’s book was to warn against narratives that glorify the market. We must heed this lesson as we confront the major moral challenge of our time, which clearly pits improving our lifestyles and comfort against ensuring the survival, security, and dignity of the world’s poor. If we allow markets, price speculation, government inaction, and our comfort to shape climate policy and individual action (though both are undeniably necessary), future historians will likely accuse us of profiting from our monstrous immorality. To avoid this, we will need powerful non-market means that allow us to act in a decent manner.

Jag Bhalla is an author specializing in science, technology, and the history of ideas. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Source: Jacobin, Jag Bhalla, May 27, 2026

Translated by readers of the website Les-Crises

TRANSLATED BTY JULES LETAMBOUR

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