In this chapter we tear through three more land-related themes. We discuss transport because in addition to the carbon emissions it produces, land is something we travel across, around, over and occasionally beneath to reach the places that matter to us. We discuss flood risks because as the world warms, land is increasingly subject to coastal, fluvial and pluvial flooding. How we adapt to those risks clearly affects the wellbeing of people who live and work in flood-prone areas, particularly the poorest. And we discuss waste because ours is a throwaway society that burns or buries its detritus on or within the land, affecting the health of those who live near incinerators, landfills and similar facilities.

Our dash through these themes will probably deny the topics the full attention each deserves, but it will enable our understanding of how and why climate change and poverty are increasingly interrelated to expand. The following sections review some recent debates, presenting and discussing the most relevant research. We then return to the thesis of rent-seeking and positional racing, pondering whether and to what extent the issues of transport, flooding and waste disposal can and should be understood in those terms.

Transport, poverty and social exclusion

Our principal concepts are as interrelated as ever (Cahill, M., 2010). Lucas and Currie (2012, p 155; cf Lucas, 2011) define ‘transport-related social exclusion’ as affecting people,

Not everyone who experiences ‘transport social exclusion’ will be socially excluded in other respects, and it is possible to be socially excluded while suffering no or few transport problems. Overall, however, transport-related exclusion will significantly reduce one's ability to access jobs, healthcare, education and crucial social activities, and that reduced participation will, in turn, affect one's transport experiences.

For Hine, ‘transport poverty’ implies a deprivation in accessibility and mobility that reinforces, and is reinforced by, other key deprivations. Mobility implies the ‘ability to get around’ while accessibility is more about the ‘get-at-able properties of a place’ (Hine, 2008, p 50).