WHO GETS TO ADAPT? Environmental Elites, Blue Collar Communities, and the Growing Climate Divide - : How Privilege Shapes Environmental Protection and ... Education, Adaptation and Flourishing)

5 Star Review

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Editorial Book Review:

By Dar Dowling

Robert William Collin opens with a line that does not waste a single word: this book will make those with privilege feel uncomfortable. That is not a provocation. It is a warning label, and he means it literally. The discomfort he is describing is not the vague kind that washes off after a good night's sleep. It is the specific, structural discomfort of recognizing that the systems built to protect the environment have been quietly sorting people by wealth and power for decades, and that climate change is now making that sorting visible in ways that can no longer be explained away.

The central concept Collin introduces, environmental elitism, is not a rhetorical flourish. It is a precise analytical category describing the concentration of climate decision-making power in the hands of government agencies, large nonprofits, universities, and the finance and real estate sector. These institutions are not villainous. They are, as Collin carefully notes, often genuinely well-intentioned. But the social structures they operate within do not allow for the recognition of their own privilege, and the result is a climate adaptation framework that increasingly protects those who need it least while leaving blue-collar workers, renters, and rural communities to absorb the full cost of heat, floods, wildfires, and retreating insurance markets alone.

The distinction Collin draws between resilience and flourishing is the book's most important intellectual contribution. Resilience, he argues, is about absorbing shocks and returning to baseline. Flourishing is about something more ambitious: social adaptations that genuinely improve people's health, dignity, and opportunity. The first goal is what the environmental elite has been building for itself. The second is what the book argues everyone deserves and nobody is currently building for the communities that need it most.

What gives the book its real force is Collin's four decades of work across law, social work, and urban planning, including appointments to advisory commissions by three governors and three presidents. This is not theoretical argument. It is a lifetime of watching the machinery of environmental policy operate up close and finally naming what he saw.

Kirkus called it timely and well-versed in the nuances of environmental justice. It is both, and it is also one of the most necessary books in the current climate conversation.

About the Author

Robert William Collin

Robert W. Collin is an award-winning author and teacher, legal scholar, urban planner, social worker, and longtime environmental justice advocate whose pioneering works explores climate change, sustainability, environmental policy and the communities most affected by environmental change.

For over four decades, Collin has combined scholarship with hands on environmental policy and justice. He has taught at Hunter College, Cleveland State University, the University of Virginia, Jackson State University, University of Auckland, NZ, the University of Oregon, Willamette School of Law, and Lewis and Clarke School of Law. His interdisciplinary background spans law, urban planning, social work, environmental studies and public policy. He is the author or co-author of numerous books and reference works. His recent climate trilogy includes Climate Change in the Classroom: Celebrating Optimism, The Climate Adaptation Generation: A Blueprint for the Future, and Who Gets to Adapt? Environmental Elites, Blue Colar Communities, and the Climate Divide. 

Collin's climate books have more than 230 reader rating across Amazon and Good reads averaging about 4.7 out of 5 stars. He currently ranks about in the top 2% in ratings of environmental nonfiction writers. His recent publications in the climate trilogy have received the International Impact Award, a Nautilus Book Award Silver Award, the National Evergreen Book Awards, and Pen Craft awards runner up recognition. Who Gets to Adapt? received a strong review from Kirkus Reviews emphasizing to "To Get It". and focused on how wealth, occupation, geography, and political and economic power influence who receives protection from climate change and who gets left behind. His early books include The EPA; Cleaning Up America's Act, Battleground: Environment (2 vol), Encyclopedia of Sustainability (3 vol) Robin Morris Collin Coauthor, Energy Choices (2 vol) Robin Morris Collin coeditor, Trask Talk: Waste and Recycling Globally. He has published extensively in law, environmental policy, planning, sustainability, and environmental justice. 

His teaching awards include the Thomas Jefferson Award from the University of Virginia, the Distinguished Faculty Award from the Z society (1993) and the Environmental Citizen Award and Mortar Board Professor of the Month from the University of Oregon. 

His community work was recognized by the Monticello Community Action Agency, Charlottesville, VA; with many certificates of appreciation from many community people. He helped form the first Environmental Justice state Agency and served on its board all 11 years. It received a trophy from the EPA for its EJ work. Collin published a law review on it contemporaneously. 

Across his work Collin was often the first to write about a controversial topic in the genre of publication. He approaches Nature and climate change as practical realities rather than partisan ones. His book combines solid scholarship with real world tools and approaches for students, educators, planners, policymakers, workers, families and communities seeking practical ways to adapt and to flourish.