A book about sustainability and how not to screw the ecosystem. Available only in hardback edition.
No one denies that development is essential for poorer nations. But in the advanced economies there is mounting evidence that ever-increasing consumption adds little to human happiness and may even impede it. More urgently, it is now clear that the ecosystems that sustain our economies are collapsing under the impacts of rising consumption. Unless we can radically lower the environmental impact of economic activity – and there is no evidence to suggest that we can – we will have to devise a path to prosperity that does not rely on continued growth.
Umm, lessee. There is evidence that a higher level of consumption doesn\’t do much for human happiness, this is true. There\’s also shitloads of evidence that rising levels of consumption do a great deal for human happiness.
It is also true that we have environmental proble4ms: CO2 emissions being one. But this is not the same as \”ecosystems collapsing under impacts of rising consumption\”. This is simply a need for us to change our methods of energy generation.
We do know how to lower the environmental impact of economic activity: we\’ve been doing it for century upon century. We\’ve been raising productivity of resource use (the amount of economy we get from the use of any or even all resources) ever since we started to use tools.
Finally, if we define \”prosperity\” as the enjoyment of a world of wealth (which it is and seems a reasonable definition) and the current world as one with insufficient wealth to be enjoyed (those billions of poor for example) then there is no possibility of prosperity without further economic growth.
The man\’s a twat.