A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
technologyreview.com
A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
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Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#2It's long been known that businesses that produce a lot of waste have lower profits. This is a large part of why businesses try to combat fraud, waste and abuse: For their financial health.
http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding-less-...
I guess it's nice to see this well-known fact applied at a broader level. I haven't seen that before.
But it also makes me feel a bit like "We're dummies, no?" What pretty much everyone knows to be true at the micro level shouldn't be some kind of big news at the macro level, yet it is because everyone thinks capitalism is ruining the planet.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#3Makes sense:
when a country has an industrial revolution it just wants to grow fast.
Then when the extreme growth part passes it starts to stabilize: this is when the country & the people start doing well enough so that they can look at other issues (environmental impact) without having to sacrifice their livelihoods.
The human will always prioritize his own and his families livelihood. Only once that is stable can one afford to look at the impact.
If you're poor and can hardly afford basic stuff for your children you obviously won't care about the environment, it's last thing on your mind.
And if anyone writes "yeah but even poor people should care": no, that is not how human nature works. First you & your family, only then everything else.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#4It's long been known that businesses that produce a lot of waste have lower profits. This is a large part of why businesses try to combat fraud, waste and abuse : For their financial health. http://archive.knoxnews.com/business/companies-finding-less-... I guess it's nice to see this well-known fact applied at a broader level. I haven't seen that before. But it also makes me feel a bit like "We're dummies, no?" What…
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Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#5Because rich countries brings their products from somewhere else, they don't have to produce them, they don't have to deal with the environmental impact of producing them.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#6Because rich countries brings their products from somewhere else, they don't have to produce them, they don't have to deal with the environmental impact of producing them.
That’s a myth, the US (and Canada, Germany, etc) still does tons of manufacturing and mining locally.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#7It brings this up in the article, but I have a very difficult time believing this isn't just because rich countries have shifted manufacturing and mining to poor countries. Look at recycling. We all thought we were so environmentally aware by recycling, but turns out so much "recycling" was just "ship to poor countries to deal with the fallout".
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#8I recently finished Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker and this exact point was made in that book. I'll paraphrase a salient quote from the book: poverty is the greatest polluter.
Intuitively this makes great sense: when you're eking out a subsistence living you're not going to care about the environment, but when resources are plenty you can afford to consider other living things too.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#9> The book... says there are four main forces... that enable decoupling in mature economies:
> * the efficiencies driven by capitalism
> * technological progress that has allowed us to “dematerialize” our consumption (by, for instance, cramming atlases, compasses, calculators, recorders, cameras, stereos, and other gadgets into a single device in our pocket)
> * public awareness of environmental damage
> * governments that respond to those concerns by putting regulations in place to reduce those harms
> So, McAfee argues, what we need to address climate change and prevent other environmental catastrophes, while maintaining modern living standards for billions of people, is … even more of each of these [four forces], working in concert.
Re: A new book asserts that rich countries grow with lighter environmental impacts
#10> The book... says there are four main forces... that enable decoupling in mature economies: > * the efficiencies driven by capitalism > * technological progress that has allowed us to “dematerialize” our consumption (by, for instance, cramming atlases, compasses, calculators, recorders, cameras, stereos, and other gadgets into a single device in our pocket) > * public awareness of environmental damage > * government…
There currently seems to be a big hole in this approach, which is that rich jurisdictions need to be aligned with poorer ones to work in concert toward these goals, otherwise rich jurisdictions can just “pretend” they’re meeting goals when they’re just moving them to poor jurisdictions.