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Quote by: bishop growth is never constant, therefore any assumption/theory based on constant growth is moot. also, economic activity/growth does not necessarily cause more pollution, inequality, wars, etc... the swedish economy has grown and they are one of the most equal (as far as capitalist states are concerned) nation in the world. they are also very anti-war, and donate heavily towards humanitarian charities. in other countries with a) less sympathetic leadership or b) corrupt leadership, you will see inequality and wars.. pollution is usually related to how developed a country is at the point of analysis. most advanced economies are decreasing pollution while their economies grow. |
To play the devil's advocate a little:
I think his point was more that the entire world experiences these consequences, not individual economies. for example, it hasn't actually been shown that there's an environmental kuznets curve for carbon dioxide (a curve that shows a decrease in pollution after a certain level of income), because no country has ever reached the projected "turn-around" point where emissions start decreasing, so this global warming gas, that affects everyone, hasn't been shown to decline after economies grow beyond a certain point.
Adittionally, there's been very little success with projects for economic growth in some sub-saharan african countries, largely because of the corruption in government, and maybe because of cultural barriers, as bf_diehl's posted article stated, value as "god" defines it, or as different cultures define it, varies, so maybe those countries are just feeling a lot of externalities from everyone elses activity, because of a different sense of what's "valuable". We have a global economy, so you can't just disregard effects on these developing counrties.