Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
distributive inequality. Growth cannot possibly increase everyone's relative
income. We cannot all be above average - unlike the children of Lake Wobegon.
There is a degree of inequality that is legitimate and in accord with a larger
concept of fairness and incentives, but also there is a degree beyond which
further inequality destroys community and social cohesion, as well as undermining
incentive to work.
(Daly, 2002: 48)
Daly (2007) suggests that the growing acceptance of anthropogenic climate change
has stimulated a sense of public urgency, but decision-makers still ask the wrong
questions and consequently get the wrong answers. They ask 'What will be the
economic damage inflicted by global warming?' 'How much will the costs of abatement
be compared with expenditures?' And 'What will the discount rates be?' This leads
to uncertainty, because the fine detail is not easily knowable. Instead, they should
ask some fundamental questions based on first principles. For instance, can we
systematically continue to increasingly emit CO
2
and other greenhouse gases into
the atmosphere without causing unacceptable climate change? The answer is more
certain. It is no. His next question is simple: What is causing us to do this? The
answer is unequivocal: our commitment to exponential economic growth. These
questions and answers imply fairly obvious policy options: heavily tax carbon
extraction and compensate by lightly taxing income, which would produce climate
stability and public revenue. Thus, although the uncertainties engendered by complex
empirical measurements and predictions would not disappear, 'setting policy in accord
with first principles allows us to act now without getting mired in endless delays'
and hesitations (Daly, 2007: 19).
Paul Ekins (2000) also explores economic growth and its relationship to environ-
mental sustainability. He identifies four types of growth:
•
growth of the economy's biophysical throughput;
•
growth of monetary or non-monetary production (GDP, GNP);
•
growth of economic welfare measured by consumption and negative production
feedbacks - for example, environmental destruction or erosion of community;
and
•
environmental growth measured by increases in natural capital through regenera-
tion of ecosystem services.
Growth needs to be distinguished from development and welfare. The relationship
between GNP growth and sustainable development is highly complex and not at all
obvious, as perhaps exemplified in the debate over the negative climate impacts of
flying and the insistence that aviation is a key to national and regional economic
growth. The arguments are further complicated when environmental sustainability
and economic development are linked to notions of lifestyle, and the standard and
quality of life of present and future generations. Costs and benefits and decisions
about 'trade-offs' shape the discussion. As Ekins (2000: 82) notes, 'sustainability
guarantees certain life opportunities in the future at the cost of the modification or
sacrifice of life opportunities in the present'. The difficulty is deciding on what trade-
offs and how many. So, with this in mind, and by developing the work of Herman
Daly, Ekins (2000: 95-6) formulates a set of sustainability principles upon which
such decisions could be based:
