Counsel for Getting There - Economics and Ecology: United for a Sustainable World - page 172

Con : Clearly, no incumbent politician is totally responsible for either a
growing or the stagnant economy, despite the unfortunate superfici-
ality that inference implies for our election processes. Environment
and a host of other important issues are ignored because of the
obsession with economics. Materialism and greed allow taxes to be
effectively billed as a waste of our private purchasing power rather
than the wherewithal to purchase vital necessities. The thoughtful
citizen is turned off, and many others become myopic, single-issue
voters. Better public education and universal health coverage take a
back seat and presumably await an improved economy so that we
can afford these basic human necessities—even though, like the
Growth Ethic, we never seem to get there.
In short, pervasiveness of the Growth Ethic in our politics leads
to misplaced priorities, superficiality, lack of participation and
interest in the act of choosing our elected leaders, and height-
ened cultural conflict as inequality worsens. Campaigns become
strident battles marked by meaningless sound bites, instead of
thoughtful arenas for periodic public debate on cultural priorities.
This said, the universally recognized effects of money in politics
are a direct result of the emphasis on materialism and continual
growth, and dramatically threaten nature's ecological services on
which we all depend and the unencumbered democratic equity
they allow.
Environment
Pro : Any arguments that linear growth is good for the environment
require a strictly “mitigation” frame of mind. In other words, the
fact that ecosystems become degraded under economic competi-
tion requires that we mend what is broken, nurture the processes
that serve us, and maintain their productive capacity for future
generations. Of course, this obligation requires a certain amount of
monetary capital. Little can be said about advantages for the environ-
ment under a mandate of continual economic growth, because such
a mandate is based on the tacit assumption that we cannot really
harm a natural system and thus will never run out of some needed
resource. Therefore, economic growth conveniently ignores any and
all environmental consequences. Nevertheless, the fact is that we
have no choice but to alter the environment in securing our living
simply because we exist and use energy. And we have a right to do
so. But, how and why we alter the environment, the level of con-
sciousness we display in how we treat nature, is altogether a differ-
ent issue—and is a matter of choice.