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Impacts- Econ Bad- Environment
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Impacts- Econ Bad- EnvironmentEconomic growth causes environment degradation making environmental regulations irrelevant Booth 95 (Douglas E., professor of economics at Marquette University, 1995, Review of Social Economy, Vol. 54) After a quarter century of environmental regulation in this country under the auspices of the Environmental Protection Agency and other government agencies, significant environmental threats remain. Ambient standards for ozone and other air pollutants are frequently violated in urban areas, lakes and rivers continue to be heavily polluted, groundwater is increasingly threatened with contamination, ambient levels of toxic chemicals in the biotic food chain are at high levels, little has been done about the potentially serious problem of greenhouse warming, and biodiversity is threatened as a consequence of reduced and fragmented natural habitats. Why has the regulatory system failed to fully address our environmental problems? The goal of this paper is to suggest that the roots of environmental problems, and the failure of environmental regulation, are deeply embedded in the processes that generate economic growth. The logic of the argument to be presented will take the following form: long-run economic growth relies on the creation of new industries and new forms of economic activity; these new forms of economic activity create new kinds of environmental problems; and new forms of economic activity constitute vested political interests that oppose environmental regulation. Each of the three main sections of the paper will provide theoretical and empirical justification for each component part of the basic argument. Impacts- Econ Bad- EnvironmentEconomic increase can cause a decrease in the environment Ravenswaay 99 (Eileen O. van, Michigan State University, , https://www.msu.edu/course/eep/255/relationship_between_the_economy_and_the_environment.htm, ) One troubling fact should be apparent from the last few paragraphs. While it is true that the more developed economic system produces more goods and services for more people, some of the goods and services it produces are merely substitutes for ones that are no longer provided by the undeveloped or natural environment. Consequently, the total amount and variety of goods produced by the economy do not necessarily indicate whether people are getting more goods and more needs are being met. The quality and quantity of goods that would have been produced by the natural environment, but are no longer being produced because of the transformation of that system, must be subtracted to be able to say whether more people are better off. For example, suppose a population in a particular territory moves from a hunter-gatherer economic system to an agrarian one. The latter system provides more food, but at the expense of food that would have been available for hunting and gathering anyway. Thus, some food the agrarian system produces simply substitutes for food that would have been available naturally if the natural ecosystem were intact. This part of the output of the agrarian system should not be counted as a net gain from having adopted that system. Likewise, water purification systems established in an industrial system may produce the same amount of drinking water that would have been available naturally in the hunter-gatherer system. The only reason the industrial system has to purify the water is because it has become contaminated with sewage, agricultural runoff, and industrial wastes. Thus, the water produced by the purification system is not a net gain over what would have been available in the hunter-gatherer system. The loss of the naturally available drinking water is a cost of the more developed economic system. Another troubling fact apparent from the paragraphs above is that the more developed economy produces more goods only by using and degrading more matter and energy. Consequently, more economic development means more transformation of the natural environmental system. Is it possible to develop the economic system without harming the environment? Answering this question requires an understanding of how economic development occurs. In other words, we need to understand how a population in a given territory develops its economic system so that it can produce and consume more goods and satisfy more needs and wants of its people. Economic Development and Environmental Improvement The basic way an economy develops is actually very simple. Namely, people can consume more and better goods only if they produce more and better goods. Thus, economic development requires either increasing output per worker (i.e., labor productivity) or expanding the resource base available to workers. Output per worker is increased by developing manufactured capital (e.g., tools, machines, buildings, structures, knowledge and social institutions), creating new technologies, and training people how to use the capital to produce goods. The resource base is expanded by enlarging the territory (e.g., acquiring new land), discovering more about the resource base within the existing territory (e.g., exploring for minerals or discovering new types of matter), or trading with other territories. Unfortunately, increasing output per worker and the size of the resource base, not only increases the quantity and quality of goods available per person. It also increases the amount of matter, energy, and space used by the economic system. This means more environmental damage. Fortunately, there is a way to address this problem because it is also possible to increase the productivity of energy and matter used in the economy. One strategy is to recycle resources within the economic system so that fewer virgin resources must be extracted from the environment and fewer degraded materials are discharged into the environment. A second strategy called dematerialization is to invent new technologies which use and degrade less matter and energy. A third way to increase natural resource productivity is to invent technologies that utilize less polluting resources. This strategy is known as material substitution. A fourth strategy known as waste mining involves finding new uses for waste materials. Increasing natural resource productivity requires investments similar to those for increasing labor productivity. New types of capital and labor must be developed. New systems must be devised to collect and process used materials. Ways of using these recycled materials to produce goods must also be found. Energy-efficient methods for recycling and producing goods must be developed. New materials and production technologies must be found. New ways of locating and siting production facilities also need to be developed. The key to achieving economic development while protecting the environment is improving both labor and natural resource productivity. But many people believe there is another key as well, and that is limiting population size. If population increases, total output of goods and services must increase or per capita consumption must fall. But increasing output means more energy and matter must be extracted from the environment. Improvements in natural resource productivity may slow the rate of extraction over time, but inevitably more people means more extraction. This course focuses on developing productivity gains, not population control. Download 0.75 Mb. Share with your friends:
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