The Environment We Want: Optimality or Sustainability?

Abstract

Damage to the environment is clearly undesirable. Why not stop it? While this might seem to be an attractive objective, in practice it is not realistic. As we saw in Chapter 1, environmental impacts are pervasive. All activities require energy and materials, and usually both, and so they emit waste energy and produce residuals. These emissions into the environment must have some sort of impact on it. If we take the view that all environmental impacts should be stopped then we would have to stop all forms of production. Rather then, we want to stop those environmental impacts that are in some sense harmful. This requires a judgement as to which impacts are regarded as harmful and which are not.