Economics and Ecological Policy

Abstract

In a certain respect, industrial economies are performing very well nowadays. Economic growth is in many Western countries about 3%. Despite this (monetary) success story, the ecological performance of our economies is worrisome. Pezzey recapitulated the general ecological (and social) tendencies of ongoing industrialisation as follows:

• a) rapid depletion of renewable natural resources (e.g. forests, fish, land and sea mammals);

• b) rapid depletion of known reserves of non-renewable energy and minerals, although new discoveries and new extraction techniques have so far avoided any decline in availability;

• c) rapid depletion of non-renewable stocks of genetic diversity (see Wilson 1988) and soil;

• d) severe problems of local, transient pollution in industrialising countries;

• e) steadily growing problems of cumulative pollution, both regional and global, principally acid rain, ozone depletion, and the

• f) accumulation of greenhouse gases such as CO₂ which are likely to cause global warming (Cline 1991);

• g) wide, and recently growing, inequalities between rich and poor nations (UNDP 1992); and greatly increased rates of change in most areas of life [...] (Pezzey 1992, 330–331).