How Do Our Actions Undermine Nature?

Abstract

The global growth experience since the end of the Second World War has given us two conflicting messages. On the one hand, if we look at the state of the biosphere (fresh water, ocean fisheries, the atmosphere as a carbon sink-more generally, ecosystems), there is strong evidence that the rates at which we are utilizing them are unsustainable. For example, the rate of biological extinctions globally today is 10-1000 times the average rate over the past several million years (the “background rate”). The mid-twentieth century years are acknowledged to have been the beginnings of an era that environmental scientists now call the Anthropocene (Vosen, 2016), during which the processes that define the biosphere are being altered enormously (see Waters et al. 2016). On the other hand, it is argued by many that just as previous generations in the West and (and more recently in the Far East) invested in science and technology, education, and machines and equipment so as to bequeath to the present generation the ability to achieve high living standards, we in turn can make investments that would assure still higher living standards in the future. In 1950, global income per capita was approximately 3500 international dollars (at 2011 prices) and world population was about 2.5 billion. In 2015, the corresponding figures were 15, 000 international dollars and 7.5 billion. A somewhat-greater-than 12-fold increase in global income over a 65-year period is unprecedented, that too starting at a 3500 international dollars base. The years immediately following the Second World War are routinely praised by commentators for being the start of the Golden Age of Capitalism (Micklethwait and Wooldridge (2000), Ridley (2010), Norberg (2016), and Pinker (2017) are a sample of books with that message). We should not be surprised that the Anthropocene and the Golden Age of Capitalism began at about the same time. We should also not be surprised that the conflicting signals of the 65 years following 1950, particularly the potentially irreversible changes to the biosphere, do not receive much airing by economic commentators. That is because contemporary models of economic growth and development (e.g. Helpman, 2004) largely ignore their damaging impacts on the workings of the biosphere.