Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet by Kerryn Higgs

Author:Kerryn Higgs [Higgs, Kerryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Environmental Economics, Econometrics, Environmental Science, Environmental Policy
ISBN: 9780262320924
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2014-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

For the next two decades, this strategy was immensely successful in economic terms, even if biologists progressively sounded warnings of its ecological costs. Osborn and Vogt (see chapter 3) were worried about the impact of such growth on the biosphere as early as 1948. Vogt explicitly identified the adoption of economic expansion as an “article of economic faith” that would exhaust minerals and jeopardize soils, water, forests, grasslands, and wildlife.96 It was into this ebullient first world bonanza that The Limits to Growth was launched in 1972, so it is perhaps unsurprising that the reception from professional economists, described in chapter 4, was not favorable.

Having established well-organized and well-rehearsed PR machinery to sell the private enterprise system, the business community was equipped to confront the gathering resistance to widespread environmental damage and to counteract the debate about the risks of untrammeled growth. It moved on to this next battle by generating hundreds of free enterprise think tanks, staffed largely by economists. Alongside already entrenched patterns of buying influence over the public and the Congress, business interests now had their own alternative academia, well-funded institutions that could challenge and then counter the voices of scientists and concerned citizens.

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