Tag Archives: environmental conservation
More Dollars for Conservation?
So, environmental conservation must be the primary goal, and economic well-being depends on it – not the other way round.
That last phrase refers to the spurious argument that economic “progress” as currently understood, i.e., increasing throughput of wealth, provides money which can be spent on conserving the environment. … Read more
Living Standard and Quality of Life
Another indirect adverse effect of environmental degradation on economic well-being arises from the effect of the degradation on people’s perception of their economic condition.
A further illustration of the erroneously perceived conflict between environmental conservation and economic well-being lies in this frequent reaction to some piece of environmental devastation: “Oh, well, at least it creates jobs for some people who wouldn’t have one otherwise.”
Certainly the degradation will keep some people busy for a while, but because of the depletion of the resource on which their jobs depend, there will be a net loss of jobs. … Read more
Digression: Pollution Red Herrings
Litter “Pollution”: A misleading idea, started when environmental awareness really took off world-wide in the late 1960′s and early 1970′s, is that “pollution” means “litter” and that preventing litter means doing all that’s necessary to prevent pollution and protect the environment. … Read more
Global Warming – A Red Herring?
The Australian Government has recently announced revised, reduced targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. There has been some objection to this but it should not really be surprising.
Governments around the world have shown that they just don’t get it. … Read more
Left, Right and The Environment
Another misleading idea used to be that capitalism and communism represented opposite extremes, opposite poles of economic theory and practice.
Proponents of communism used to believe, inter alia, that if only the world were communist there would be no more environmental degradation, no more pollution, no more problems in that area. … Read more
Environment versus Economic Progress
The fierce conflicts between conservationists on one side and workers, industrialists, and some politicians on the other arise from a misconception.
Both parties in fact desire the same goal – economic well-being. But the latter and many of the former believe that environmental conservation and economic progress are conflicting aims, between which a balance or compromise must be found. … Read more