As your worldview implies, humanity has learned how to create an economy-driven paradise. Yes again – but only on an infinitely large and malleable planet. It should be obvious to you that Earth is finite and its environment increasingly brittle. No one should look to GNPs and corporate annual reports for a competent projection of the world’s long-term economic future.

To the information there, if we are to understand the real world, must be added the research reports of natural-resource specialists and ecological economists. They are the experts who seek an accurate balance sheet, one that includes a full accounting of the costs to the planet incurred by economic growth.”This new breed of analyst argues that we can no longer afford to ignore the dependency of the economy and social progress on the environmental resource base. It is the content of economic growth, with natural resources factored in, that counts in the long term, not just the yield in products and currency. A country that levels its forests, drains its aquifers, and washes its topsoil downriver without measuring the cost is a country travelling blind It faces a shaky economic future. It suffers the same delusion as the one that destroyed the whaling industry. As harvesting and processing techniques were improved, the annual catch of whales rose, and the industry flourished. But the whale populations declined in equal measure until they were depleted.

Several species, including the blue whale, the largest animal species in the history of Earth, came close to extinction Whereupon most whaling was called to a halt. Extend that argument to falling ground water, drying rivers, and shrinking per-capita arable land, and you get the picture.”Suppose that the conventionally measured global economic output, now at about $31 trillion, were to expand at a healthy three per cent annually By 2050, it would in theory reach $138 trillion. With only a small levelling adjustment of this income, the entire world population would be prosperous by current standards. Utopia at last, it would seem! What is the flaw in the argument? It is the environment crumbling beneath us.”The appropriation of productive land – the ecological footprint – is already too large for Earth to sustain, and it’s growing larger. A recent study building on this concept estimated that the human population exceeded Earth’s sustainable capacity around 1978 By 2000, it had overshot by 1.4 times that capacity.

In short, Earth has lost its ability to regenerate – unless global consumption is reduced, or global production is increased, or both.”By dramatising these two polar views of the economic future, I don’t wish to imply the existence of two cultures each with a distinct ethos. All who care about the economy and environment, and that includes the vast majority, are members of the same culture. The gaze of our two debaters is fixed on different points in the space-time scale in which we all dwell. They differ in the factors they take into account in forecasting the state of the world, how far they look into the future, and how much they care about non-human life.