Should economic growth come before environmental protection?
Grow first, clean later
Growth funds schools, hospitals and clean technology. Poor countries cannot afford rich-country standards yet, and prosperity is what eventually pays for a cleaner environment.
Adam Smith: Markets and Sympathy · Hayek: Knowledge and Order · Enlightenment NowNature sets the limits
Damage to soil, water and climate is often irreversible and hits the poorest first. Growth that destroys its own resource base is borrowing from the future.
Rachel Carson: Silent Spring · Hans Jonas: Ethics for a Technological Age · M. S. Swaminathan: Food SecurityBoth want lasting prosperity for ordinary people and accept that poverty itself harms health and the environment.
The real choice is between kinds of growth. Price pollution, invest in clean energy and protect the commons so that growth and conservation reinforce each other, as in Swaminathan's call for an evergreen revolution.
Lean on growth when basic needs are unmet and the harm is reversible. Lean on protection when damage is irreversible, affects future generations, or falls on people with no voice.
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