Abstract
This article contrasts two fundamentally different understandings of economic growth and "development" that lead to diametrically opposed approaches to how to deal with global ecological deterioration. One is the currently hegemonic perspective of neoclassical economic theory, which has been used to advocate growth as a remedy for environmental problems. The other is the zero-sum perspective of world-system theory, which instead suggests that growth involves a displacement of ecological problems to peripheral sectors of theworld-economy. The article begins by sketching the history of these two perspectives in recent decades and reflecting on the ideological and epistemological contexts of their appearance and different degrees of success. It then turns to the main task of critically scrutinizing some of the foundations of the neoclassical approach to environmental issues, arguing that its optimistic view of growth is based on faulty logic and a poor understanding of the global, physical realities within which money and the capitalist world-system operate.
Highlights
O n the very first days of the new millennium, newspapers in Sweden-as elsewhere-devoted some editorial space to assessing the state of the world
The leading daily Dagens Nyheter expressed puzzlement over a survey showing that a large percentage of Swedish youth were not optimistic about the future. Why this worry about global ecology, the editor asked, that the pessimistic prophecies of the Club of Rome could be dismissed once and for all? Yet, the previous day, in the same newspaper, an environmental journalist had observed that the state of the world environment is considerably worse than most people in the richer countries realize
Were two very different messages on global ecology offered in the same newspaper
Summary
O n the very first days of the new millennium, newspapers in Sweden-as elsewhere-devoted some editorial space to assessing the state of the world. The WCED conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992-the climax of three decades of negotiations on global issues-solidified an official creed suggesting that growth is the general solution to environmental problems (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987).
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