Capitalism Makes You Cleaner

Reason.com ^ | October 2015 | Matt Welch

[expat_panama]

One of the most rightly celebrated books of the early environmental movement was New Yorker writer John McPhee's 1971 page-turner, Encounters with the Archdruid. The quasi-religious figure referenced in the title was naturalist legend David Brower, the first executive director of the Sierra Club and founder of a half-dozen other environmentalist organizations, including Friends of the Earth and the League of Conservation Voters.

McPhee's concept was elegantly simple: Send Brower out into environmental no-man's lands with his antagonists—a mining magnate in the Glacier Peak Wilderness area, a golf-loving real estate developer on Georgia's Cumberland Island, and United States Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Floyd Dominy on the Colorado River, which Dominy had recently helped disfigure with the Glen Canyon Dam. Brower was a larger-than-life figure, by turns prickly and pragmatic, conversational and condemnatory; yet his opponents on these trips also viewed themselves as responsible stewards of Mother Nature, and the ensuing repartee is a fascinating collision between mid-century faith in engineering progress and the first stirrings of a more pessimistic countercultural backlash.

[snip]

... this passage might be the best literary rendering of a concept too little understood in our sky-is-falling culture: the environmental Kuznets Curve.

{snip}

But moving the periscope back reveals a long-term trend toward environmental cleanliness everywhere that capitalism has been allowed to flourish at length, whether it be in democratic socialist France or the allegedly laissez faire United States. We all get there, as long as we don't totally murder the goose that laid these golden eggs.

[expat_panama]

For some reason they didn't include the curve in the article so here it is:

[wita]

Interesting curve. If true, and my BS meter does not agree necessarily, one should stop shortly after the turning point because there must be balance before the decline in per capita income. This would seem to me to run counter to common sense and reality in that as per capita income rises no one is doing diddly about pollution.

[wita]

Pollution might not be the best word here, better to use the chart word environment worsens. Either way it doesn’t sound right to me that environment naturally worsens with a rise in per capita income but I am listening.

[Toddsterpatriot]

If true, and my BS meter does not agree necessarily, one should stop shortly after the turning point

One should stop increasing income, or stop cleaning the environment?

[rlmorel]

One has only to look at the Eastern Block and Communist countries where per capita income fell.

Just horrendous environmental impacts. Worst in the world.

[Yardstick]

I think you misread the graph. The horizontal axis is per capita income, so the further right you move the higher the income. The vertical axis is environmental degradation.

So waht it shows is that once you move rightward beyond the turning point, you get the best of both worlds — increasing income amd decreasing environmental degradation.

[Yardstick]

The environment would initially worsen as people move from subsistence survival to farming and then dirty industry — but then as wealth increases industry becomes cleaner and the degradation curve turns downward.

[Yardstick]

And the graph suggests a second “turning point” or maybe final destination where through all the innovations and advances of a wealthy capitalist society, the amount of environmental degradation is actually less than a totally impoverished subsistance society. This is what you have at the far right edge.

[Cronos]

there is no decline in per capita income -- that's on the X axis and keeps increasing. The graph shows that as X (per capita income) increases, Y (environmental degradation) increases to a point and then decreases

Why would one stop after the turning point? After the turning point, per capita increases and environmental degradation also decreases

[expat_panama]

Happy Mid-week everyone!  The stocks adventure continues since Tuesday's surge in rising volume into this mornings buoyant futures (+0.42%).  Metals have already had their jump and are resting back to mid-year support levels --we'll just have to see how firm that support turns out.

Later on  in the day we get--

8:15 AM ADP Employment Change
8:30 AM Trade Balance
10:00 AM ISM Services
10:30 AM Crude Inventories

Headline links:

• Fed faces patchwork recovery despite near-normal labor markets
• US high-frequency trader convicted in first US 'spoofing' case   The Guardian
• San Francisco voters defeat measure restricting Airbnb rentals
• Why J.P. Morgan IPO Access is a Huge Deal for Regular Investors
• Asia surges with Japan, China stocks in lead; risk appetite lifts dollar

[expat_panama]

as per capita income rises no one is doing diddly about pollution.

Let's think.  Where do we find more filth, poor neighborhoods or rich?   Which is more polluted, Mexico City or Bern Switzerland?

[BenLurkin]

[expat_panama]

LOL!!! [I really did laugh out loud too!]