Environmentalism and Wealth

Daniel Ben-Ami has a nice essay at spiked-online about environmentalist thinking (click here). He notes that since the Enlightenment people have thought that human progress comes from mastery over nature and from being more productive, but many environmentalists think that human well being is harmed by being more productive. It’s an important point that leads to some real policy differences. If you think that we have too many green house gases, then you have two choices: stop manufacturing or learn to manufacture without as much pollution. Too many environmentalists opt for the first choice, which is bad because so much of the world’s poor look to gain from industry. Ben-Ami notes this as a disturbing trend among certain segments of the green movement – too many are calling for roll backs of technology, rather than searching for better and cleaner technology.