4 Costs of a ‘Grow Now, Clean Up Later’ Mentality
How the consequences of neglecting environmental issues boomerang back at us
Credit: This article is based on the scientific article “The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability” by Paul Ekins and Dimitri Zenghelis. (Full citation and link available at the end of the article)
The earth is in bad condition as it currently suffers from three planetary crises at the same time: climate change, loss of biodiversity, and environmental pollution. These crises are pushing the earth toward tipping points. Tipping points are points of no return because one environmental issue triggers further environmental issues, causing a cascade effect. For example, the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet can trigger other issues at 1–3 °C (1.8–5.4 °F) temperature increase that push the temperature even higher above a catastrophic level of 4 °C (7.2 °F) increase (see How Arctic Coasts Are Affected By Climate Change for an example of melting permafrost). Despite these urgent issues, economists warn us that rapidly converting to an environmentally friendly economy is prohibitively expensive.
The warnings that converting to an environmentally friendly economy is expensive is based on the predictions of standard economic models. Two of the most widely used models to quantify…
