NEWSWEEK.COM 21
ECONOMICS
or intense competition among profit-seeking com-panies (think how much pressure CRT makers faced as LCDs took over their markets). This competition provides strong incentives for companies to save money on resources (after all, a penny saved is a penny earned) and tech progress provides plenty of opportunities to do exactly that. So internal com-powerful and more fuel-efficient; smartphones re-place entire shelves full of devices; and the economy bustion engines are simultaneously lighter, more
dematerializes in countless other ways.it comes to thinking about resource consumption and availability, this fact is essentially irrelevant. Our experience since Earth Day has demonstrated that our planet is easily vast enough to supply us with all the materials we’ll need, for as long as we’ll need them. The real danger is not that our growth will deplete the planet, but instead that it will be-foul it. So let’s look at pollution next.It’s true that we live on a finite planet. But when
As every Economics 101 student learns, pollutionless per person, but less in total. In the U.S., which now using less of them year after year. And not just accounts for about 25 percent of global GDP, annu-al consumption of resources as diverse as copper, paper, water for agriculture, timDeveloping countries, including fast-growing ones critical fertilizer component) and cropland is now trending downward. In addition, total American energy use has been essentially flat since 2007, even as the economy has grown by almost 20 percent. ber, nitrogen (a
ing. But I predict that in the not-too-distant future such as India and China, are not yet dematerializ-they’ll start decreasing their consumption of some resources, just as high-income countries have.how much better and lighter today’s LCD computer especially progress with all things digital (think of screens are than the cathode ray tube [CRT] moni-erful forces are combining to drive this demateri-alization of the economy. The first is tech progress, As I explain in my book More from Less, two pow-
tors that preceded them). The second is capitalism,took in 1980. From leBUYINwall at a Wbullion on a conveyor in overcrowdinmoney to buy essentials in a third the time it and Black Friday at a Best Buy in CaliforniaG Phole Foods in LonOWg kinderER Wgofartens in Monrkt to riSerouth As in 2gght: A baby boom is Beach, California;^0 f^1 rica; the produce^8 gcouolia; ld^ gea.old rn
between human prosperity and the state of nature has been eased. But it has.”
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