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Does Environmental Sustainability Contradict Prosperity?
Author(s) -
Edenhofer Ottmar,
Steckel Jan Christoph,
Jakob Michael
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
global policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.602
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1758-5899
pISSN - 1758-5880
DOI - 10.1111/1758-5899.12164
Subject(s) - prosperity , economics , natural resource economics , sustainability , sanitation , revenue , consumption (sociology) , electricity , commons , climate change mitigation , business , climate change , economic system , environmental economics , public economics , economic growth , political science , environmental science , ecology , finance , engineering , environmental engineering , sociology , law , electrical engineering , biology , social science
Continuous economic growth, understood as an increase of consumption, is often seen to be incompatible with ambitious climate protection. In this article we aim to structure the debate by asking two questions: is economic growth possible with regard to achieving ambitious climate targets? And, is economic growth desirable? We argue that foregoing economic growth would neither be sufficient to achieve ambitious climate targets, nor would it reduce the need of partially contested mitigation technologies, such as nuclear energy or Carbon Capture and Sequestration ( CCS ). In addition, we argue that economic growth should not be an end by itself but rather a means to achieve prosperity. We propose to define guardrails and specific goals for prosperity that need to be achieved, in analogy to the Millennium Development Goals. One example could be to provide minimum access levels to specific infrastructure services, e.g. access to water, electricity or sanitation. Their provision could be financed by revenues from taxing the overuse of (global) commons, e.g. a carbon tax.