We can’t decouple economic growth from the limits of our planet
This can’t just be a coincidence – our genuine progress indicator and our living planet index have been in decline every year since the year that we started to exceed the limits of our one planet.
It’s true. Using ecological footprinting as a measure of our impact on our one planets resources we exceeded the resource limits of our one planet in the late 1970s.
Our global Genuine Progress Indicator, a true measure of our financial prosperity, was at it highest in 1978 and has been declining or flat every year since.
And our Living Planet Index, a measure of the abundance of vertebrae populations has been in decline since the late 1970s.
This can’t just be a coincidence. This is evidence of the fact that our economy is contained within the limits of society and that our society is contained within the limits of our environment.
It may be possible to in theory ‘decouple’ carbon from our economy but it is not possible to decouple the effects of our un-contained economic growth from impacting on our environment.
It’s time to shift to the ecological model.
SIMON WILD 