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Chris
04-19-2013, 03:33 PM
This is an interesting report on how the free market is green.

Greed As Green: How the Profit Motive Helps the Environment (http://www.american.com/archive/2013/april/greed-as-green-how-the-profit-motive-helps-the-environment)


as documented in several studies, our environment has paradoxically gotten cleaner and greener as we have become wealthier. These counterintuitive results are typically conveyed through inverted U-shaped “environmental Kuznets curves” (EKCs) that document how emissions and/or concentrations associated with several pollutants first rise with economic development, but then fall as income exceeds a threshold level (Figure 1).

http://i.snag.gy/YFLJ7.jpg

...Typically missing from this debate, however, is the notion that the search for increased profitability has long delivered both economic and environmental improvements by promoting the increasingly efficient use of material resources, or, in other words, the creation of ever more economic value while using ever less physical stuff. While this notion is obvious in an age where whole libraries can be stored on small electronic devices, perhaps the best statement on the subject still belongs to Jonathan Swift, who argued nearly three centuries ago in Gulliver’s Travels that whoever “could make two Ears of Corn, or two blades of Grass to grow upon a Spot of Ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of Mankind, and do more essential Service to his Country than the whole Race of Politicians put together.”

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On this Earth Day, spare a thought for the profit motive, an unheralded but long-standing champion of the environment!