Freediver says:
Quote:A tradeoff between environmental and economic concerns is usually a tradeoff between short and long term economic interests, as basic measures of productivity ultimately depend on the environment. It is a tradeoff between short term prosperity and long term sustainability.
Your statement makes sense - but multi national corporations and industry don't tend to look at the long term sustainability of the environment they are exploiting. They only look at increasing the resource export and if one mine runs dry - move onto the next. They don't say "we've only got so many billions of tonnes of minerals and we want our business to be sustainable for a 100 years, so we will reduce our exports, as well as our profits in order to keep that mine going for the next century".
When one resource has been depleted - they'll move onto the next - leaving behind infertile and poisonous ground.
Great wealth places a greater demand on suppliers for "toys" - most of which have a short life span, increase CO2 emissions and then get used as landfill to create even more damage to our land.
Perhaps if we had less wealth, we would be creating less damage to our environment and to people, particularly now that more than 50% of westerners are obese or overweight. Just imagine if our oil supply came to an end and we had to walk everywhere - or ride our bikes. Most people are aware of the irreparable damage huge oil companies have caused to third world countries where they have no fresh drinking water and their once fertile soils are now poisonous wastelands.
Multinationals like Exxon Corp., Mobil Corp. and Phillips Petroleum Corp make obscene profits amounting to $ billions - how much of those profits get put back into repairing the destruction they leave in their continual search for more resources?
The demand for goods is so great, because the multinationals tell us we need their products. If the demand for goods wasn't so great, less trauma would be caused to our environment.