A couple of questions that I continue to turn over and which I’m not at all clear on the answers to:

Is it necessary to seriously restrain economic growth for the sake of the environment (and ultimately ourselves) or can growth continue pretty much at present rates but in “sustainable” ways (with the help of technological breakthroughs, e.g.)?

If present rates of growth do need to be curtailed, can this be done in a way that doesn’t drastically and disproportionately impact the very poorest people in the world, whose well-being would appear to be most directly tied to continued economic growth?

If it’s necessary to do so, is it possible to transition to a more sustainable model of development without dramatic net increases in state power and intrusiveness?

I think the semi-official answer to these questions would be that we must continue to grow economically and to expand trade globally, and that any environmental consequences will have to be dealt with by means of regulation, conservation and new technologies.

The dissenting view (or cluster of views) would be that industrial capitalism has to be re-thought at a fairly fundamental level, and that we should re-tool the economy primarily for local production and consumption (with protectionist measures if necessary). This would include poor people in the Third World who should be producing for local markets rather than commodity export.

These aren’t the only two possible views, but the first seems to represent, more or less, the elite consensus, while the second is more in line with the thinking of the anti-globalization movement. They also cut across the left/right division in that you have people on the “right” and “left” wings of both camps. There are liberal globalists and conservative anti-globalists, and vice versa.

Like I said, I don’t have firm answers on any of this stuff. For one thing, I don’t really feel well-informed enough to have an solid view. And, of course, the environmental dimension insn’t the only significant one. But it does seem to be particularly pressing in that everything else depends on the continued health and wholeness of the biosphere.