Economic Growth and the Environment:Alternatives to the Limits Paradigm

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Abstract
What is the relationship between an expanding human economy and environmental quality? For most biologists, environmentalists, and ecological economists, the dominant paradigm for understanding the interactions between the economy and the environment is the concept of limits. The idea is that there are biological and physical limits to economic growth beyond which both ecological and economic collapse would occur. In this view, limits are seen as absolute constraints on economic activity, not just as a point beyond which economic growth results in environmental destruction. This concept of limits is a common theme, from limits on arable land (Malthus 1836), to energy and material limits (Meadows et al. 1972, 1992), to the economic scale and thermodynamic limits of ecological economists (Daly 1979, 1996). Although the limits concept has successfully been used to mobilize concern for environmental issues, the concept is problematic (Norgaard 1995). In this article, I argue that the concept of limits is ecologically and economically not useful and politically hinders the cause of conservation. I also propose metaphorical and analytical aspects of an alternative view.