First in a series.

In sifting through the literature on environment and economy, you eventually come to Simon Kuznets. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Kuznets, an economist, hypothesized a changing relationship between wealth inequality and economic growth. The Kuznets Curve, for which he is noted, describes a scenario in which economic growth initially tracks along side rising income inequality, but then– at some inflection point– begins to fuel a closing of that gap. The argument for growth was clear: keep growing long enough and fast enough, and eventually you’ll hit the inflection point and everybody will be better off.

Not long afterwards, Kuznets’ hypothesis regarding growth and its eventual point of positive social effect was applied to environmental issues. The argument is similar: while growth initially fuels ecological degradation, if you grow long enough and fast enough, growth will eventually allow us to demand a clean up job. In other words, people use their new wealth to finance environmental stewardship. Here’s what the curve looks like, for the air pollutant SO2:

20tlab_chart1480

The existence of the environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) was the argument in John Tierney’s recent op-ed in the New York Times, and it comes at a time when serious conversation of federal action around CO2 pricing is ramping up. Tierney, using the EKC as rhetorical shield, claims that not only do we not need to sacrifice anything to confront the ecological crisis, we’d in fact be screwing up progress toward the inflection point if we did. So, as with income inequality, the prescription is this: growth is the problem, but don’t stop growing until it becomes the solution.

Hmmm.

I think this a key topic in the sustainability discussion, as the conclusions reached around EKC really parse out different philosophies currently in play. The debate around the EKC curve is pretty interesting, and one I’d like to explore in a series of forthcoming posts. In the meantime, here are some questions worth thinking about:

- Do EKC curves apply beyond just micro-pollutants like SO2? What about CO2? Deforestation? Fresh water?

- What about species extinction? Or irreversible ecosystem damage? Can we still spend our way out of those problems?

- Assuming Kuznets is correct, how do we know when we’ve reached the inflection point, or how far away it is?

-What assumptions about technological progress underlie the EKC? What assumptions about human behavior?

If Tierney is right, it would appear all that’s required of us is to sit back and keep our foot on the gas pedal until we arrive, right on time, to our cleaned up future. But if he’s not, depending on Kuznets might distract and undermine what’s shaping up to be a promising political and cultural sea change. Stay tuned for more on this…

Image from TierneyLab, New York Times.