From Sources to Sinks

Abstract

A steadily growing world population, combined with shrinking supplies of natural resources, could be a global catastrophe in the making. Since the eighteenth century, economists have warned of this disastrous prospect where population growth outpaces the growth in food and other resources. Yet time and again, innovation has changed the equation. The true limit on society’s growth, however, may be Earth’s finite ability to absorb the waste by-products of human resource use and production. This article proposes changing the rules of economic production, using new measures of value like the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) or the Five Pillars of Economic Development (5P) to assure that future development planning includes maintaining nature’s capacity to absorb pollution and society’s capacity to absorb stressors, as well as providing continued access to raw materials, labor, and capital.