I realize I’m preaching to the choir a bit here, but I always thought about the economy as a bunch of objects and things that people are doing with them, but I just realized that actually, growth of the economy will always somehow impact the environment (not always necessarily to its detriment though). It really is a zero sum game and I was making a mistake of not always thinking about the two in concert.
I wouldn’t call it zero sum. I think of zero sum as meaning more determent to the environment would always be more profitable. But in reality, some industries, like fossil fuels, agriculture, and mining have an outsized impact on the environment compared to things like software development, craftsmanship like watch making, and media.
From Greek roots, economics is resource management pertaining to a house or district. And isn’t the environment just humanity’s house? It would surely be a good thing to broaden traditional economics to include the externalities that companies dump into the environment.
It’s not just you, it’s capitalism in general. The incentives without government intervention are entirely to plunder the natural resources to the maximum extent possible as quickly as possible, because without government intervention, they are all basically free, despite having massive value.
AKA The tragedy of the commons or economic externalities.
The usual analysis is that the economy is a subset of the environment. In other words, the human economy is a (small, fragile, entirely dependent) part of the wider natural economy.
Unfortunately, orthodox economists have still not received the memo.
This might apply to my country, I don’t think it applies to all though.
Wait until you realise the environment is not the only thing that is heavily influenced by the economy. It is humans for who are for the most part are responsible for the recent changes in Earth’s climate and human society is all about the economy. Let me introduce you to historical materialism, something Friedrich Engels described as:
that view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes against one another.
