Which is important environment or economy?

The environment. You literally can not live without it (or as my favorite writer puts it “Protect your landbase, you can’t have sex without it”).

To answer that, all we need to do is ask what would have happened if we had not taken the steps we have over the past 50 years to conserve energy and protect the environment. With cars that polluted 20 times as much as today’s vehicles, homes that leaked energy and had inefficient heating systems, factories pouring pollutants into the air, heavy metals polluting our waters. What would be the destruction to our health and our economic system? It think it’s clear that while we might make temporary, short-term economic progress at the expense of the environment, in the long run the economy depends on the well-being of the environment. That said, we need to realize that we can’t move forward with initiatives that just aren’t economically feasible—such as large-scale attempts at solar and wind energy sources. More R & D is needed.

They are not in opposition. Wealthier countries have cleaner environments.

And countries which have prepared for the post-cheap-petroleum era will dominate this century.

@jaytkay Wealthier countries are cleaner because they export/outsource their industry to “developing” countries where they don’t have to see the destruction. Any economy based on extraction of natural resources, particularly the hyperexploitation of any of them, is necessarily harmful to the environment. Look at what is happening in Brazil.

Suppose, and this is a big supposition, that we were able to come up with sustainable methods for agriculture and manufacturing. There would still be the question of how we treat wildlife. Plants and animals are going extinct at a rate that scientists are saying is comparable to that of the dinosaur and other previous mass extinctions. Now it becomes a matter of values. Which is worth more, increasing our population and per capita consumption, or the diversity of the natural world? I think we lose something very precious every time a species disappears and that maybe we should rethink how we do things.

@LostInParadise GA. Are you familiar with permaculture?

@incendiary_dan Yes there is a huge issue of our exporting dirty jobs. But the US is still big a oil producer (#3 if this graph is correct). We have mining and timber industries, too.

@jaytkay So that wealth, and a strong economy, are based on necessarily polluting and/or destroying somewhere. And the U.S. is still a net importer of all those things, particularly oil. More is bought from foreign sources than is produced here, as with oil largely because U.S. oil supplies peaked in the ‘70s.

Techno -fixes can not help the environment, humans included . Industrial economics are based on hyperexploitation. There’s no getting around that.

Important for what? For the survival of mankind, the environment is important, in fact, essential.

For the survival of the Earth or the Universe, neither, a change of the laws of physics would be required.

A healthy and biodiverse environment is more important. Wealth is relative, and compared to the past, even the poor have an enormous abundance of safety, luxuries, health, food, entertainment, and so on. An unhealthy environment, on the other hand, threatens our very existence, especially if you include future generations in your concerns. Ya, you might survive climate change, but your grandchildren will curse the stupidity of current generations.

If we could go back to a sustainable economy we may be able to have both. See thestoryofstuff.com. It was a real eye opener for me.

Planet Earth doesn’t need humans. Planet Earth doesn’t need economies created by humans.

Economies created by humans need planet Earth. Unless they move ‘offshore’ into outer space.

In order to maintain a cleaner enviroment we need to be able to afford the resources needed to care for it. If we don’t care for our economy then the enviroment will continue to go down hill as we will be unable to pay for the resources and programs that keep the enviroment clean. So, the economy is more important in my opinion. If we care for our economy then we will be able to afford to care for other aspects of life.

Environment; I look at it this way, economies are social constructs, societies can, for better or worse, adapt to exist without them. However the environment, and in this context I mean air, water, land, are necessities for human life, contaminate them too much too quickly and the consequences – at least at a local level – are pretty much lethal.