rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_7949c7a6-45c2-5b2c-8f78-d15dd1bb8e39">6.1 Biodiversity, human development, and political freedom
6.2 Fuel poverty in the UK
7.1 Stanley Jevons and the “rebound effect”
7.2 Four types of decoupling
8.1 Taxing and subsidizing carbon
8.2 How to mitigate climate change: A policy toolbox
9.1 Energy transition in France: The négaWatt scenarios
9.2 Three lessons from the Chinese growth experiment
9.3 The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences 2018
10.1 Rousseau vs. Voltaire after the Lisbon earthquake of 1755
11.1 The CETA and environmental policy
12.1 The double penalty of urban sprawl: The case of France
12.2 Urban well-being: The case of Paris
12.3 Urban success stories
Figures
5.1 The many values of natural resources
9.1 Human well-being and the biosphere: The self-destructive vicious circle
9.2 Human well-being and the biosphere: The virtuous circle of sustainability
9.3 Three horizons for humanity: Well-being, resilience, and sustainability
10.1 The three linkages of sustainable development
10.2 Social-ecological trade-offs and synergies
Tables
5.1 Social discount rate options
5.2 Social cost of CO2, 2010–2050
6.1 World fisheries and aquaculture
6.2 Evolution of global forest, 1990–2015
6.3 Global and regional per capita food consumption, 1964–2015
6.4 Energy use, 1980–2014
7.1 The share of country groups in global material consumption in 2010
7.2 Physical and monetary trade of goods for the EU-28
7.3 Import dependency for the EU-28
7.4 Waste treatment in the OECD, 2013
7.5 Material flow accounting for Western industrial Europe, 1950–2010
7.6 Absolute decoupling between GDP and CO2 in 21 countries
8.1 The global energy mix in 1973 and 2015
8.2 Renewable energy competitiveness
8.3 Global emissions of CO2 in 2016
8.4 Emissions of carbon dioxide in 2015, country ranking, and shares
8.5 A simple model of fair and efficient climate justice
9.1 Environmental contribution to some diseases
9.2 Environmental deaths in different regions of the world
10.1 Environmentally related tax revenue for some OECD countries, 1994–2016
11.1 Internal and external water footprint (2011)
11.2 Goods transportation, 2000–2016
12.1 The global urban population, 2018 and 2030
12.2 Priority actions for a low carbon building strategy
12.3 Urban population in the EU-28 exposed to air pollutant concentrations (2012–2014)
Introduction: Economics for the twenty-first century
Are we thriving or are we doomed? That is the question. In our early twenty-first century, two radically different views regarding the fate of humanity on Planet Earth co-exist.
The first one insists on the remarkable prowess of humankind: Once fearful creatures deprived of almost any significant natural advantages in a hostile environment, we have managed in a matter of a few thousand years – and even more in the last two centuries – to become Kings of Nature, Masters of the Biosphere, Rulers of Life. Driven by the power of social cooperation, humanity’s journey toward prosperity in all corners of the world is truly impressive.
What is more, our collective success has allowed us to change for the better our biological and social self: We have become taller, stronger, healthier, smarter, freer, and, most probably, happier. To take just one striking example of our exponential progress, in the last fifty years alone, human health has been improved more than in the seven million years or so of human presence on Earth. Seen from this perspective, the future of humanity calls for reasonable optimism, if not outright cheerfulness. With the right combination of innovation and incentives, no insurmountable obstacle will stand in the way of our ingenuity.
The other view is decidedly grimmer. It argues that humanity is, to put it mildly, deeply disappointing: In a matter of a century, even more so since 1950, we have managed to substantially destroy our own habitat, the most hospitable planet for us in the Universe, harming our own well-being and that of our successors for shortsighted gains. To take just one illustration of how fast we are degrading the biosphere, cumulative man-made carbon dioxide emissions causing climate change in the last fifty years alone represent 70% of all recorded emissions (since 1750). Homo sapiens sapiens, the one who knows he knows, appears to be losing the great race between his intelligence and his avidity.
Even more frustratingly, our planet’s riches have been squandered for the benefit of a handful among us: Our societies have become increasingly unequal, fragmented, and polarized in the last thirty years; all the while environmental degradations have accelerated. The planet and life on it will survive our inconsequence, as they have
