For generations, people have lightened their environmental impact by multiplying their consumption less than their income
Emphasis mine. Please note that consumption is
not decreasing, it's
still multiplying. (Just not as quickly as income.) As long as that is true, we still have exponential growth of environmental destruction.
Lightened their environmental impact? While
multiplying their consumption? WTF are you trying to sell us?
An especially striking example is China. Without the dematerialization from 1980 to 2006 by Chinese consumers, actual national energy use in 2006 would have been 180 percent greater, Ausubel says.
This is ridiculous. China is a poster boy for environmental destruction. They're not finished yet - they're planning to build
half a thousand new coal plants in the next decade, even with complete knowledge of their already disastrous effect on China's air and the world's climate. But the authors of this "study" are seeing rainbows and popsicles because income there managed to rise even more quickly.
Dematerialization. What a nice sounding word to make us feel better. What's the point? That some countries don't screw up quite as badly as other countries? Or just that things could have been even worse? Well yes, I suppose that's always the case, isn't it? Things could always be even worse.
I'm accelerating toward this brick wall, but look, my income's rising even faster than my speed! If they were rising at the same rate, I would have already hit! Isn't that nice.
Pollyanna bullshit doublespeak, misrepresentation of exponential growth, and ignorance of industry's impact on the environment. I'm disappointed in ScienceDaily for publishing this.
Global environmental destruction is accelerating. As the world gets richer. Our only hope is for the world to get poorer again. Which, of course, it will do. But will it do it in time to give our children half a chance?