Less carbon, more community building

Some pollutants, such as smog, decrease as we get richer and can afford things such as catalytic converters for cars. But carbon dioxide consistently tracks economic growth. As Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman concluded last year, CO2 is “the one major environmental contaminant for which no study has ever found any indication of improvement as living standards rise.” Which means that if we’re going to cope with global warming, we may also have to cope with the end of infinite, unrestrained economic expansion.

csmonitor