Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

By Indur M. Goklany

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The Improving State of the World

CATO INSTITUTE

Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................................viiPart A: Economic Development, Technological Change, and the Human Condition1. Introduction......................................................................................................32. The Improving State of Humanity...................................................................................193. Has Globalization Widened the Gaps in Human Well-Being?...........................................................574. The Cycle of Progress: Factors Propelling Humanity's Progress.....................................................79Part B: The Effects of Economic Development and Technological Change on the Environment5. Competing Views Regarding Affluence, Technology, and the Environment..............................................1036. Long-Term Environmental Trends....................................................................................1177. Are Long-Term Trends Consistent with Environmental Transitions?...................................................1878. Factors Affecting Environmental Trends............................................................................207Part C: Reconciling Human Well-Being With Environmental Quality9. The Promise and Peril of Bioengineered Crops......................................................................23710. Climate Change and Sustainable Development.......................................................................289Part D: Sustaining the Human Enterprise11. The Future Sustainability of Human Populations...................................................................35312. Extending the Limits: The Role of Economic Development, Technological Change, and Free Trade.....................373Appendix A...........................................................................................................413Appendix B...........................................................................................................419Notes................................................................................................................421Index................................................................................................................507

Chapter One

A long suburb of red brick houses-some with patches of garden-ground, where coal-dust and factory smoke darkened the shrinking leaves, and coarse rank flowers, and where the struggling vegetation sickened and sank under the hot breath of kiln and furnace, making them by its presence seem yet more blighting and unwholesome than in the town itself, ... they came by slow degrees upon a cheerless region, where not a blade of grass was seen to grow; where not a bud put forth its promise in the spring; where nothing green could live but on the surface of the stagnant pools, which here and there lay idly sweltering by the black road-side.

On every side, and as far as the eye could see into the heavy distance, tall chimneys, crowding on each other and presenting that endless repetition of the same dull, ugly form, which is the horror of oppressive dreams, poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air.... Then came more of the wrathful monsters ... and still, before, behind, and to the right and left, was the same interminable perspective of brick towers, never ceasing in their black vomit, blasting all things living or inanimate, shutting out the face of day, and closing in on all these horrors with a dense dark cloud.

But night-time in this dreadful spot!-night, when the smoke was changed to fire; when every chimney spirted up its red flame; and places that had been dark vaults all day, now shone red-hot, with figures moving to and fro within their blazing jaws ... night, when carts came rumbling by, filled with rude coffins (for contagious disease and death had been busy ...) ... night, when some called for bread, and some for drink to drown their cares ... night, which unlike the night that Heaven sends on earth, brought with it not peace, nor quiet, nor signs of blessed sleep.... - Charles Dickens (1840-41), The Old Curiosity Shop, pp. 346-481

Dickens's vision of the industrial town as Hell on earth was penned when modern economic growth was still young. With the advent of industrialization and urbanization that initially accompanied such economic growth, mankind's history-until then largely one of constant poverty, hunger, disease, and death, periodically punctuated by epidemics, floods, droughts, famines, war, and other natural and unnatural disasters-seemed destined to take a turn for the worse. But with hindsight, we now know that even as Dickens was chronicling the dark phase of economic development, the forces that would lift Britain from that Stygian gloom had already been set in motion. Those forces gathered steam over the next few decades, and, today, more than a century and a half later, the average Briton has never been richer, better fed, healthier, or longer lived.

The British experience with modern economic growth has been repeated, to one degree or another, in other countries. It first spread to other parts of Western Europe and its mainly white colonies, for example, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. It has since diffused broadly to other parts of the globe, albeit with varying degrees of success. And the average inhabitant of planet earth-such as the average Briton today-is also wealthier, freer from hunger and disease, and likely to be longer lived than ever before. And although epidemics, floods, droughts, and other natural disasters still occur, their consequences, while still severe, are generally not as lethal as in times past, except where poverty stalks the land because of war-civil or otherwise-and dysfunctional state policies.

Modern economic growth is characterized by unparalleled technological change, which has transformed the world more in the past two centuries than all the other events put together since the beginning of agriculture 10 millennia ago. This technological change was accompanied by a prodigious increase in the use of inanimate energy, particularly fossil fuels and other renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. The associated industrialization and increases in agricultural productivity, urbanization, population, mobility, trade, and consumption of material goods have transformed the social, cultural, and physical landscapes of societies.

Together, economic growth and technological change have redefined the role of women and children, restructured the workplace, undermined age-old arrangements of caste and class, expanded the middle class, and developed new institutions and organizations. In turn, societies aspiring to faster economic growth are restructuring themselves-freeing economies, bestowing property rights on private parties, giving individuals more latitude, and strengthening education-even as those very factors reinforce economic growth in empowering middle classes to create the basic conditions for democracy in societies that have never tasted it.

Economic development, however,...