This is a linkpost: https://grantmulligan.substack.com/p/positive-sum-environmentalism

From my earliest grade school memories, lessons on the environment were uniformly focused on how humans were destroying the planet. We were driving species to extinction and creating holes in the ozone.

The environmental stories being taught from grade schools to graduate programs largely haven’t changed in more than sixty years. A student in 1970 would have cited many of the same authors and arguments as a student today. Silent Spring is still taught as a clarion call to address pollution. John Muir’s defeat at Hetch Hetchy remains the classic example of how wilderness and beauty are destroyed in the name of economic advancement. And despite years of empirical evidence disproving their theories, Malthus’ and Erhlich’s warnings that human consumption will outstrip the earth’s ability to provide remain pillars of environmental 101 courses. A student today might learn about the BP oil spill instead of Exxon Valdez and climate change instead of acid rain, but the core message hasn’t changed - humanity’s relationship with nature is fundamentally broken and in our pursuit of progress we have left the natural world a husk of its former self.

But the world has changed, and environmentalism needs to change with it. In contrast to the traditional narrative, we have actually been remarkably successful at solving environmental challenges. This environmental progress has occurred without requiring a step backwards in human prosperity. In fact, growing wealth and technological advancement are fundamental conditions for environmental progress. We’ve proved it’s possible to decouple emissions and GDP growth in the highest income countries. As Hannah Ritchie says in Not the End of the World, “in rich countries carbon emissions, energy use, deforestation, air pollution and water pollution are falling while these countries continue to get richer.”¹ This is largely because rich countries can afford to care, invest in new, expensive technologies, and bring them down the cost curve. For all the urgency and challenges that remain, there’s good evidence that things are getting better, dramatically better, and we should be much more optimistic about humanity’s relationship with nature.²

Consider climate change. While we still have a long way to go, considerable headway is being made...

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