Good Vs. Bad Growth
Uneconomic growth often reflects poorly developed or poorly planned growth, rather than growth that is inherently bad. For example, if one assumes that Atlantic hurricanes and Pacific typhoons have intensified in recent years due to human-caused global warming, then a rapid surge in automobile ownership in China, Brazil, and India could be seen as uneconomic growth. This is based on the assumption that significantly increasing the number of internal combustion engines worldwide would increase global warming, and that the economic damage from global warming would more than offset any economic growth brought about from the increase in automobiles; however, if the new automobiles were ethanol-fuelled or battery powered from non-greenhouse-gas-producing energy sources such as solar, wind, or nuclear instead of petroleum-fuelled, the effect on global warming might be very minor and not uneconomic at all. Note that the hypothetical surge in automobiles might be 'uneconomic growth' from a global perspective, but 'good economic growth' from those countries' perspective (an example of an externality).
Read more about this topic: Uneconomic Growth
Famous quotes containing the words bad and/or growth:
“Jail sentences have many functions, but one is surely to send a message about what our society abhors and what it values. This week, the equation was twofold: female infidelity twice as bad as male abuse, the life of a woman half as valuable as that of a man. The killing of the woman taken in adultery has a long history and survives today in many cultures. One of those is our own.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“A person of mature years and ripe development, who is expecting nothing from literature but the corroboration and renewal of past ideas, may find satisfaction in a lucidity so complete as to occasion no imaginative excitement, but young and ambitious students are not content with it. They seek the excitement because they are capable of the growth that it accompanies.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)