Damage of the environment is an inevitable consequence of worldwide improvements in the standard of living.?

Question

Discuss.

Answer 1

Of course not.  People who think like this are the ones who would rather see men live in caves.

There is nothing incompatible with mans advancements and environmental improvement.

In fact, mans improvement only helps the environment.  Compare the differences in the environment in places where mans standard of living is low like China, Bangladesh, Sudan, Egypt, or India to countries that have a high standard of living like Norway, Canada, France or the US.

Answer 2

What damage????

Here are pictures of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki today...

You think we can destroy this planet?????  Wow!

http://images.google.com/images?q=nagasa...

http://images.google.com/images?q=hirosh...

Answer 3

its an inevitable consequence of improvement in standards of living within a reasonable time frame as enviromentaly friendly methods are way to expensive for  LEDC's to adopt.... unless of course MEDC's wish to pay the difference in cost between these... hmm thats soo likely to happen

and as for cheap ways to decrease pollution they are already being done... there are no cheap ways left... so only MEDC's can afford to do them, but as MEDC's refuse to pay huge sums of money to see an effect which may or may not matter.

assuming all threats in enviroment are real, then as some scientists predict that the damage has already been done and we should instead put money in to dealing with the effects rather than prevention of things we no longer have control over

at least thats my oppinion, anyone see any major flaws? (except spelling)

@ dr jello you rase a good point but while we were developing we caused great damage to are enviroment on a local scale (for where i live roman mines can still cause leeching into rivers and that was from a time where we were developing at a slow rate) howevere if you look at world wide scale of enviromental damage it all started when we started developing RAPIDLY think industrial revolution.

so no matter the speed of development damage WILL be done however on a local scale it is 'easy' to deal with but developing slowly involves living in horrible conditions for longer so developing fast and accepting some widespread damage may be the better option in terms of quality of life.

if you can develope a quick way of developing while sustaining both local and world wide enviroments then you deserve a nobel prize

Answer 4

I had to take an environmental economics class in grad school.  My professor was telling us how you actually see better care taken of the environment as standard of living increases.  I guess because you're no longer struggling just to survive and can focus on other things.

The downside of this is that to get to the stage where things are improving, the society ends up doing alot of damage.

Answer 5

Absolutely, it has its advantage and disadvantages.

Answer 6

Absolutely not.  The damage to the environment is a consequence of laziness, short-term thinking, and unregulated greed, not a rising standard of living.

You can get rich 2 ways. You can rob a bank or you can work hard at creating something new and better.  Likewise, we can raise our standard of living by robbing the environment (with no concern for future generations) or we can work hard and create new and better ways to sustain a high standard of living.

Answer 7

Damage is relative.  One person may see an improvement as damage.  Like plowing a feild to grow food.  However, there is damage everyone can aree on like smog and toxic waste being put into rivers.