Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

by Kate Raworth

It’s people power, not economic growth per se, that protects local air and water quality. Likewise it is citizen pressure on governments and companies for more stringent standards, not the mere increase in revenue, that compels industries to switch to cleaner technologies. Third, cleaning up a nation’s air and water by shifting from manufacturing to service industries doesn’t eliminate those pollutants: it sends them overseas, letting someone else, somewhere else, feel the burn while those back home can import the neatly packaged finished product. That means it is a strategy for environmental clean-up that cannot be followed by all countries because eventually there will be nowhere left to outsource the pollution.