And growing the economy all at the same time.
Reason (10/9/19) column: "Environmental scientist Jesse Ausubel remembers the moment his research trajectory changed. Over dinner one night in 1987, his friend and colleague Robert Herman, a physicist with a wide range of interests, wondered aloud, 'Are buildings getting lighter?' That apparently simple question inspired the pair to begin looking into the 'material intensity' of the modern world. In 2015, Ausubel published an essay titled 'The Return of Nature: How Technology Liberates the Environment.' He had found substantial evidence not only that Americans were consuming fewer resources per capita but also that they were consuming less in total of some of the most important building blocks of an economy: things such as steel, copper, fertilizer, timber, and paper...I was surprised to learn that total American energy use in 2017 was down almost 2% from its 2008 peak, especially since our economy grew by more than 15% between those two years. I had walked around with the unexamined assumption that growing economies must consume more energy year after year. This turns out not to be the case anymore—a profound change. Energy use went up in lockstep with economic growth in America for more than a century and a half, from 1800-1970. Then the increase in energy use slowed down, and then it turned negative—even as the economy kept growing. Over the last decade, we've gotten more economic output from less energy."
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"Growth works, raising people and nations out of poverty, improving sanitation, increasing access to education, reducing infant mortality, and elevating standards of living. Growing economies are also good for the earth."
– David Shaywitz,
Wall Street Journal
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