Most of what I read on the topic is wishful thinking or fluff. But John Kay writing in the Financial Times provides intriguing perspective:
Gloomy commentators have always argued that scarce resources will halt economic growth and their prognostications have always been wrong. Human ingenuity has found new resources and substitutes for old ones – oil and gas replaced coal, the artificial fixation of nitrogen solved the scarcity of bird droppings for use as fertiliser, and plastics substituted for pretty much everything.
But economic growth in affluent societies does not mean an increased claim on resources because growth is now mostly about better stuff, not more stuff. Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, has been reported as saying that America’s gross domestic product weighs no more than it did a century ago. It is hard to see how even the great sage could know this, but easy to see what he means. At the beginning of the 20th century big companies such as US Steel, Pullman and International Harvester made goods you could stand on or sit in. Their counterparts today are Microsoft, Pfizer and Coca-Cola, whose products fit in your pocket.
At Wuppertal in Germany, a research group documents our use of the three main kinds of materials with Teutonic thoroughness. Biomass – the product of living and growing things – feeds us, clothes us and furnishes our homes. We eat it and we wear it out. Fuels warm us and power our cars and become atmospheric gases. Metals and minerals make our manufactured goods and our buildings and are then dumped. The quantities grown or mined in Europe can easily be established. But we import not only oil and steel but also items made using oil or steel. They leave a trail of debris that leads back to the mine and the forest. While it makes sense to count this waste, the consequences are strange. A gold ring may weigh only five grams but, since ore contains very little gold, that ring may represent several tonnes of stuff. Precious metals and minerals account for a large proportion of our consumption of stuff.
A new model for growing better – that is for true prosperity – requires moving beyond waste, not only of natural resources but of human creative capabilities. The logic of economic development continues to push us, in fits and starts, in that direction.