ABSTRACT
Although it is usually assumed that the two terms “sustainable development” are compatible, this is not self-evident. As the economist Paul Ekins observes:
[T]here is literally no experience of an environmentally sustainable industrial economy, anywhere in the world, where such sustainability refers to a non-depleting stock of environmental capital. It is therefore not immediately apparent that, on the basis of past experience only, the term ‘sustainable development’ is any more than an oxymoron.1
