ABSTRACT
While the emphasis in Chapter 4 was on presenting insights from mainstream environmental economics clearly and in ways that help explain why the economic system puts the environment at risk, the emphasis in this chapter is on issues where mainstream economics provides little insight or obfuscates important causes of environmental distress. We explore why there is a counterproductive “growth imperative” in corporate capitalism, why salvation does not lie at the end of the environmental Kuznets curve, why the cure of Pigovian taxes is a pipe dream, and why the debate over “jobs versus the environment” is badly distorted.
