Economic growth protects the environment

Yes, yes, we know, this isn’t what we’re all normally told but it’s true all the same. As even The Guardian points out here:

How Tunisia’s shrinking economy and fish stocks put shark on the menu

Poorer people scrabble rather harder for whatever there is to eat. Time horizons shorten as the imperative is to survive rather than optimise the future world. So, yes, a shrinking economy does indeed increase pressure on those irreplaceable natural resources.

With Tunisia’s economy battered by the coronavirus pandemic and generally expected to undergo its greatest contraction since gaining independence in 1956, it is unclear where protecting its native marine species sits within the government’s priorities

Somewhere between nowhere and a long, long, way down the list would seem likely.

And yes, this does all work the other way around. Richer places have more resources to devote to not eating everything in sight, to protecting those desirable parts of the environment. That’s why, to give a different example, the air in London is cleaner these days that it has been since perhaps 1300 and the introduction of Newcastle’s sea coal to the capital.

Richer people protect the environment more - therefore, logically, environmentalists should be urging us all to become richer. Odd that it doesn’t quite work that way but then there we are, nowt so queer as folk.