The World Keeps Getting Richer. Some People Are Worried

For all of that, growth continued rather yeastily. In the fifty years since this manifesto, the American economy has increased fourfold, far outstripping the country’s population, which has increased by sixty per cent. For the rest of the world, growth during this period has been even more dramatic. The global economy has become twenty-six times bigger—or twelve times higher per person. In 1970, half of humanity lived in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than two dollars a day. Today, only a tenth of the global population lives in extreme poverty. As astonishing as this growth engine has been to behold, we do seem to be choking on its exhaust. When “The Limits to Growth” was published, humanity had, in its history as a species, emitted half a trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the environment. We belched out triple that amount in the ensuing years. The world was just 0.4 degrees Celsius warmer than the pre-industrial average back then; last year, it was 1.5 degrees warmer, and on track to hit three degrees by the end of the century, at which point all kinds of cataclysms are expected—polar ice caps petering out, swollen oceans swallowing the coasts, almighty wildfires, famine, and more.