I realize I’m preaching to the choir a bit here, but I always thought about the economy as a bunch of objects and things that people are doing with them, but I just realized that actually, growth of the economy will always somehow impact the environment (not always necessarily to its detriment though). It really is a zero sum game and I was making a mistake of not always thinking about the two in concert.
I wouldn’t call it zero sum. I think of zero sum as meaning more determent to the environment would always be more profitable. But in reality, some industries, like fossil fuels, agriculture, and mining have an outsized impact on the environment compared to things like software development, craftsmanship like watch making, and media.
Someone just read Blue Mars.
The usual analysis is that the economy is a subset of the environment. In other words, the human economy is a (small, fragile, entirely dependent) part of the wider natural economy.
Unfortunately, orthodox economists have still not received the memo.
