Spring 1994 41 41 DISCUSSION PAPERS John M. Gowdy* Progress and Environmental Sustainability One of the most pervasive ideas in Western culture is the notion of progress. Among economists, it is synonymous with economic growth. According to advocates of unlimited growth, more growth will result in a cleaner environ- ment, a stable population level, and social and economic equality. Although most environmentalists do not subscribe to the growth ethic, they generally cling to a notion of progress by arguing that there has been continual enlight- enment in public attitudes toward the environment and that this enlightenment can lead to environmental salvation. I argue that there is no convincing argument for past human progress and no reason to believe that it will occur in the future. Once we abandon notions of progress, we free ourselves to concentrate on making do with what we have rather than placing our hopes on some future material or ethical utopia. Progress is a noxious, culturally embedded, untestable, nonoperational, intrac- table idea that must be replaced if we wish to understand the patterns of history. —STEPHEN J AY GOULD 1 Progress might have been all right once, but it’s gone on too long. —OGDEN NASH 2 * Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590. Gowdy’s main research area is ecological economics. He is the author of Evolutionary Economics, which will be published by Kluwer in 1994. 1 Stephen Jay Gould, “On Replacing the Idea of Progress with an Operational Notion of Directionality,” in Matthew Nitecki, ed., Evolutionary Progress (Chicago: University of Chi- cago Press, 1988), p. 319. 2 Quoted by William Provine, “Progress in Evolution and Meaning in Life,” in Nitecki, Evolutionary Progress, p. 49. 3 David Hull, “Progress in Ideas of Progress,” in Nitecki, Evolutionary Progress, p. 27. Hull presents an alternative view to the idea that the concept of progress is new. I. INTRODUCTION It is widely accepted that the idea of progress is quite new, that the idea of a world rapidly evolving to a better and better state is a product of the industrial revolution. 3 The new Victorian view of progress was inevitably intertwined with notions of perfectibility through commercial enterprise. The idea of www.umweltethik.at