Question

Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, explains how the U.S. economy is growing and actually using less and less stuff to do so. Thanks to new technologies, many advanced economies are reducing their use of timber, metals, fertilizer, and other resources. McAfee says this dematerialization trend is spreading to other parts of the globe. While it’s not happening fast enough to stop climate change, he believes it offers some hope for environmental protection when combined with effective public policy. Yeah and like you say, it’s deeply counterintuitive. I didn’t believe it the first time I heard about it. I kind of walked around with this unexamined assumption that as economies grow, as populations grow, of course, they use more materials from the earth. They use more resources. You need molecules to build an economy.And I came across this wonderful essay written by Jesse Ausubel, called “The Return of Nature: How Technology Liberates the Environment.” And he made this point, and I thought that would be wonderful if it were true, but that actually can’t possibly be right. That’s not how growth works. And so I went to his sources. I double-checked and I came to the conclusion he was absolutely right.And so I became super enthusiastic about this and wanted to understand it and try to explain it. Because it seems to me that this is a really profound change in our relationship with the planet that we all live on.We had 200, almost 250 years of the industrial era which was a period of amazing growth and human population and human prosperity and economies. But wow, the industrial era was really tough on our planet. We took more from the earth year after year. We dug mines. We chopped down forests. We polluted. We killed all of the passenger pigeons. We almost killed all the buffalo and whales. In some ways, this was a really tough chapter for the planet Earth and it looked like there was this tradeoff between our prosperity and the health of the planet. I don’t believe that tradeoff has to exist anymore because I think we’re demonstrating that we can grow economies, grow population, grow prosperity, improve the human condition while also taking better care of the Earth and treading more lightly on it.

Less nickel. Less gold. Less fertilizer. Less water for irrigation and less timber. Less paper. Less of just about all the, of the molecules. All the things that you build an economy out of. And there’s an important distinction here. There are two kinds of less. There’s less per capita. In other words, less timber per American. And then there’s less timber year after year, by all Americans put together. Which is a much more profound phenomenon and that’s essentially saying that America’s, all Americans total footprint on the planet is shrinking over time. And that’s what is going on and that’s what I wrote More from Less about.

1. What are the implications of McAfee's arguments?
2. Can you think of any arguments against McAfee's arguments?
3. Can you think of any evidence that supports McAfee that he does not present in the interviews and lectures?
4. How do you view globalization given McAfee's evidence?

Answer 1

Implications of McAfee's argument are that there is going to be less severe climate change as technology is helping reduce the environmental impact by using less resources and putting those resources to good use. That America is ultimately using less natural resources.

McAfee doesn't provide any evidence as to the quantum of resources saved, he should have provided some evidence as to how technology is acting as a saviour. Technology needs advanced amount of electricity, if electricity is being generated from renewable than its fine, but if it is non renewable than it counter argues the statement that technology is ultimately saving the planet.

He should have provided evidence that recyclable materials are being put to use and how the government is initiating green energy and technology. More and more products are being manufactured which are easy to recycle and digital mediums are being initiated.

Given McAfee's evidence which is not substantial, I still view globalisation as something which has a trade off between prosperity and exploitation of resources. Not all advanced economies are using this technology, and they are not the biggest consumers of such products of natural resources, the developing economies are, and unless those countries employ green technology, globalisation would harm the planet to a certain extent.