Environmental Kuznets curves—real progress or passing the buck ...

D.S. Rothman / Ecological Economics 25 (1998) 177–194 191
Table 2
Various fits to ecological footprint data
Functional Fitted equation a Adjusted r 2 Turning point b
form
Linear 0.896 (5.4)+3.77×10 −4 (12.0) (GDP/capita)
0.7379
Quadratic 0.626 (2.8)+5.60×10 −4 (5.3) (GDP/capita)−1.30×10 −8 (1.8) (GDP/cap- 0.7496 21 587
Log-linear −4.193 (9.2)+0.619 (11.9) ln(GDP/capita)
0.7322
ita) 2
Log-quadratic −0.046 (0.0)−0.398 (0.5) ln(GDP/capita)+0.061 (1.3) (ln(GDP/capita)) 2 0.7364
a Equations fitted to data provided by Wackernagel et al. (1997). Values in italic parentheses are absolute values of the t-statistics
for the coefficients. Due to heteroskedasticity, weighted regressions were used for the linear and quadratic forms.
b Turning points only calculated for quadratic equations with negative coefficients on the quadratic term.
past the periods of increasing environmental impact
and resource use, so as to avoid increasing
their impacts in the first place (Goldemberg et al.,
1988; Pearson, 1994; Munasinghe, 1995; Ferguson
et al., 1996; Karr and Thomas, 1996; Schindler,
1996).
This leaves us with the question of what needs
to be done to ensure that the answer to the second
question above is yes, which requires, in part, a
better examination of the first question. This task
requires a number of parallel efforts. First, we
must more carefully analyze the relationship between
economic activity and environmental impact.
We must understand that solving
environmental problems means more than handing
them off, i.e., passing the buck to people in
other places or in other times. It must be understood
what we mean by growth, i.e. that we make
a clear distinction between economic growth and
growth in human well-being. For all of these, we
need to link analyses of this issue to other areas of
research that are providing important insights,
particularly that on industrial ecology and dematerialization,
the definition and measurement of
indicators of economic, human and environmental
well-being and the relationships between trade
and the environment.
From a policy perspective, it is imperative to
recognize that the necessary changes are possible,
but not inevitable. This has been expressed explicitly
in almost all of the work on the EKC to date.
As Radetzki (1992) states, even if one does buy
the basics of the EKC hypothesis, the changes
that have occurred and will occur ‘‘will not be the
result of environmental laissez-faire. Many of the
behavioral adaptations, sometimes quite painful,
have been prompted by social mandates overriding
the freedom of unregulated markets’’. However,
the opinion of Beckerman (1992), among
others, that economies react appropriately without
policy intervention and that the surest way to
achieve environmental quality is to get rich are
still around and do carry weight in policy circles.
Thus, it is important that, as researchers, we not
only improve the substance of our analyses, but
that we also improve the communication of our
results and the assumptions behind these.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Sander de
Bruyn, Thomas Selden and an anonymous reviewer
for their insightful comments on earlier
versions of this paper. The paper is much improved
as a result, with all remaining errors and
opacity being the sole responsibility of the author.
Also, the data underlying the analyses presented
are available from the author upon request.
References
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Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment,
National Institute for Environmental Studies, Washington,
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