Evaluating the Costs of Growth

The twentieth century has been extremely unusual in that economic growth rates have been extraordinarily high. At the same time, costs of this growth have also been extremely high. These have been in the form of environmental degradation, depletion of planetary resources and species, climate change, and adverse social change. Since many of the effects of growth go outside the marketplace, evaluating costs and benefits involves value judgments of types which economists are not well-equipped to make. This article sketches some issues which have not received sufficient attention in the discourse about current policy options which bear importantly on our future