Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2010 Jan;1185:237-45. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.05284.x.
Boulding's 1966 paper on the economics of spaceship Earth established the framework for ecological economics and an understanding of economic growth. In ecological economics, economies are conceptualized as open subsystems of the closed biosphere and are subject to biophysical laws and constraints. Economic growth measured as an increase in real gross domestic product (GDP) has generally been associated with increases in the use of energy and materials and the generation of wastes. Scale, composition, and technology are the proximate determinants of environmental impacts. They are often reduced to two: scale (GDP) and intensity (impact per unit GDP). New work described in this paper defines "green" growth as intensity that declines faster than scale increases. Similarly, "brown" growth occurs when intensity declines more slowly than increases in scale, and "black" growth happens when both scale and intensity increase. These concepts are then related to the environmental Kuznets curve, which can be understood as a transition from brown to green growth. Ecological economics provides a macroperspective on economic growth. It offers broad policy principles, and it challenges the primacy of economic growth as a policy objective, but many important questions remain.
鲍尔丁 1966 年关于地球号宇宙飞船经济的论文为生态经济学奠定了框架，并对经济增长有了一定的了解。在生态经济学中，经济被概念化为封闭生物圈的开放子系统，并受物理定律和限制的约束。经济增长以实际国内生产总值（GDP）的增加来衡量，通常与能源和材料使用量的增加以及废物的产生有关。规模、组成和技术是环境影响的直接决定因素。它们通常可以简化为两个：规模（GDP）和强度（每单位 GDP 的影响）。本文所描述的新工作将“绿色”增长定义为强度的增长速度快于规模的增长速度。同样，当强度的下降速度低于规模的增长速度时，就会出现“棕色”增长，而当规模和强度都增加时，就会出现“黑色”增长。然后，这些概念与环境库兹涅茨曲线相关联，该曲线可以理解为从棕色增长到绿色增长的过渡。生态经济学为经济增长提供了宏观视角。它提供了广泛的政策原则，并挑战了经济增长作为政策目标的首要地位，但仍有许多重要问题悬而未决。
