Covering the countryside with McMansions, Big Box Stores, roads, and producing all the cars needed to support that lifestyle counts the same in this insane economic theory as turning our cities into attractive affordable places to live where car ownership is unnecessary.
Likewise, factory farm meat and dairy production counts the same as the production of highly nutritious and tasty vegan foods.
On a planet where so many people live in dangerous, unhealthy housing, suffer food shortages, and don't have access to clean water or modern sanitary systems, we still need economic growth. It just has to be focused in such a way that generally reduces the environmental footprint of humanity.
Once we've got the basics worked out, for a start by the elimination of fossil fuels, true economic growth can be directed towards expressions of our humanity that have minimal adverse environmental impacts, or ideally, positive environmental impacts.
I think about my own environmental footprint quite a bit. My wife and I have never enjoyed a stable income, mostly due to health issues, the kind of shit that falls out of the sky. We've been slammed around between affluence and hospital bills and mortgages we can't pay. At our lowest point my wife was recovering from a major surgery and we were a week or two from foreclosure. Thankfully we had family who could bail us out. In our affluence we've bailed some of them out too.
We're in the affluent place now. Knock on wood.
I'll tell you what I'm not doing. I'm not buying an electric car. We just don't drive that much and our little old hybrid gets 40 mpg plus. We're not putting solar panels on our roof, We just don't use that much electricity. Solar panels are so common in our neighborhood there's probably a net export of electricity whenever the sun is shining.
My wife is vegetarian approaching vegan, I'm that most days as well. I'm not going to cook two meals, one for her and one for me. I only do that for large family gatherings, a mix of vegans, vegetarians, and carnivores who sometimes kill the animals they eat. I've been a carnivore who has killed animals I've eaten. Hunter is both my name and a natural talent.
I think what me and my wife appreciate most about affluence is that we can support causes that are important to us and we can support artists.
When we go out to eat, when we go to the movies or theater, when we go to concerts, when we buy paintings from local artists, when we buy books (we buy a lot of those!), when we subscribe to streaming services, then we are supporting the arts.
Art tends to have a small environmental footprint.
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