经济与环境的关系向来暧昧。柴静在片中也说了,空气中是什么味道,“是钱的味道”。Rachel Carson在 Silent Spring中也说过 "This is an era of specialists, each of whom sees his own problem and is unaware of or intolerant of the larger frame into which it fits. It is also an era dominated by industry, in which the right to make a dollar at whatever cost is seldom challenged." [6]自然确实也有自我毁灭机制,比如火山喷发、海啸、森林大火,但是人这种生物为了利益而苦苦经营的后果也是可怕的。每个经济学学生入门必学的概念之一,就是“增长”Growth,而非“发展”Development,它是一条状如心电图的曲线,它笃定地告诉我们,“横轴为历史,纵轴为经济”。它没有上限也没有下限,因为我们只要改变刻度,就可以走向无穷。这让环境学、生态学学者尴尬不已:“拜托,增长怎么可以是无穷的呢?” 历史学家 J. R. McNeill在 Something New Under the Sun中说过一句很有意思的话:“From about 1880 to 1970 the intellectual world was aligned so as to deny the massive environmental changes afoot. While economists ignored nature, ecologists pretended humankind did not exist.” 所以环境经济学、生态经济学的工作便成了某种结合,他们研究经济的“限度”,或者“代价”。他们要从那些全部被正向累加的量中扣除一系列的成本,人类的健康、寿命,自然资源的生态存量和多样性,以及不平等的收入、尊严、快乐。
Herman E. Daly & Joshua Farley的生态经济学教材 Ecological Economics-Principles and Applications 便是秉持了这个主题[7],与其说他们是在教授生态经济学的知识,不如说是在探讨如何处理经济增长与自然环境的矛盾。以图2.2为例,它意在把经济增长的正向作用(Utility)和反向作用(Disutility)纳入同一个理论框架,从而找到那个经济与环境的平衡点。而图3.2则抽象地呈现了生态与经济的三种关系,左图代表的也许就是中国之前的三十年,中图代表现在的水深火热,那么未来呢?
[1]陶然等,2010年,《经济增长能够带来晋升吗?对晋升锦标赛理论的逻辑挑战与省级实证重估》
[2] He Qing-Lian, 2006年版, 《中国现代化的陷阱》
[3] Chen Yuyu, et al., 2013; Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’ s Huai River policy
[4] Andrew Gelman & Adam Zelizer, 2014; Evidence on the deleterious impact of sustained use of polynomial regression on causal inference
[5] Edward Glaeser, 刘润泉译, 《城市的胜利》
[6]Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
[7] Herman E. Daly & Joshua Farley, Ecological Economics