Barbara Ward's Claim That Prosperity and Nature Are One Problem
Barbara Ward was among the first to argue that prosperity, equality and the protection of nature are inseparable planetary goals, according to Or Rosenboim's essay on her work in Aeon. That is a stronger claim than saying all three matter. If the goals are inseparable, then a policy that buys growth by degrading the environment is not a regrettable trade-off — it is a category error, because the thing being pursued is undermined by the way it is pursued. It also means inequality and ecology are not competing causes to be ranked, but parts of one argument. Whether the inseparability holds in every case is the hard question; the value of Ward's formulation is that it refuses the conventional framing in which development and nature are put on opposite sides of a ledger.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
'Inseparable' is doing a lot of work. It implies a growth strategy that wrecks the natural systems it depends on isn't merely regrettable but self-defeating.
Or it bundles three goals that do collide in practice and labels the bundle a single planetary project, which can be a way of avoiding the question of what gives way when they conflict.