State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?

Today the car industry spends $31 billion a year just in the United States on advertising and has effectively exported car culture to developing countries—like China, where the automobile fleet has grown from less than 10 million to 73 million in just 11 years—using lessons learned in earlier successes.14

benefit corporations, which requires them to work toward having an overall positive effect on society and the environment.

A number of other groups—for example, the Great Transition initiative and the Future We Want—have performed similar exercises.

GDP also leaves out many things that actually do enhance well-being but that are outside the market, such as the unpaid work of parents caring for their children at home or the nonmarketed work of natural capital in providing clean air and water, food, natural resources, and other ecosystem services.

society instead adopts the central economic goal of sustainable human well-being, macroeconomic policy will change radically.

Adaptive management.

formulation and implementation of decisions concerning natural and social capital assets.

a minimum, then, for any type of waste where accumulated stocks are the main problem, emissions must be reduced below absorption capacity.

the current system steadily transfers resources to the financial sector.

These results are obtained by slower growth in overall government expenditures, net investment, and productivity; a positive net trade balance; cessation of growth in population; a reduced workweek; a