Are We Consuming Too Much?

Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 18, Number 3—Summer 2004 —Pages 147–172

Are We Consuming Too Much?

Kenneth Arrow, Partha Dasgupta,

Lawrence Goulder, Gretchen Daily, Paul Ehrlich,

Geoffrey Heal, Simon Levin, Karl-Goran Maler,

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Stephen Schneider, David Starrett and

Brian Walker

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s humanity’s use of Earth’s resources endangering the economic possibilities

open to our descendants? There is wide disagreement on the question. Many

people worry about the growth in our use of natural resources over the past

century. Some of this increase reflects the higher resource demands from a growing

world population. But it also reflects the growth of per capita output and consumption. During the twentieth century, world population grew by a factor of four to

more than 6 billion, and industrial output increased by a factor of 40. Per capita

y Kenneth Arrow is Professor of Economics Emeritus, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Partha Dasgupta is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of

Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College, both in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Lawrence

Goulder is Professor and Shuzo Nishihara Chair in Environmental and Resource Economics,

Stanford University, Stanford, California. Gretchen Daily is Associate Professor of Biological

Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Paul Ehrlich is Bing Professor of Population Studies, Stanford University, Stanford, California. Geoffrey Heal is Paul Garrett

Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility, Columbia Business School, New York,

New York. Simon Levin is Moffett Professor of Biology in the Department of Ecology and

Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. Karl-Goran Maler is

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Director of the Beijer International Institute of Ecological Economics, Stockholm, Sweden.

Stephen Schneider is Professor of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California. David Starrett is Professor of...