Translations:Information Booklet/68/en
Today “economic growth” is often used as a marker of progress and an indicator that standards of living are improving. However, the idea of economic growth is often coupled to a worldview that humans dominate and exploit nature[1]. This “worldview” is at the heart of many high-polluting nations, and many believe has its roots 400 years ago, in a time period that’s known as the Scientific Revolution. Intellectuals of the time wrote about how mankind was superior to nature[2], and how it was the right of humans to dominate over nature. The ideas that were first spread around this time were extremely influential over the following centuries, and helped to inform the laws, technologies, ways of life, customs and cultures that are still present in rich countries today. Many of these ways of life have since been passed on to, or imposed on, other countries across the world.