Knowledge and the environment

Some recent analyses suggest that future increases in knowledge will, more or less automatically, alleviate or even eliminate future environmental problems. Here we examine this issue. First, we discuss whether a knowledge explosion is indeed occurring, addressing some of the problems with assessing knowledge-growth. We next consider whether growth in knowledge will help the environment; we ask whether future advances in knowledge are likely to assure benign environmental outcomes, and discuss physical limitations of reducing resource consumption. Finally, we outline policy interventions that would help produce and implement environmentally helpful knowledge. Although knowledge-growth can help attenuate future environmental problems, we are skeptical as to the ability of advances in knowledge to offset fully the adverse environmental impacts of continued growth of population and per-capita consumption. The ongoing shift from a material-based to a services-based economy reduces, but does not eliminate, the significant environmental impacts associated with the increasing scale of economic output. In addition, the ability of the economy to replace certain key natural resource inputs with knowledge inputs must eventually encounter limits. Public policy has a crucial role both in discouraging environmentally damaging forms of consumption, and in promoting the generation and diffusion of environmentally beneficial knowledge.