As the US writers Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster note: "No-growth capitalism is an oxymoron: when growth ceases, the system is in a state of crisis." The upshot is that the natural environment, on which human life and the human economy depend, is sidelined—"not as a place with inherent boundaries within which human beings must live together with Earth's other species, but as a realm to be exploited in a process of growing economic expansion."
正如美国作家弗雷德•马格多夫和约翰•贝拉木•福斯特所指出的:“没有增长的资本主义是个自相矛盾的说法:增长一旦停止,这个制度就会陷入危机。”其结果是人类生命和经济所依赖的自然环境被撇在一边—“不再是人类必须与地球上其他物种并存的天然鼴域,而成为人类在经济发展和经济扩张的过程中有待开发的领地。”
The uncomfortable and inconvenient truth is that the physical resources of the biosphere are finite. We're not approaching the ecological limits to growth; we're well past them. And in the process we are fouling the planet with our wastes and threatening the natural systems on which humanity and all other species depend.
让人倍感不安并且能够引起麻烦的现实情况却是:生物圈内的物质资源是有限的。而我们现在不是在接近经济增长的生态极限,而是远远超过了这个极限。并且在这个过程中,我们一直在用各种废弃物污染这个星球,威胁着人类和所有其他物种所赖以生存的自然系统。
The hard statistics of ecological decline could fill a library. We're chewing through massive quantities of both renewable and non-renewable resources at a breakneck speed.
关于生态恶化的可靠统计数据多到几乎可以装满一个图书馆。我们正在以极其危险的速度吞噬着大量可再生和不可再生资源。
In 2005, the UN Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a collaborative work of more than10,000 scientists, found that 60% of "ecosystem services"—things like climate regulation, the water cycle, pollination, global fisheries, natural waste treatment—were being degraded or used unsustainably. "Human activity is putting such a heavy strain on Earth's natural functions," the report warned, "that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain human endeavor can no longer be taken for granted."
2005年,由一万多名科学家共同完成的《联合国千年生态系统评估报告》发现,有60%的 “生态系统服务”——诸如气候调节、水循环、授粉、全球渔业、自然界对废弃物的处理等等——都在退化或者没有被可持续地利用。这份报告警告说,“人类的活动现在给地球的自然功能施加了如此巨大的压力,以至于我们不能再理所当然地认为这个星球的生态系统会有能力维持人类的努力和奋斗。”