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… is from pages 66-67 of the newly published final volume – Bourgeois Equality [2] – of Deirdre McCloskey’s essential trilogy on the essence and role of bourgeois values in modern life; this quotation is directed at those people who fear that modern economic growth – what Deirdre calls “the Great Enrichment” – necessarily threatens our physical environment or is otherwise ‘unsustainable’ (footnote deleted):
The environmental limit looks to be solved by the ingenuity that caused the Great Enrichment in the first place. It will not be solved by some of the stranger economic suggestions, such as Eating Local. As Robert Wuetherick asks, “What will be next? 100-mile-sourced medicines? 100-mile-sourced ideas? 100-mile-sourced economic history?”