The problem with the World Bank has to do with development - the spreading of Western over-consumption worldwide.

Growth is widely thought to be the panacea for all the major economic ills of the modern world.

We say we need to clean up the environment; to clean up the environment, we need to be richer. But maybe getting richer is actually making us poorer.

Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence.

Nonrenewable resources should be exploited, but at a rate equal to the creation of renewable substitutes.

The problem with the World Bank has to do with development - the spreading of Western over-consumption worldwide.

Growth chestnuts have to be placed on the unyielding anvil of biophysical realities and then crushed with the hammer of moral argument.