HERE is a salutary tale about the World Bank. The first draft of its , dedicated to sustainable development, contained a diagram labelled “the relation of the economy to the environment”. It showed a rectangle labelled “economy”, with an arrow entering it labelled “inputs” and an arrow exiting it labelled “outputs”. That was it.
It was my job, as senior economist in the , to review the draft and offer suggestions. I said drawing such a picture was a great idea, but it really had to include the environment. As drawn, the economy was…
