The demand side of the economy is the consumer population. The consumers decide what they do and do not want to purchase, therefore driving demand.
"Infinite need" implies that infinite supply could exist, or that infinite growth is sustainable, both of which are not true. Infinite need also doesn't exist.
I will argue that people (for example) needing clean water increases the demand for clean water. This is why companies like Nestle are profiteering off of selling bottled water, and why the CEO said that water should not be a human right.
Wait. But someone has to bottle the water, right? Or is nestle supposed to do it for free?
Furthermore they have to compete with tap water. So the value of bottled water can only be the water itself + bottle + energy used to fill bottle + interest because their “service” is not for free. There is a justified interest to make a profit from one’s efforts.
I give you that. Just a few were directly involved in innovation.
But the rich do quite successfully create the framework conditions for innovation and development.
Mostly driven by profit, but a world based purely on goodwill fails at the first doubter, the first who does not want to participate.
So capitalism is what we got. And so far it has proven to be more resilient than other systems.
Even if they're right — which we all know they are not — it wouldn't matter. Climate change is going to devastate human life if we do nothing. If, somehow, the source of the warming wasn't human-caused, we'd still need to find a way to counteract it. It's not our fault doesn't prevent it from being our problem.
"Ok, then let's prepare for the inevitable, strengthen infrastructure, prepare for mass migrations, improve our crops to sustain bigger variances in weather, evacuate people from flood danger zones, ensure our supply chain doesn't collapse, fund poor countries so they can survive better, etc. You know, prepare for the crisis"
I had a guy tell me once that maybe climate change is just the Earth getting closer to the sun, and we should send an astronaut up to the Hubble telescope so they can look through it and measure the distance to the sun....
I've known this guy for over a decade, and it's not that he's stupid, he's just completely ignorant about climate change and doesn't put in any effort to learn about science.
It's not happening.
It's happening but it's all cyclical.
It's not cyclical this time but it's not our fault.
It's our fault but global warming is good ackshually.
Global warming is bad but there's nothing we can do about it.
We could do something about it but it's too expensive/late.
Maybe it's not too expensive but THE CHINESE!
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
(no not all conservatives/climate change deniers are narcissists but the overlap is interesting)
There's a lot of money pushing this idea. I live in a certain US state where an organization has been paying to have billboards up that push this idea for years now.
The most terrible thing is that it's a half truth. While yes plants grow better with increased CO2, the downsides are so destructive it is not at all beneficial.
If you're based in the UK, then all you can do is smile at the shit we have to deal with government-wise. If you don't laugh, you'll go mad, kinda thing.
That 'Four Stage Strategy' is horribly, horribly apt even today.
I've found a clever way to counter those folks is to say, "you might be right, and as the apex species it's our moral obligation to seize control and protect the natural order of things for as long as we are able to slow the coming of hell on earth. Just like our right to shoot guns. Yee haw."
What I hear some acquaintances say is like "who cares, I'll go to the beach, turn the AC on, what's the big deal" .
As if the floods we had in Italy this year, or the wild fires, or the storms, or the draughts, or the Alps without snow, the glaciers disappeared, the sea turned green, the invasion of jellyfish weren't connected.
Some people, most people, are just too fucking stupid.
To be fair, I think both sides blow it out of proportion and that can stifle discussion. It won't be the "end of the world" where everyone will die, but we will have the "end of the world" as we know it.
I think one of the main points that need to be stressed to the kind of people in your example would be droughts.
Droughts will continue to get worse and will affect everyone. With a bad enough drought, we won't be able to feed entire cities. And that's when things really start to fall apart.
Yeah, people expect the earth to suddenly start cracking and spitting out hot lava or something.
No, it's gonna be a slow, steady march towards the end, just as it always has been. Slow enough that we feel like we can put it off for another day.
Slow enough that one day we will look up from our phones, see the oceans of fire and shrug. Too late now, just switch on the AC and go back to scrolling.