Definitions of "Eco-Affluence"

James Martin, founder of the 21st Century School (now the Martin School) at Oxford University, has said that if we make the right choices in the present and future, we can live well in a sustainable and essentially environmentally-harmless way. We will then be "eco-affluent." We'll still have the luxuries we've come to take for granted (or their equivalent), but damage to the environment will have ceased.

Jack Hollander of the University of California at Berkeley believes that an affluent society is more interested in, and more likely to protect, the environment than poor societies (who are struggling to get by in any way possible). In this usage, "eco-affluence" apparently occurs when wealthy societies finally decide they care about the environment.

Both opinions seem correct to me. I've seen a food-processing plant in the hills of Panama discharging smelly yellowish effluent into a beautiful mountain stream which flowed to the city below. I doubt that such a thing would be tolerated today in the United States or other First World countries.

With countries like China and India beginning to adopt widespread use of First World technologies like the automobile, eco-affluence seems to be the only way to prevent dire consequences for our entire planet.