The Bretton Woods conference created the World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and soon after GATT. Korten is one of the world’s clearest critics of the economic philosophies and practices that drive the global system. In this selection, Korten traces the history of Bretton Woods and argues that the human economy is embedded in and dependent on the natural ecosystems of our planet. The author writes that until the present moment in history the scale of human economic activity relative to the scale of the ecosystems was small enough so that (in both economic theory and practice) we could up to a point ignore this fundamental fact. However, he argues that now we have crossed a monumental historical threshold because of the fivefold economic expansion since 1950 and therefore the environmental demands of the economic system have filled up the available environmental space of the planet. This chapter discusses economic growth, powerful interests that stand in the way of achieving a reversal of current trends, and bringing issues into mainstream policy debates.
