Rapidly escalating environmental problems of the late 20th century have a common characteristic: their increasingly global nature. Damage to ecosystems, the atmosphere, oceans, forests, agricultural systems, and water supplies threatens both the stabiliy of industrialized nations and the growth aspects of the developing world. The concepts of growth management and sustainable development have emerged as responses to environmental crisis. If these concepts are to be applied on the scale necessary to avert ecological catastrophe, a transformation of existing institutions is required. The future world economic system must be based on a kind of a global ecological Keynesianism, with a significant social direction of capital flows, demand management, and technological choices, to promote ecological sustainability.
