And unlike other goods and services, the demand for environmental protection comes only from the government. But because the demand for environmental mitigation comes from the government, it is not the enterprises which create a greater demand for environmental mitigation. Quite simply, we cannot be content to sit back and watch the entrepreneurs do their work. The other problem is that entrepreneural environmental mitigation still does not resolve the problem of sustainability. Mitigation merely slows down the rate of the destruction of clean air and water and the rate of resource depletion, but as long as the economy continues to grow and people continue to demand consumer goods, the economy may run into problems of unsustainability.
Sustainability is a very vague concept and a poorly understood term.
What this means, according to the critics, is that resource depletion really isn't a problem, and that the problem of sustainability simply boils down to making enough capital investments. The problem with this line of thought is that it ignores the fact that certain resources are irreplaceable. For example, we will probably never find a substitute for clean water. By putting blind faith in environmental entrepreneurship and market-oriented approaches in general, we're guilty of trying to have our cake and eat it too. We all know that the current economic system is in dire need of reform.