Title:
SUSTAINABILITY THOUGHTS 193: DOES THE CURRENT MOVE FROM THE PERIOD OF GREEN MARKET PARADIGM SHIFT AVOIDANCE 1987-2022 TO FORMAL CIRCULAR ECONOMIC THINKING 2023-2024 MAKE SENSE IN TERMS OF LONG-TERM ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY? IF NOT, WHY NOT?

Authors:
Lucio Munoz

Abstract:
It can be said that in the traditional market there was no need for reuse in theory as the externalities being produced are assumed away so markets can grow without producing them by assumption, a situation which the Brundtland Commission in 1987 documented as false as there are externalities produced, which have been accumulating since 1776 and that had led to the critical sustainability problems, they said could only then be fixed using thinking beyond traditional market thinking. Today those pollution production problems have not yet been addressed, yet the whole world, including the United Nations, is moving towards circular economic thinking, knowing since 1987 that the root cause of sustainability problems was not economic linearity, but critical problem cost externalization reflected in socially and/or environmentally distorted traditional market prices. Hence, going circular economic thinking means that we know now and accept that there is a real critical externality production problem linked to traditional market thinking, but now we just define it away as the circular economy will be able to grow as much as it wants without producing social and/or environmental pollution problems too but this time it takes place by defining the externality problem away, which is not possible. In other words, going from assuming away critical problem generation under traditional market thinking to defining them away under circular economic thinking cannot be a solution to the generation of sustainability problems as without correcting distorted market prices today/current situation you cannot expect to solve long term sustainability problems/future situation. And this means that the move from linear traditional market thinking to circular market thinking is a move inconsistent with the Thomas Kuhn’s paradigm evolution loop as no abnormalities linking traditional market thinking to the socioenvironmental pollution production problem have been removed yet making the circular market a pollution production market too. And this raises the question, does the current move from the period of green market paradigm shift avoidance 1987-2022 to formal circular economic thinking 2023-2024 make sense in terms of socio-environmental sustainability? If not, why not? What are the long-term sustainability implications of this? Among the goals of this paper is to provide answers to the questions above.