On the Methodological Unity of Post-Industrial and Sustainable Development as the Environment Preservation Imperative
Each stage of the economic development of any society is associated with the consumption of natural resources. Thus, the impact of human society on the environment determines the environmental conditionality of the economy. The problem of economy – the maximum satisfaction of needs – becomes the central problem of ecology, as the development of civilization has caused a large volume of resources’ consumption. National economies can be at one of the following development stages: traditional, industrial, post-industrial society. Each stage is characterized by a certain state, the structure of economy, the type and amount of used resources, the attitude to the natural environment and, accordingly, the type of ecological and economic development. In an industrial society, the environmental conditioning of the economy is associated with the use and minimization of resource consumption in order to increase the economic efficiency, but not with understanding that the resources are exhaustible and non-renewable. Therefore, when moving to the postindustrial stage of development, it is important to understand its connection with sustainable development, which consists in synchronizing the innovative development of the productive forces of industry and the "green" nature-saving technologies.