We doubled produced capital and destroyed 40% of natural capital. The GDP chart looked fine.
The Dasgupta Review reports that over 1992–2014, global per-capita produced capital roughly doubled while per-capita natural capital fell by roughly 40%, corroborated by the World Bank's Changing Wealth of Nations 2021. Through the Inclusive Wealth Criterion lens: ΔK_produced > 0 but ΔK_natural << 0 for parties — future generations, downstream ecosystems — external to the trade. Whether the sum is net-positive or net-negative depends on shadow prices that standard GDP accounting omits entirely. A growth statistic that aggregates +100% produced capital with −40% natural capital into a single cheerful headline is measuring one column of a ledger while pretending the others do not exist.