Cloudscape

When you look at the list of countries by income per capita, it becomes apparent that nature is apparently an important factor — though the list varies from year to year, countries such as Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Ireland, Iceland, Danmark and so on have often been among the list. Two other relationships appear to be a history of fossil fuel exploitation and a history of war, both of which indirectly stimulate productivity.
The causality of this relationship is probably dual. On the one hand, richer people may have been more inclined to seek out nature, and the children of wealthy people are generally relatively wealthy themselves. On the other hand, nature may make people happier and thereby more productive.
If the latter is more important than the former, then it is important to recognize this factor in economy; it must be known that nature is important in economy, and therefore there is all the more reason for the two to be in harmony. Environmentalism does not need to hamper economy, but may on the contrary promote it. Everything, including economy, is a question of balance, and so it must be approached in a holistic as well as a more analytic way. Economy that is out of balance will damage the environment, which will damage the well-being of the population, which will damage economy.

This remains, however, a hypothesis.