Sustainability, Attainability …
By Jackson Kern
The pursuit of sustainable development is best characterized as a two-front war. Economic sustainability and environmental sustainability are best understood one in the light of the other; the defining challenge of sustainable development is to innovate and promote economic practices which function within the constraints of our natural environment, and which leave future generations the liberty to enjoy the treasure and bounty of our earth. The final pillar is that of socio-political sustainability, which essentially means the promotion of strong civic institutions and good democratic governance which is reflective of the popular will.
In the context of a globalizing economy confronted by uniquely global challenges, all legitimate designs for sustainability must address the greatest challenge of all: they must include a blueprint for the development of the world’s lower income nations. This pursuit no doubt involves a strong element of socio-political development. But it is economic development which, rightly or wrongly, invariably reaches the forefront in the dialogue. Economic development translates as the pursuit of wealth accumulation and ever-rising standards of living and physical comfort. All in the image, of course, of the affluent West and North.
This is where the trouble begins. A study reported in the Times of London in December 2006 revealed that ten percent of the world’s population controls eighty-five percent of its assets. Most residents of the first world are unaware of the sheer scale of this grinding inequality of wealth concentration. The lessons of human tendency teach us that there is no hope of achieving a more equitable balance by virtue of redistribution alone.
If incomes are to rise across the more wretched stretches of the earth, they must do so by internal wealth creation, by economic growth and all that it entails. This means “a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage”. In the present discourse, at least, this means the emergence of heavy industry, the rise of modern infrastructure, intensified electricity production, new-generation agricultural practices, deforestation, acid rain, and carbon emissions. But as the specter of human-induced climate change gains credibility, as our fisheries approach a danger of exhaustion and as “peak oil” arrives, is all of this unattainable? Is it possible that we are approaching or have already arrived at the maximum carrying capacity for human wealth that is offered by our finite planet earth? Further than this, is it possible that the present economic arrangement specifically precludes the possibility of high incomes for all by its very structure and design?
Two phenomena would need to be proven to expose such a contradiction. The first is that the wealth currently enjoyed in the world’s higher income countries is perpetually dependent upon a distant and mammoth underclass which offers cheap labor while enduring great hardship and austerity. The second is that we are in fact, as many believe, reaching an “ecological tipping point”. Elementary economics suggests that the first case is true. In the second case, there is sadly no such thing as elementary ecology and thermodynamics. (Many of course would credibly allege the same about economics.) The planet earth is an infinitely complex system of interacting variables and it is my judgment that most assessments of the direction in which we are heading exaggerate the degree of certainty with which any assertion can be made.
I cannot and do not claim to have my fingers on the relevant data which can prove or disprove this contradiction. Rather, I simply posit that it is time that we ask ourselves some of these questions. One can alternatively and eternally invoke Karl Marx or Adam Smith and David Ricardo in seeking to explain the current global divisions of wealth and labor. Leaving that debate aside, what I do know is that the resource demands of enriching such a mammoth proportion of the earth’s population will be positively titanic. If the ecology alarmists of the present are correct to any small degree, the outlook may be very bleak indeed.
Posted by on 01/21 at 03:46 PM
