Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970213093438.015a50ec@ilhawaii.net> Date: Thu, 13 Feb 1997 09:34:40 -1000 From: "Jay Hanson mailto:mailto:j@qmail.com" <j@QMAIL.COM> Subject: Re: THEORY: Population and Development To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
At 09:07 AM 2/13/97 -0500, Steve Eskow wrote:>The reason the poor of the world do not have bread is because I have extra
>loaves in the freezer--and the freezer itself consumes energy--and in order
>to get bread to the poor of the world, I must de-develop: if I give up my
>extra loaves, there will be wheat for Africa.
>
>Is that proposition widely accepted by those here?
That's somewhat, but not totally correct. Look at it this way:
Humans had the good fortune to evolve on a planet with many natural resources (ecological economists call this "natural capital"). This natural capital represents the human endowment. In other words, nature created and humanity inherited it.
If one sees the flow of solar energy as a fixed "flow" of energy, then for all practical purposes, the amount of natural capital is limited and finite.
Some of humanity's "natural capital" is in the form of renewable capital (e.g., hydrological cycles), and some is in the form of nonrenewable capital (e.g., fossil fuel). As one might expect, "nonrenewable" means exactly that -- it can only be used once.
It is up to human society how it distributes its endowment -- its natural capital -- among its members.
It is also up to human society whether or not it destroys its renewable capital -- and itself in the process.
Jay