Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970703064207.008b8370@aloha.net> Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 06:42:07 -1000 From: Jay Hanson <mailto:j@QMAIL.COM> Subject: "sustainable anything" To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
In 1992, both the US National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London warned in a joint statement that science and technology might NOT be able to save us:"If current predictions of population growth prove accurate and patterns of human activity on the planet remain unchanged, science and technology may not be able to prevent either irreversible degradation of the environment or continued poverty for much of the world."
"The future of our planet is in the balance. Sustainable development can be achieved, but only if irreversible degradation of the environment can be halted in time. The next 30 years may be crucial." [ http://dieoff.org/page7.htm ]
Never before in history had the two most prestigious groups of scientists in the world issued a joint statement!
Science-oriented (and egalitarian or religious) people see the scientific consensus as a CRISIS. They feel that the collapse of our life-support system (and a few billion untimely deaths) during the next century would be IMMORAL. Obviously, those with young children are especially concerned because it will occur within their lifetimes.
Economic-oriented (and individualist or libertarian) people don't see the scientific consensus as a CRISIS, they see it as an economic OPPORTUNITY either because they are not bright enough to understand the scientific arguments or they just don't give a damn.
Economists are especially deadly because they are killers by training -- it's completely automatic and unconscious for them. For example, consider former World Bank's chief economist, Lawrence Summers:
"I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable ... because foregone earnings from increased morbidity" are low. He adds that "the underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted; their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles...." [The Economist, Feb. 8, 1992].
These cold-blooded calculations expose a global system of economic homicide where human lives are viewed only as footnotes to the global economy -- it's a global whorehouse where everything is for sale. . . .
WHY IS SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT SO POPULAR? The main reason that sustainable development is so popular now, is that the moneymaking class thinks it can become even wealthier by selling "sustanability".
In a way it is like selling low-fat yogurt. The problem is that if one eats too much of it, one still gains weight. (Americans are now fatter than ever.) So technology alone, like low-fat yogurt alone, can not solve the problem. Solutions to both problems require absolute "limits" on consumption.
Thus, "sustainable development" is essentially a "limits" problem -- it's the "Tragedy of the Commons" again.
The Tragedy of the Commons problem has only one solution: "mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon". In other words, to become sustainable will require humanity to gain POLITICAL control over the global whorehouse.
There is simply no other solution to the Tragedy of the Commons problem. There is simply no other way to become sustainable.
Once the moneymaking class finally understands the undeniable political aspects of our survival problem, "sustainable anything" will become as extinct as the dodo bird -- as extinct as civil society is destined to become in the 21st century.
Corporations now have the best governments that money can buy, I am certain they intend to keep them.
Jay -- http://dieoff.org