Message-ID: <s325305e.039@crs.loc.gov> Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 10:11:37 -0500 From: Jonathan Sanford <mailto:JSANFORD@CRS.LOC.GOV> Subject: Re: UNITED NATIONS: Third World Lacks C -Reply -Reply To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
Dear Jay,I still think the IPS article on the UNDP energy study was flawed for the reasons I stated. Likewise, I continue to think your scenerio of inevitable collapse is flawed for the stated reasons.
You say I neglect the increasing energy costs of energy and the biophysical limits of growth. I do not think either is relevant to the above statements.
Any increased energy cost of producing energy will be included in the price of the final product. Otherwise, unless production is subsidized, nobody will produce new energy. And I still observe that, in spite of all the technological efforts needed to get access to the stuff, petroleum products still sell for less today in real terms than they did 20 or 30 years ago.
I don't think the presumed biophysical limits of growth has anything to do with the UNDP energy study. They didn't consider it either. I agree that the carrying capacity of earth is limited and we need to pay close attention to damage we might cause through human activity. For most extractive industries, however, this is a side issue. The cost of restoring cover for mines or for preventing environmental destruction from drilling is not so great as to stop the activity. It just raises the price a little or cuts the gains a bit. I agree it should be done. But the added cost is not prohibitive.
You tend to argue by reference to authority rather than by reason. Happens to be that I agree with your authorities about the need for sustainable development. Thing is we don't know where that limit might be.
Personally, I think we may already have crossed the line. You quote the 1993 zero population manifesto by 58 scientific acadamies. They want zero pop growth by the lifetime of our children. I think this is unrealistic. By the time all the young people now living grow up and start raising kids, there will be another huge spurt of population growth. So even if world population is stabilized by their late middle age, the total number of living people will be many billions higher than it is today.
I think environmental preservation is a goal whose time has unfortunately passed, since we have to figure out what we do with all the people now living or soon coming. I suppose we could preserve the environment as it is by halting growth and denying people in poor countries opportunities for employment, habitation, and food. But reducing world population through mass death in order to preserve the environment in its current form is not a very ethical tactic, seems to me.
I think we have a conflicting ethical situation --preserve the environment or preserve the people. I think we're going to have to look for a fallback position on the environment that can be sustainable in some form in order to accomodate all the kids who now exist and want to grow up. Just where that fallback position might be is not clear to me. But I don't think we should buy into doomsday scenerios which assume that a large share of the vulnerable people in the world have to be killed off in order to protect things as they are now for our benefit.
Jon Sanford