From Readers

Your Letters and Comments

The Jury’s Not Out — It’s Not Even in Session

Efforts like the collaboration between economists and ecologists, detailed by Jon Christensen in “Are We Consuming Too Much?” (Conservation In Practice, April-June 2005), are essential if we are to harness the power of the economy for achieving environmental sustainability and maximizing long-term human welfare. The analysis of genuine wealth and investment is sorely needed and is a considerable advance over other calculations of economic wealth and sustainability. The most important consequence of this contribution would be — just as the authors clearly intend — catalyzing further multi- and transdisciplinary work. In addition to the need to account more fully for ecosystem services in genuine wealth and investment, this research program must address three key issues in order to do justice to the question “Are we consuming too much?”

First, analyses performed at the scale of nation states deny the reality of global markets and prohibit valid conclusions regarding national consumption. Arrow et al.’s study addresses only forest loss and the draw-down of oil and mineral reserves within a country’s borders. But when large fractions of domestic consumption derive from forests and oil reserves elsewhere, the sustainability of these stocks and flows within a nation fails to capture the impacts of a nation’s behavior on global sustainability. Furthermore, in assigning responsibility to nations regulating their natural resources, we should be wary of assigning too little to the corporations and consumers who are ultimately responsible for these unsustainable flows.

Second, it is no simple matter to translate consumption — the metric of Arrow et al.’s analysis — to human welfare, which is the prime concern in sustainability analyses. Although economics traditionally assumes that welfare is an increasing function of consumption, there is reason to believe that this function diminishes more rapidly than traditionally assumed. Research by Amartya Kumar Sen and Richard Layard, for example, suggests that beyond a certain minimum level (close to the poverty line in more developed countries), increases in consumption yield at best very minor increases in happiness. Accordingly, assessing the economic balance of a nation’s spending and harvesting only obliquely addresses the nation’s ability to sustain human welfare. Yet currently, much attention is focused on increasing overall consumption. To improve human welfare, we must focus much more attention on the intratemporal distribution of consumption and on understanding the various factors that promote welfare and the ranges over which they operate.

Third, economic analyses understandably assume the substitutability of natural for human capital, but without sufficient attention to understanding the limits of that substitutability. People living in poverty are not likely to value the aesthetic and ethical values of biodiversity above material goods, but some people who live in relative wealth are willing to forgo great gains in personal wealth in pursuit of beauty and ethical ideals. Take environmental researchers, for example, whose intellectual capacities could easily command far greater incomes as financial analysts than as academics. The existence of such individuals suggests that the substitutability of some values of biodiversity is deeply limited, and the comparison with disadvantaged people suggests that this substitutability varies tremendously in ways for which economic analyses do not currently account. When species are being lost at a rate paralleled only by the five great extinctions, ignorance of the dynamics of this substitutability is ignorance of whether we are indeed consuming “too much.”

The pursuit of sustainable gains in human welfare will surely benefit from the efforts of esteemed researchers like Arrow and colleagues. But before this work yields much-needed answers to guide public policy, it must be bolstered by the efforts of many other academics in additional innovative collaborations. Such collaborations must involve other social and natural scientists in order to analyze the basis of human welfare and the economic implications of other depleted and degraded resources.

KAI M. A. CHAN

Center for Conservation Biology

Stanford University

Can We Crank Up the GDP without Depleting Natural Resources?

I think one of the most interesting things that comes up in both your article “Are We Consuming Too Much?” (Conservation In Practice, April-June 2005) and the Ehrlich-and-company article is this comparison between consumption and investment. These are two distinct categories in any Economics 101 class, for good reason; and like you say, if we put enough into the investment category so that we ensure that future generations are okay, we should be able to put the rest into the consumption category without concern.

The concern is over future generations, though. Even if we are investing enough to ensure that they are okay, if we put a lot of our GDP into the consumption category, there’s a good chance that this will result in natural resources being consumed and therefore not there for those same future generations we are worried about. In a recent post over at Gristmill (http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/6/9/23178/58075), one of the things that I hopefully conveyed was that nowadays, we can crank up the GDP without depleting natural resources.

Also, I think that the valuation of services that nature provides, such as water purification, is one of the most important things coming out of this merger of economists and ecologists. Hopefully we will realize that there are some things that can be done better and in a more aesthetically pleasing manner by “natural” systems than by human-made ones. I think that in some cases, extensive man-made water treatment facilities may be the most efficient way to get the job done as well as the only way to ensure quality within the range of certainty necessary for policy makers and public officials to sleep easy at night. However, I think that such alternative ways of getting things done can work (probably more on a smaller scale than a larger one) and will have an important role in the future — or at least I hope so.

ANDREW BRETT

Princeton University

A Nail in the Coffin

After the article “Are We Consuming Too Much?” (Conservation In Practice, April-June 2005), I am relieved. Now I can go out and buy an SUV, take longer and hotter showers, turn up the heat at home, and increase my consumption. All I need to do is replace all my books on voluntary simplicity with books on investing.

Several years ago, ZPG (Dr. Ehrlich’s group) and the Sierra Club predicted that, if we did not come to grips with population within the next few years, it would be too late. The problems of the day would overwhelm efforts to preserve the future. It seems that day has come, and many environmental organizations are looking for ways to stay viable. Smile and denial are quickly replacing the doom-and-gloom practices of the past.

Tangible goals are being replaced by simple feel-good actions. ZPG, once a staunch supporter of U.S. population stabilization, now focuses simply on fertility rights as a way of reaching stability. The immigration side of U.S. population growth is seen as too xenophobic to discuss. Those that do are branded as racists and bigots and hateful greens (the recent board vote of the Sierra Club, the greening of hate, highlighted this). In short, politics have trumped real goals of the environmental movement, and today’s right-wing politics seem to be causing all other groups to move toward the right. Your organization seems to be no exception.

Unfortunately, reality is still reality. Population and consumption continue to rise as well as their consequences: global warming, species loss, resource depletion, war, and a myriad of other ills. Ignoring this and focusing on helping the poor have not and will not solve the pressing problems of the day. Getting into bed with cornucopian economists means everyone gets screwed. An old and seemingly outmoded adage from the environmental community says that sustainable growth (whether of developed or undeveloped countries) is an oxymoron. Why not make plans for the day when population and consumption growth level off, as they must, given the finiteness of the planet? Why not look for difficult but tangible solutions instead of easy (continued material growth) but short-sighted ones?

JACK M. PEDIGO

Seattle, Washington

Food for Thought

The article “Are We Consuming Too Much?” (Conservation In Practice, April-June 2005) presented so much to think about — which I still am doing. Yet somehow, I cannot shake my belief as an ecologist that sustainability is not best defined as sustaining human welfare (at least not the consumptive quality of life in the U.S.). You have presented a really fine article that everyone needs to read and think about carefully.

MARY HOOD

Professor Emerita of Biology

University of West Florida