Everyone is an environmentalist to some degree. At the very least, nobody wants to shit where they eat. Even if you believe the Earth was put here solely so its inhabitants can exploit it, you don’t think it can be exploited to the point where it’s left uninhabitable. Obviously, the “environmentalist debate” takes place between this view and the “don’t touch a fucking thing” point of view, but I see a fundamental problem with most of the debates I’ve been a part of.
Sustainability has become one of the most frequently used words in environmental circles in the last decade. The trouble is, nobody seems to know what it means. Just to clarify my own position, I’d consider myself something of a conservationist. At the most basic level, I don’t want to shit where I eat. But, I also want to keep some stuff that’s particularly beautiful, to some degree, unspoiled. Unless a deposit of endless wealth is discovered underneath Yosemite Valley, lets make it so people can enjoy its beauty. Sure, put some walkways in, clear some underbrush, build a hotel or two. Is that sustainable? I think even many hardcore environmentalists would say so.
Where almost every self-proclaimed environmentalist or conservationist differs though, is when it comes to harvesting some part of nature for man’s benefit. For example, if Fresno was Darfur, and strip mining Yosemite meant that millions of people in the Fresno region would not only eat, but have an opportunity to prosper, I’d say lets take some pictures before those excavators move it. I’d consider that sustainable. How is that possible?
Sustainability isn’t just about the environment. The only reason we care about the environment is because of its ability to sustain life, and more specifically, humans. With that in mind, here are some wonderful thoughts from MIT professor Robert M. Solow in paper Sustainability: An Economist’s Perspective.
An obligation to conduct ourselves so that we leave to the future the option or the capacity to be as well of as we are.
You have to take into account, in thinking about sustainability, the resources that we use up and the resources that we leave behind, but also the sort of environment we leave behind including the built environment, including productive capacity (plant and equipment) and including technological knowledge.
If you don’t eat one species of fish, you can eat another species of fish. Resources are, to use a favorite word of economists, fungible in a certain sense. They can take the place of each other. That is extremely important because it suggests that we do not owe to the future any particular thing. There is no specific object that the goal of sustainability, the obligation of sustainability, requires us to leave untouched.
Sustainability doesn’t require that any particular species of owl or any particular species of fish or any particular tract of forest be preserved. Substitutability is also important on the production side. We know that one kind of input can be substituted for another in production. There is no reason for our society to feel guilty about using up aluminum as long as we leave behind a capacity to perform the same or analogous functions using other kinds of materials – plastics or other natural or artificial materials. In making policy decisions we can take advantage of the principle of substitutability, remembering that what we are obligated to leave behind is a generalized capacity to create well-being, not any particular thing or any particular natural resource.
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