sustainable development
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
"Sustainable development" is the objective that unites those who are focussed on economic
growth and solving the problem of poverty with those who are concerned for the environment. It
is the world's great need, the answer to its main problem: How can we solve the problem of world
poverty, with 10 million children dying of poverty every year, with 3 billion people living on less than
$2 a day, without wrecking the Earth's environment, overpolluting, exhausting the natural resources,
and wiping out biodiversity?
The problem is enormous; it is generally ignored, or assumed by educated people to be
insoluble, as if we can only be thankful that the billions of Chinese, Indians, and other Third-Worlders
are mostly too poor to afford cars or appliances or heating and airconditioning and all the other
things the world's richest half-billion enjoy. But are you aware that all of that poverty is due to
social injustice, the lack of opportunity? Are you content to permit that injustice to continue forever?
Have you no social conscience?! Ignoring the problem of world poverty won't make it go away; if we
don't find a solution, the Earth's environment will be ruined, or there will be world wars or other
megadisasters.
I do not know the details of the solution but I can offer some broad outlines.
The first is that we have to have a globally planned economy. We have to aim for mass equality
and equal opportunity, the elimination of poverty and creation of prosperity for all humanity. This
will require a determination of what resources will have to be used to create this affluence, and how
we are going to dispose of all the pollution, reuse and recycle all the materials, while preserving the
most wilderness and biodiversity, and halting the extinction of species. The Plan must span 150
years--the 7 generations anticipated by Native Americans. Obviously, it will have to be revised
along the way, probably particularly at the 50 and 100 year points and at any other time that huge,
unanticipated events may occur.
To solve the problem of world poverty will further require a massive transfer or redistribution of
wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries. This will require that we levy a progressive
tax on wealth, that will tax the multimillionaires, not the middle class. Worldwide, this tax could
raise a trillion dollars a year. If 30% of that were directed towards eliminating world poverty, it could
do so and produce universal prosperity within a generation. Obviously this is just in my humble
opinion.
Many--perhaps you, the reader yourself--are skeptical as to whether it is really physically
possible to achieve sustainable development, to replace the nearly universal poverty with universal
affluence without ruining the environment.
But I believe that we have enough degrees of freedom in planning the future that it could be done.
These are the variables that we have to play with, parameters that are as yet undetermined, but
that if we make the most of them could make sustainable development physically possible:
1. Definition of prosperity. Certainly if we define "prosperity" as we do in America, with every
family owning three big gas-guzzling cars that they individually commute to work in 50 miles round
trip each day, then it's not going to work. But let's define prosperity as a nice, big house on a 4,000
square foot lot, and now it begins to seem more feasible. Of course, that is only the beginning of
the definition, but it illustrates how much leeway we may have.
2. More use of sharing, reusing, and recycling. For example, everyone or at least many would
like a sprts car, a luxury car, a boat, and a plane. So often in America, this means that the affluent
family buys one of each--which then sit unused 95% of their time. We need to restructure our
system so that these fun things can be shared by renting them out.
3. Regional planning so that people don't have to commute so far to work each day. Perhaps
mass migrations to mild climates where home heating and cooling needs are low.
4. There is the dimension of time. We might find that we do indeed have to pollute and deplete
resources at unsustainable rates--for the next 100-125 years, perhaps, on the expectation that,
thereafter, these practices will be reversed, the rainforests replanted, etc. What factors could make
such a turnaround possible? See factors 5-7 below.
5. We can change the rate of world population growth. It's now projected to peak about 10
billion around 2050, but we might provide birth control methods and incentives that might turn it
around and attain NPG much sooner.
6. One factor might even be space travel. Some day we will be able to avail ourselves of the
immense resources and pollution sinks that are available out in space.
7. New technologies could vastly expand our options. We should quadruple our research and
development efforts and direct them more specifically towards solving the sustainable development
goal.
growth and solving the problem of poverty with those who are concerned for the environment. It
is the world's great need, the answer to its main problem: How can we solve the problem of world
poverty, with 10 million children dying of poverty every year, with 3 billion people living on less than
$2 a day, without wrecking the Earth's environment, overpolluting, exhausting the natural resources,
and wiping out biodiversity?
The problem is enormous; it is generally ignored, or assumed by educated people to be
insoluble, as if we can only be thankful that the billions of Chinese, Indians, and other Third-Worlders
are mostly too poor to afford cars or appliances or heating and airconditioning and all the other
things the world's richest half-billion enjoy. But are you aware that all of that poverty is due to
social injustice, the lack of opportunity? Are you content to permit that injustice to continue forever?
Have you no social conscience?! Ignoring the problem of world poverty won't make it go away; if we
don't find a solution, the Earth's environment will be ruined, or there will be world wars or other
megadisasters.
I do not know the details of the solution but I can offer some broad outlines.
The first is that we have to have a globally planned economy. We have to aim for mass equality
and equal opportunity, the elimination of poverty and creation of prosperity for all humanity. This
will require a determination of what resources will have to be used to create this affluence, and how
we are going to dispose of all the pollution, reuse and recycle all the materials, while preserving the
most wilderness and biodiversity, and halting the extinction of species. The Plan must span 150
years--the 7 generations anticipated by Native Americans. Obviously, it will have to be revised
along the way, probably particularly at the 50 and 100 year points and at any other time that huge,
unanticipated events may occur.
To solve the problem of world poverty will further require a massive transfer or redistribution of
wealth from the rich countries to the poor countries. This will require that we levy a progressive
tax on wealth, that will tax the multimillionaires, not the middle class. Worldwide, this tax could
raise a trillion dollars a year. If 30% of that were directed towards eliminating world poverty, it could
do so and produce universal prosperity within a generation. Obviously this is just in my humble
opinion.
Many--perhaps you, the reader yourself--are skeptical as to whether it is really physically
possible to achieve sustainable development, to replace the nearly universal poverty with universal
affluence without ruining the environment.
But I believe that we have enough degrees of freedom in planning the future that it could be done.
These are the variables that we have to play with, parameters that are as yet undetermined, but
that if we make the most of them could make sustainable development physically possible:
1. Definition of prosperity. Certainly if we define "prosperity" as we do in America, with every
family owning three big gas-guzzling cars that they individually commute to work in 50 miles round
trip each day, then it's not going to work. But let's define prosperity as a nice, big house on a 4,000
square foot lot, and now it begins to seem more feasible. Of course, that is only the beginning of
the definition, but it illustrates how much leeway we may have.
2. More use of sharing, reusing, and recycling. For example, everyone or at least many would
like a sprts car, a luxury car, a boat, and a plane. So often in America, this means that the affluent
family buys one of each--which then sit unused 95% of their time. We need to restructure our
system so that these fun things can be shared by renting them out.
3. Regional planning so that people don't have to commute so far to work each day. Perhaps
mass migrations to mild climates where home heating and cooling needs are low.
4. There is the dimension of time. We might find that we do indeed have to pollute and deplete
resources at unsustainable rates--for the next 100-125 years, perhaps, on the expectation that,
thereafter, these practices will be reversed, the rainforests replanted, etc. What factors could make
such a turnaround possible? See factors 5-7 below.
5. We can change the rate of world population growth. It's now projected to peak about 10
billion around 2050, but we might provide birth control methods and incentives that might turn it
around and attain NPG much sooner.
6. One factor might even be space travel. Some day we will be able to avail ourselves of the
immense resources and pollution sinks that are available out in space.
7. New technologies could vastly expand our options. We should quadruple our research and
development efforts and direct them more specifically towards solving the sustainable development
goal.
