work to produce two dollars’ worth of goods where
before there was only one, so that both the billionaire
and the starving man can satisfy their wants.
Thus was neoclassical economic
theory, putatively value-free and scientific, made structurally dependent
on a commitment to infinite economic growth, a
value-laden, unscientific, demonstrably unsustainable commitment if ever there was one.
[ 11]
The bruNdTlaNd assertion that
we face “limitations imposed by the
state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present
and future needs” can be read as both acknowledging
ecological limits to human activity and as sidestep-ping the major issue that those ecological limits have
brought to the fore. Can humans, through technological development, solve any problem brought on by
resource scarcity and the limited capacity of ecosystems to absorb our acts and works? When all is said
and done, can we enlarge the economy’s ecological
footprint forever in order to create wealth? Gradually,
we are coming to recognize that the answer is no.
[ 12]
aN ecoNomy caN be modeled
as an open thermodynamic system,
one that exchanges matter and energy
across its border (that mostly conceptual, sometimes
physical line that separates culture from its home in
nature). An economy sucks up valuable low-entropy
matter and energy from its environment, uses these
to produce products and services, and emits degraded
matter and energy back into the environment in the
form of a high-entropy wake. (Waste heat. Waste matter. Dissipated and degraded matter: yesterday’s
newspaper, last year’s running shoes, last decade’s dilapidated automobile.) An economy has ecological
impact on both the uptake and emission side. The
laws of thermodynamics dictate that this be so. “You
can’t make something from nothing; nor can you
make nothing from something,” the law of conservation of matter and energy tells us. With enough energy we could recycle all the matter that enters our
economy—even the molecules that wear o= the
coins in your pocket. But energy is scarce: “You can’t
recycle energy,” says the law of entropy. Or, in a col-
[ 13]
loquial analogy: Accounts must balance and bills
must be paid. To operate our economic machine we
pay an energy bill; we must ever take in energy anew.
es TablishiNg an ecologically sustainable economy requires that humans accept a limit on the amount of
scarce low entropy that we take up from the planet
(which will also, necessarily, limit the amount of degraded matter and energy that we emit). An e=ective
approach would be to use market mechanisms, such
as would occur if we had an economy-wide tax on
low-entropy uptake (the extraction of coal and oil, the
cutting of lumber). The tax rate could be set to ensure
that use doesn’t exceed a limit — the CO2 absorption
capacity of the planet, the regenerative ability of forests. Producers and consumers would have freedom
under the cap brought about by the tax. With such a
tax, the tax on workers’ income could be abandoned.
(As the slogan says, we should “tax bads, not goods.”
Work is good. Uptake of scarce resources is bad.)
[ 14]
For decades environmentalism
has been primarily a moral vision,
with principles susceptible to being reduced to fundamentalist absolutes. Pollution is wrong; it is profanation. We have no right,
environmentalism has said, to cause species extinction, to destroy habitat, to expand the dominion
of culture across the face of nature. True enough,
and so granted. But even Dick Cheney agreed that
environmentalism is essentially, merely, a moral vision. (“Conservation,” he said, on his way to giving
oil companies everything they wanted, “may be a
personal virtue, but it is not a su;cient basis for
a sound, comprehensive energy policy.”) The time
has long since passed for the achievement of sustainability to be left to simple moral admonition,
to finger-wagging in its various forms. It’s time to
use the power of the market — the power of self-interest, regulated and channeled by wise policy—
to do good. Environmentalism must become an
economic vision.
[ 15]
accep TiNg a limi T on the economy’s uptake of matter and energy
from the planet does not mean that
we have to accept that history is over, that civiliza-
[ 16]
