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    A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth
    A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth
    A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth
    Ebook150 pages2 hours

    A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth

    By Wilfred Beckerman

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    About this ebook

    In this detailed economic investigation of sustainable development, a noted professor of economics argues that many of the alarms commonly sounded by environmentalists are, in fact, unfounded, and that current sustainable development policies should be reconsidered in light of their effects on the earth's human population, such as increased poverty and environmental degradation in developing countries. In a rare balanced counterpoint to popular sustainable development rhetoric, Professor Beckerman forces policy makers to consider whether future generations have rights that morally constrain and trump the claims of those alive today, particularly the masses of people living in dire poverty, arguing that the current sustainable development program is a menace to the prosperity and freedom of both current and future generations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIndependent Publishers Group
    Release dateNov 23, 2015
    ISBN9781598131833
    A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth
    Author

    Wilfred Beckerman

    Wilfred Beckerman is an Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, and a former member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

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      Book preview

      A Poverty of Reason - Wilfred Beckerman

      A Poverty of Reason

      Sustainable Development and Economic Growth

      Wilfred Beckerman

      Oakland, California

      Copyright ©2003 by The Independent Institute

      The Independent Institute

      100 Swan Way, Oakland, CA 94621-1428

      Telephone: 510-632-1366 • Fax 510-568-6040

      E-mail: info@independent.org

      Website: www.independent.org

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by electronic or mechanical means now known or to be invented, including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

      ISBN 978-0-945999-85-2

      Published by The Independent Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, scholarly research and educational organization that sponsors comprehensive studies on the political economy of critical social and economic issues. Nothing herein should be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before Congress.

      THE INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE is a non-profit, non-partisan, scholarly research and educational organization that sponsors comprehensive studies in political economy. Our mission is to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies, grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity.

      Politicized decision-making in society has confined public debate to a narrow reconsideration of existing policies. Given the prevailing influence of partisan interests, little social innovation has occurred. In order to understand both the nature of and possible solutions to major public issues, the Independent Institute adheres to the highest standards of independent inquiry, regardless of political or social biases and conventions. The resulting studies are widely distributed as books and other publications, and are debated in numerous conference and media programs. Through this uncommon depth and clarity, the Independent Institute is redefining public debate and fostering new and effective directions for government reform.

      FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

      David J. Theroux

      RESEARCH DIRECTOR

      William F. Shughart II

      SENIOR FELLOWS

      Bruce L. Benson

      Ivan Eland

      John C. Goodman

      John R. Graham

      Robert Higgs

      Lawrence J. McQuillan

      Robert H. Nelson

      Charles V. Peña

      Benjamin Powell

      William F. Shughart II

      Randy T. Simmons

      Alexander Tabarrok

      Alvaro Vargas Llosa

      Richard K. Vedder

      ACADEMIC ADVISORS

      Leszek Balcerowicz

      WARSAW SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS

      Herman Belz

      UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

      Thomas E. Borcherding

      CLAREMONT GRADUATE SCHOOL

      Boudewijn Bouckaert

      UNIVERSITY OF GHENT, BELGIUM

      Allan C. Carlson

      HOWARD CENTER

      Robert D. Cooter

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

      BERKELEY

      Robert W. Crandall

      BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

      Richard A. Epstein

      NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

      B. Delworth Gardner

      BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

      George Gilder

      DISCOVERY INSTITUTE

      Nathan Glazer

      HARVARD UNIVERSITY

      Steve H. Hanke

      JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

      James J. Heckman

      UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

      H. Robert Heller

      SONIC AUTOMOTIVE

      Deirdre N. McCloskey

      UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS,

      CHICAGO

      J. Huston McCulloch

      OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

      Forrest McDonald

      UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA

      Thomas Gale Moore

      HOOVER INSTITUTION

      Charles Murray

      AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

      Michael J. Novak, Jr.

      AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE

      June E. O’Neill

      BARUCH COLLEGE

      Charles E. Phelps

      UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER

      Paul Craig Roberts

      INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL ECONOMY

      Nathan Rosenberg

      STANFORD UNIVERSITY

      Paul H. Rubin

      EMORY UNIVERSITY

      Bruce M. Russett

      YALE UNIVERSITY

      Pascal Salin

      UNIVERSITY OF PARIS, FRANCE

      Vernon L. Smith

      CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY

      Pablo T. Spiller

      UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

      BERKELEY

      Joel H. Spring

      STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK,

      OLD WESTBURY

      Richard L. Stroup

      NORTH CAROLINA STATE

      UNIVERSITY

      Robert D. Tollison

      CLEMSON UNIVERSITY

      Arnold S. Trebach

      AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

      Gordon Tullock

      GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

      Richard E. Wagner

      GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

      Walter E. Williams

      GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY

      Charles Wolf, Jr.

      RAND CORPORATION

      100 Swan Way, Oakland, California 94621-1428, U.S.A.

      Telephone: 510-632-1366 • Facsimile: 510-568-6040 • Email: info@independent.org • www.independent.org

      Preface

      Introduction

      Chapter 1    What Is Sustainable Development Supposed to Mean?

      Chapter 2    Finite Resources and the Prospects for Economic Growth

      Chapter 3    Energy and Biodiversity

      Chapter 4    Climate Change

      Chapter 5    The Precautionary Principle

      Chapter 6    Bureaucratic Regulation and Protectionism

      Chapter 7    The Ethics of Sustainable Development

      Notes

      References

      Index

      About the Author

      Throughout the affluent countries of the world, the doctrine of sustainable development has attracted a very wide following. Almost all the governments of the developed countries pay lip service to it, and any particular intervention in public life that can be claimed to promote the objective of sustainable development is almost automatically assumed to be justified.

      Given the strength of the numerous groups and bureaucracies in society that have a vested interest in sustainable development, it is not surprising that they have not felt the need to spell out the intellectual case for it. Although many vague statements of the basic objectives and beliefs of sustainable development have been made, there has been little, if any, detailed defense of these beliefs. Consequently, it has been difficult to embark on a serious debate about sustainable development. In this monograph, I try to identify the key planks in the sustainable-development platform and to subject them to critical analysis. These planks include, of course, the usual claim that the world will soon run out of nonrenewable resources—a claim that has been growing fainter as it has been increasingly falsified—and the more important recent claim that the future of the planet is being threatened by climate change. But there is nothing new about this latter claim, and many powerful critiques of this part of the sustainable-development program have already been published.

      At various points in this monograph—and particularly in the final chapter—I also examine the claim that sustainable development represents the moral high ground, that it represents greater respect for the rights of future generations and for the dictates of intergenerational justice. I show that this claim is without foundation. Furthermore, I argue that the sustainable development lobby's strange obsession with future supplies of material resources—in spite of its proclaimed disdain for mere material possessions—only diverts attention from the most important persistent threat to human welfare. This threat is one that is not automatically dispelled by the economic growth that can be expected to take place over the course of the twenty-first century: the ever-present threat to democratic liberties, involving the widespread violation of human rights throughout much of the world. My conclusion is that the most important bequest we can make to future generations is a world in which there is greater respect for human rights and liberties than is the case today. The only development that is sustainable now is development that enables people to live together peacefully.

      Finally, I would to thank Oxford University Press for permission to draw on some material previously published in my book Justice, Posterity, and the Environment co-authored with Joanna Pasek, and in my contribution to Fairness and Futurity, edited by A. Dobson. I also thank Edward Elgar for permission to use material in Economic Growth and Valuation of the Environment edited by Ekko van Ierland, and the editors of the journal Environmental Values. I am also greatly indebted to Alex Alexander Tabarrok of The Independent Institute for major and valuable comments on an earlier draft and to anonymous referees for useful comments on a later draft.

      During the last few years, the politically correct slogan that has swept the developed world and that has been the foundation for a great expansion of bureaucratic activity at both the national and the international level is sustainable development. Together with the so-called precautionary principle, the sustainable-development slogan is widely presented as a great new insight that should be used to guide policy.

      The object of this monograph is to show that the support for sustainable development is based on a confusion about its ethical implications and on a flagrant disregard of the relevant factual evidence. Indeed, the popularity of sustainable development cannot be explained by reference to its intellectual coherence, for it is founded on two indefensible propositions. The first is the positive proposition that economic growth will soon come up against the limits of resource availability. It is argued that action is required to reduce to sustainable levels the rate at which resources are used—an impossible task, of course, unless we were to stop using some resources completely. In chapters 2 and 3, I show the predictions of imminent exhaustion of resources to be unfounded, both on theoretical grounds and in the light of a mass of evidence. The true prospects for economic growth over the course of this century are that future generations will be much richer than people alive today.

      In chapters 4 and 5 I go on to show that one particular major current fear is greatly exaggerated: namely, that the growth—indeed the survival—of the human race is at risk from the danger of climate change. So although the climate-change problem has to be taken seriously and the results of scientific research into this problem over the coming years have to be followed closely, there is no case for any drastic action now, in the present state of knowledge and given the many other urgent problems facing us, to combat climate change. Nor is this conclusion invalidated by the appeal to the precautionary principle.

      The second fundamental principle underlying the campaigns for sustainable development is that it represents the moral high ground. Apparently, it does so largely because it places more emphasis on intergenerational equity than do conventional economic principles. In chapter 7, I seek to demonstrate that this part of the case for sustainable development is also flawed. In fact, coherent reasons are rarely given for believing that sustainable development is an ethically superior goal to the conventional economists’ goal of maximizing the sum of human welfare over future generations, and vague hand-waving in the direction of intergenerational justice or equity or the rights of future generations is apparently assumed to be enough to shame any critics of sustainable development. But if these concepts are examined more closely, as I do in chapter 7, it transpires that they have little or no relevance to the problem of how we ought to conceive our obligations to future generations.

      If, therefore, the increasing popularity of the concept of sustainable development cannot be explained by its intellectual strength, its growing influence on international and national policy might perhaps be better explained by reference to sociological phenomena, such as the public's appetite for dramatic environmental scare stories or politicians’ tendency to jump on media-supported bandwagons. Such phenomena also fit easily into what economists describe as the rent-seeking behavior of various agents in society: each agent seeks to maximize its market power by means other than socially valuable methods of increasing productive efficiency and the like.¹ Thus, the popularity of sustainable development might be explained by the combined power of numerous bodies that can successfully exploit some of the sociological phenomena mentioned above in order to expand their power.

      Such bodies include enterprises that hope to gain from subsidies to

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