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This
is another opinion about “sustainable development”. It is presented only partially but the
link at the bottom of the article will take you to the article in its
entirety.
The Challenge of Sustainable Development
Jerry Taylor
Jerry Taylor is director of
natural resource studies at the Cato Institute.
Although "sustainable development" appears to be a solution in
search of a problem, two main strategies to promote it have been suggested by
environmentalists. The first, promoted by the Worldwatch Institute, Paul
Kennedy, Dennis and Donella Matthews (authors of the 1970s classic Limits
to Growth and their recent sequel Beyond the Limits), and to
some degree the UNCED, involves giving some central authority power over
the economy in order to control technological evolution and define the
limits of acceptable industrial and consumer activity in order to ensure
sustainability. The second strategy, advocated by the World Bank and
neoclassical economists, involves economic interventions by national
governments in order to correct for the "market failures" that
(in their view) undermine sustainable development.
The former agenda is dubious to say the least. Central planners have
been judged incompetent when it comes to overseeing economic production,
having universally failed in their quest to ensure economic growth. How can
we now expect planners to not only ensure economic growth (an explicit
prerequisite for sustainable development), but to ensure that that growth
be "sustainable?"
Consider the automobile, a technology that generally ranks as
"unsustainable enemy number one" for most environmentalists.
Aside from the vast social and economic benefits that would not now exist
if the automobile had never been introduced, the automobile was directly
responsible for the retirement of 25 percent of the land devoted to
agriculture at the turn of the century, since feed was no longer needed to
raise and sustain draft animals. Not only were millions of acres of land
returned to nature, but major reductions in water pollution, soil
degradation, and urban sanitation were achieved because of the automobile.
Similarly, the oil and gas industry (probably "unsustainable enemy
number two") helped reverse the alarming deforestation rates of the
nineteenth century by replacing wood used for fuel with fossil-fuel
alternatives. In 1850, 50 percent of harvested timber was used for fuel,
providing 90 percent of U.S. energy supplies. Today, only 20 percent of
wood is consumed for fuel in America. By contrast, over half of the timber
harvested worldwide is used for fuel; about 80 percent in the developing
world. One could persuasively argue that those two "environmental
enemies" were actually green technologies and industries, but the odds
that central sustainable development planners would ever recognize them as
such is minimal to say the least. As even Vice President Al Gore conceded
in Earth in the Balance, "the most serious examples of
environmental degradation in the world today are tragedies that were
created or actively encouraged by governments-usually in pursuit of some
notion that a dramatic reordering of the material world would enhance the
greater good. It is no accident that the very worst environmental tragedies
were created by communist governments, in which the power of the state
completely overwhelms the capabilities of the individual steward."
The free, competitive marketplace creates not only human capital but
natural capital as well. That is because capitalism is the most productive
engine of intellectual and technological advance, and it is that stock of
human knowledge and technology that turns the earth's material into useful
commodities. "Humans are the active agent, having ideas that they use
to transform the environment for human purposes, observes economist Thomas
De Gregori. "Resources are not fixed and finite because they are not
natural. They are a product of human ingenuity resulting from the creation
of technology and science." David Osterfeld adds that "since
resources are a function of human knowledge, and since our stock of
knowledge has increased over time, it should come as no surprise that the
stock of physical resources has also been expanding." Closed societies
and economies under the heavy hand of state planning are doomed to live
within the confines of dwindling resource bases and eventually experience
the very collapse feared by the proponents of sustainable development.
Third World nations that allowed markets to operate relatively unhindered
after World War II, for example, have far more "sustainable"
societies than those nations that intervened heavily in their economies to
correct for "market failure." Typical is the case of South Korea
and Ghana, which about 35 years ago, had about the same per capita income.
Ghana was much more richly endowed with natural resources and was less
densely populated. Ghana intervened in its economy to a far greater extent
than South Korea, and today, South Korea has eight times the per capita
income of Ghana and is a healthier and more stable society.
The world today is not only sustainable, but is more sustainable than
ever before in the sense that future generations will inherit more natural
and man-made capital to meet their needs than any preceding generation.
That will be the case, however, only as long as the global economy is left
relatively unrestrained by well-meaning but woefully misguided
environmental planners. Government control over resource production or
consumption only serves to dismantle the very engines of resource creation
necessary for a sustainable society, and inevitably delivers control into
the hands of those who are politically strongest at any given time.
Excessive and heavy-handed regulation of pollution slows technological and
economic growth, achieving few gains at the margin in developed nations
while actually harming human health in less developed countries by reducing
the economic resources that are so necessary to alleviate the unnecessary
suffering of millions every year.
[The] challenge is to break out of the old environmentalist paradigm
that reached its apogee at Rio and instead embrace policies that free the
economy to produce the wealth necessary for environmental improvement and
the natural resources necessary for a growing economy. Such an agenda would
eliminate unnecessary energy and farm subsidies, defund the World Bank and
international lending institutions that subsidize projects that are
unprofitable in the marketplace, deregulate energy production by electric
utilities and the petroleum and natural gas industries, begin the process
of divesting federal land, eliminate western water subsidies and public
control of that resource, end the ban on oil exports from Alaska's North
Slope, remove all subsidized energy research and development from the
federal budget, and begin to seriously reexamine the heavy reliance on
command-and-control environmental regulation.
International agencies such as the UN Commission on Sustainable
Development should likewise be urged to work toward the adoption of market
economies in the developing world, the elimination of all forms of economic
subsidy and protection, and the divestment of public ownership of economic
and environmental resources in order to maximize the economic growth necessary
to deliver millions from poverty and related environmental diseases.
Admittedly, the analysis presented above does not deal with what many
consider the most serious threats to "sustainability:" global
climate change, ozone depletion, and species extinction. All of those
issues require far greater attention than can be given within the confines
of this article. Suffice it to say, however, that a growing consensus of
scientists believe that public fears regarding those threats are far out of
proportion to the actual risks they pose to society, that the scientific
evidence scarcely justifies the apocalyptic warnings of the environmental
lobby, and that unwarranted fixation on those dubious threats only serves
to divert scarce resources that could be used to remedy real, proven
environmental and health threats that, as noted above, are responsible for
millions of deaths around the globe every year.
The Cato Review of Business &
Government
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg17n1-taylor.html
***
· The very worst thing about “Agenda 21”
is, they are implementing it in an un-American way because it is anti-
American. They know if we the people
were asked to vote on it and ratify it by each state, it would never pass.
· They are all guilty. This is not about being a Democrat or a
Republican it’s about being an American.
Every elected official who is sneaking this past the citizens of
this country is not worthy of calling themselves an American.
· There is no middle road here. You either support implementing Agenda 21
or you oppose implementing Agenda 21.
Which flag is your flag?
AGENDA
21
FREEDOM 21
 
· Make “Agenda 21” an election issue for
your Congressman.
· “Agenda 21” should be a public debate
issue. Let’s bring “Agenda 21” out
of the closet and shine the bright light of scrutiny on the subject so all
Americans know what’s happening.
· To be a Freedom 21 Fighter you don’t have
to join anything. You don’t have to
pay any dues. You don’t have to
attend any meetings. You just have
to learn about Agenda 21 because you can’t fight something you know nothing
about. Then you must share your
knowledge with your friends and neighbors.
And the next time you meet someone who is running for elected
office, any office, ask them where they stand on Agenda 21 “sustainable
development”. Be a Freedom 21
Fighter!
· May GOD Bless the United States of
America.
LINKS:
· Maurice
Strong Architect of Agenda 21
· Local
Agenda 21 – The U.N. Plan for your community
· ICLEI Members
· Henry Lamb @ World Net Daily
· Freedom 21 – Advancing the Principals of Freedom in the 21st
Century
· U. N.
Watch
· The Earth Charter and the Ark of the Gaia Covenant
· Sirolli Institute and Lake County, CA
‘Lake County’s Spirit of Entrepreneurs’
· HOME
© copyright Bill Wink July 1, 2005
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