A New Years Day look to the future

This blog post marks the end of my holiday break. I have been debating the theme for my first blog of the new year. I have purposely minimized the end-of-year fiscal cliff debate and deal from consideration. There are plenty of commentators on that subject, though I do have some opinions on the bigger picture and the implications that arise from that issue.

What I would like to start out with is an issue that I have touched on before and will continue to in the future. That issue is the impact of humanity on our planet, and how we can change our culture in order to minimize the negative results of that impact.

A long time ago, I remember hearing an environmental concept: “an environmental fight to save something can never be truly won, for threats to its existence will keep coming back; but once the fight is lost, in many cases it is lost forever.” I believe this is generally true. Sure, there are conditions where the loss is somewhat superficial and could be restored to a large extent by the abandonment of the threat and a plan to reclaim the lost condition. But, for the most part, environmental losses are not prone to being reversed, and when reversals are desired and attempted, they are usually very expensive.

2012 being a presidential election year in the United States, we endured a year of debate over policies covering many aspects of national policy. Many of those policy arguments were aimed at what was perceived to be the best interest of people. Sometimes short term best interests, sometimes long term best interest. I question the preeminence of the best interest of people in many policy debates. The reason for that is that I believe the tendency for self interest of the individual or group to trump the wider best interest of all of the people degrades the value of the argument.

There was much interest in Paul Ryan's obsession with Ayn Rand and her belief that if everyone acted in their own self interests the interests of the whole would be best realized. While that obsession was derided and even disavowed by Mr. Ryan himself, the premise was never analyzed to my satisfaction beyond the basic Randian versus Keynesian argument of government taxing and spending.

I would like to look at the greater picture. How does our system function, and how would it best function, to produce the largest long term benefit to humanity. In this context I would like to posit the argument that we should make policy decisions based on the impacts of those decisions on our planet, because I believe that would result in the best outcome for the people. We, as humanity exists today, have become an overwhelming over-consumer of the finite resources of our planet. Continued policy decisions based on the benefits those decisions have for people to enjoy, almost certainly means that the planetary resources will continue to be depleted. People will chose to ignore that fact and applaud that their lives have been enriched by the policy. This is how it generally works today, and that needs to change, because that is a loss for the environment and those losses are generally permanent.

What would be a better paradigm is if decisions were made in the best interest of the planet. Protecting what is left of our environment benefits everyone. We all (meaning all of humanity; past, present, and future) live better lives with abundant clean air and water, where our food supply and food production is safe and sustainable, and where our shelter is also clean, safe, and sustainable. Self interest does not promote these results. Powerful individuals and groups acting in their own self interest consume resources at an unsustainable level, whether they are aware of it or not. Failing to consider the long term results of our self interest will impact future generations in an immensely negative way. How many of us, when we consider our own consumptive decisions, include contemplation of whether or not our great great grandchildren will be able to share that type of consumption, and if not, consider that narcissistic consumption undesirable.

Economic growth is something that is generally believed to be necessary. I have wondered for years what economists think, if they do at all, about the long term future of our planet within the context of economic growth. Do they really think that Gross Domestic Product can grow infinitely?
GDP consists of the value of all goods and services produced. Well those goods and services are also consumed. So we might consider producing a metric for Gross Domestic Consumption. That is one way that might enlighten the consideration of the sustainability of our consumption. Production sounds like such a positive thing. We need to consider consumption, and in doing so include the fact that unsustainable consumption is a decidedly negative thing. As it is now the United States is consuming more than we produce, so that we are depleting the world's resources not just our own. And the larger threat is that we are exporting our consumeristic culture to countries that have the potential to consume at a level that could dwarf our own.

So, we must think of the future. We must cultivate a vision of that future where sustainability is the primary goal, supplanting growth as the stabilizer of the economy. We must see that the good of the planet is the good of the people.