Sustainability and Distribution

John McGrath of Gristmill namechecks Herman Daly, a professor at the Maryland School of Public Policy and one of the founders of the field of ecological economics (I may even take a class with him next semester). EE, of course, posits that a sustainable economy must ultimately achieve a "steady state," limiting both population growth and industrial output. McGrath connects this idea with the current problems of inequality in the world:

It is frequently said that developing countries will never accept sustainable development if it means prolonging their poverty. What this independent audit of the World Bank's policies show, however, is that growth itself is not a panacea for poverty. Similarly, academic research now suggests most of China's anti-poverty progress occurred not in the 1990s but in the early 1980s, well before the rapid growth in China's recent past.

International development policies have fetishized growth while ignoring inequality and sold it to the developing world largely on the promise that growth would lead to less poverty. This promise has turned out to be a lie. If you don't deal directly with inequality, it doesn't get better. Indeed, multiple examples (China, Russia, even the U.S. today) show it gets worse.

In a world where renewables are rapidly becoming competitive with fossil fuels, it may become possible to sell the global poor on sustainable development. But if we want to build a solid consensus, we also need to directly and meaningfully address the poverty of individuals, not just the poverty of nations.

Ecological economics is to be distinguished from environmental economics, which addresses environmental problems but stays within the neoclassical paradigm, which ecological economics sees as inadequate. Mark Montgomery of the AEI-funded American magazine has more on the difference.