From August 26 through September 4, 2002,approximately 100 heads of state and 60,000 dele-gates will gather in Johannesburg, South Africa, toattend a “World Summit on Sustainable Develop-ment.” The conference—convened on the 10thanniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiroand expected to be the largest U.N. summit in histo-ry—will explore domestic and international policyoptions to promote the hottest environmental buzz-words to enter the public policy debate in decades.

The concept seems innocuous enough. Afterall, who would favor “unsustainable develop-ment”? A careful review of the data, however,finds that resources are becoming more—notless—abundant with time and that the world is infact on a quite sustainable path at present.

Moreover, the fundamental premise of theidea—that economic growth, if left uncon-strained and unmanaged by the state, threatens

unnecessary harm to the environment and mayprove ephemeral—is dubious. First, if economicgrowth were to be slowed or stopped—and sus-tainable development is essentially concernedwith putting boundaries around economicgrowth—it would be impossible to improve envi-ronmental conditions around the world. Second,the bias toward central planning on the part ofthose endorsing the concept of sustainable devel-opment will serve only to make environmentalprotection more expensive; hence, society wouldbe able to “purchase” less of it. Finally, strict pur-suit of sustainable development, as many envi-ronmentalists mean it, would do violence to thewelfare of future generations.

The current Western system of free markets,property rights, and the rule of law is in fact thebest hope for environmentally sustainable devel-opment.

Sustainable DevelopmentA Dubious Solution in Search of a Problem

by Jerry Taylor

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute.

Executive Summary

No. 449 August 26, 2002

What Is SustainableDevelopment?

The concept of sustainable developmentis an important milestone in environmentaltheory because it posits how society itselfshould be organized, not simply why certainenvironmental protections should be adopt-ed or how they can be best implemented.This ambitious interpretation is widelyshared by business leaders, policy activists,and academics alike.1 Of course, just howmuch social and economic change is neces-sary to achieve sustainability depends uponhow “unsustainable” one believes the presentto be. Many advocates of the idea clearlybelieve the present to be quite unsustainableand thus are prepared for radical change.

Unfortunately, sustainable developmentis rather difficult to define coherently. TheUN Commission on Economic Developmentin its landmark 1987 report titled OurCommon Future defines sustainable develop-ment as that which “meets the needs of thepresent without compromising the ability offuture generations to meet their own needs.”2

But that definition is hopelessly problematic.How can we reasonably be expected to know,for instance, what the needs of people in2100 might be?

Moreover, one way people typically “meettheir own needs” is by spending money onfood, shelter, education, and whatever elsethey deem necessary or important. Is theimperative for sustainable development, then,simply a euphemism for the imperative to cre-ate wealth (which, after all, is handed down toour children for their subsequent use)? True,some human needs, such as the desire forpeace, freedom, and individual contentment,cannot be met simply by material means, butsustainable development advocates seldomdwell on the importance of those nonmateri-al, non-resource-based psychological needswhen discussing the concept.3

Thus, sophisticated proponents ofsustainable development are forced to dis-card as functionally meaningless the

UNCED definition. Otherwise, the UNCEDdefinition can be read as a call for society tomaximize human welfare over time. Anentire profession has grown up around thatproposition. The profession is known as eco-nomics, and maximizing human welfare isknown not as “sustainable development” butas “optimality.” Was Adam Smith’s TheWealth of Nations really the world’s first call forsustainable development?

Since the release of Our Common Future,more than 70 competing definitions of sus-tainable development have been offered byacademics and policy analysts.4 EconomistsDavid Pearce and Jeremy Warford, two of theworld’s more serious thinkers about sustain-able development, argue that these competingdefinitions largely fall into two categories.Many advocates of sustainable developmentare defining regimes in which the naturalresource base is not allowed to deteriorate.5

This category is generally known as the“strong” definition of sustainability. Otheradvocates of sustainable development aredescribing regimes in which the naturalresource base would be allowed to deteriorateas long as biological resources are maintainedat a minimum critical level and the wealthgenerated by the exploitation of naturalresources is preserved for future generations,who would otherwise be “robbed” of theirrightful inheritance. This category is generallyknown as the “weak” definition of sustainabil-ity. Weak sustainability, then, can be thoughtof as “the amount of consumption that can besustained indefinitely without degrading cap-ital stocks,” defined as the sum of both “nat-ural” capital and “man-made” capital.6

Unfortunately, both strong and weak def-initions of sustainable development poseproblems. As Robert Hahn of the AmericanEnterprise Institute points out, the narrowerthe definition, the easier it is to pin down,but the less satisfactory the concept.7

Strong Sustainability, Flabby AnalyticsNumerous analytic problems cripple the util-

ity of strong sustainable development theory.First, advocates of strong sustainability

2

Both strong andweak definitions

of sustainabledevelopment pose

problems. Thenarrower the

definition, theeasier it is to pin

down, but the lesssatisfactory the

concept.

are implicitly contending that in most casesnatural capital is more desirable than theman-made capital created from its exploita-tion. Natural capital, it is argued, offersfuture generations multiple possibilities forits use, whereas man-made capital settles thequestion for future generations. Future gen-erations, argue advocates of strong sustain-ability, may have different preferences for theultimate use of natural capital than the pre-sent deciding generation.

Nevertheless, the wealth created byexploiting resources is often more beneficialthan the wealth preserved by “banking” thoseresources for future use. Otherwise, therewould be little point in exploiting resourcesfor commercial use in the first place.Moreover, wealth created through resourceexploitation is far more versatilely employedthan the rock or mineral might be in its unal-tered state.

Subscribers to the concept of strong sus-tainabilty are implicitly suggesting that theworld is somehow a poorer place becausepast generations drew down stocks of oil,iron, and various other minerals and metalsto make advanced satellites, modern indus-try, and—through the wealth thereby creat-ed—advanced medicines and dozens of otherlife-enhancing technologies and practices.Geography professor M. J. Harte of theUniversity of Waikato, New Zealand, under-scores the analytic problem:

We should accept that it is oftenimpractical and perhaps undesirableto hold natural capital intact in itsentirety, but it is also counter to theidea of sustainability to bequeath astock of natural capital to futuregenerations that is incapable of yield-ing sufficient resource flows (i.e.,“income”) to fulfill their potentialneeds and aspirations.8

Taken at face value, strong sustainabilityis wholly inconsistent with a modern econo-my. Whether a project is sustainable foreveror just a very long time has nothing to do

with whether it is desirable. If unsustainabil-ity were really regarded as a reason for reject-ing a project, there would be no mining, nomore than subsistence agriculture, and noindustry.9

A second problem with the concept ofstrong sustainability is the fact that sustain-able resource use can, paradoxically, causemore environmental damage than unsus-tainable resource use. For instance, econo-mist Richard Rice, ecologist RaymondGullison, and policy analyst John Reid—ateam of scholars who together spent yearsstudying the Amazonian rain forests ofBolivia—concluded recently:

Current logging practice causes con-siderably less damage than someforms of sustainable management(which require more intensive har-vests of a wider variety of species).Indeed, a more sustainable approachcould well double the harm inflictedby logging. . . . Sustainability is, in fact,a poor guide to the environmentalharm caused by timber operations.Logging that is unsustainable—thatis, incapable of maintaining produc-tion of the desired species indefinite-ly—need not be highly damaging(although in some forests it is, espe-cially where a wide range of specieshave commercial value). Likewise, sus-tainable logging does not necessarilyguarantee a low environmental toll.10

The third and final problem with strongsustainability is the implicit suggestion thattoday’s natural resource base (and the healththereof) will necessarily be of significantinterest to future generations. On the con-trary, conserving today’s natural resourcebase does not ensure that tomorrow’s natur-al resource base is secure. Likewise, drawingdown today’s natural resource base does notnecessarily mean that tomorrow’s naturalresource base will be put in jeopardy.

Resources are simply those assets that canbe used profitably for human benefit.

3

If unsustainabili-ty were reallyregarded as a rea-son for rejecting aproject, therewould be no min-ing, no more thansubsistence agri-culture, and noindustry.

“Natural” resources are a subset of the organ-ic and inorganic material we think of as con-stituting the biological environment, since notall of that material can be used profitably forhuman benefit. But what can be used produc-tively by man changes with time, technology,and material demand. Ocean waves, for exam-ple, are not harnessed for human benefittoday and thus cannot really be thought of asa natural resource. But the technology to har-ness the movement of waves as a means togenerate energy certainly exists, and the daywhen the cost of doing so is lower than thecost of alternative energy sources is the daywhen waves become a natural resource.Uranium, to cite another example, would nothave been considered a resource a century agobut is most certainly thought of as such today.Petroleum was not an important resource 150years ago but today is thought of as perhapsthe most important resource to modern soci-ety. And if cold-fusion technology had pannedout, coal would be another example of yester-day’s resource but tomorrow’s relatively use-less rock.

Thus, the natural resource base is itselfrelative and its components vary greatly withtime due to technology and materialdemand. The composition of the naturalresource base of a century ago is substantial-ly different from the natural resource base oftoday, not because of depletion but owing toadvances in the economy, technology, andindustrial society. There’s little reason tothink that tomorrow’s resource needs willnecessarily match those of today.

The Meaninglessness of WeakSustainability

What if we embrace the weak definition ofsustainable development—allowing naturalresources to be depleted as long as they aremaintained at a “minimum critical level” andthe proceeds of their use are preserved forfuture generations—rather than the clearlyuntenable strong definition? Weak sustain-ability is certainly a more reasonable proposi-tion, but that’s largely because it is function-ally indistinguishable from the economists’

mission of maximizing human welfare. Aseconomist David Pearce, a strong proponentof weak sustainability, concedes:

[Sustainable development] impliessomething about maintaining thelevel of human well-being so that itmight improve but at least neverdeclines (or, not more than temporar-ily, anyway). Interpreted this way, sus-tainable development becomes equiv-alent to some requirement that well-being not decline through time.11

The two apparent qualifications of weaksustainability are really no qualifications atall. If, on the one hand, we understand “min-imum critical level” as the natural resourcebase necessary to sustain human life, thenone certainly doesn’t maximize human wel-fare by consuming resources beyond thatpoint. As noted by scholars at the Australia-based Tasman Institute:

Stripped down to its essentials, effi-ciency means making the best use ofresources, including natural resources,capital, labor, knowledge and inherit-ed institutions and cultural values, toensure that community well-being ismaximized. Essential to this are ener-getic steps to reduce waste and toensure that valued goods and servicesare provided with minimal cost.Environmental concerns are a vitalpart of the notion of economic effi-ciency and allocations of resourceswhich do not take environmentalconcerns into account are unlikely tobe efficient.12

If, on the other hand, we mean that each andevery natural resource, regardless of its utilityto mankind, should be preserved beyondsome minimal critical level—for example, if weconstrue sustainable development to meanthe maintenance of a set of resource “oppor-tunities”13—then, without reference to costsand benefits, the concept is simply anti-

4

Weak sustainabil-ity is certainly a

more reasonableproposition

because it is func-tionally indistin-

guishable fromthe economists’

mission of maxi-mizing human

welfare.

human and inimical to the interests of futuregenerations.

As a thought experiment, assume that theonly way we could have preserved theAmerican bison beyond a minimum criticallevel was to leave the Great Plains largelyuntouched by agriculture. Would the sacrificeof what was to become the world’s most pro-ductive cropland in order to protect the greatbuffalo herds have been in either the econom-ic or social interest of future generations? Apolicy paradigm that refuses to consider thecosts or benefits of such decisions is incapableof making a moral argument about the inter-ests of future (human) generations. But toinclude cost and benefit calculations in suchdecisions brings us right back to the econom-ic concept of “maximizing welfare.”

The admonition that the proceeds of suchtradeoffs be preserved for our children issuperfluous. Since all wealth is eventuallyinherited by future generations, there wouldappear to be no rationale for a special state-supervised “account” to be established fortheir benefit.

The Incoherence of Intergenerational EquityPerhaps the strongest rationale for both

strong and weak variations of sustainabledevelopment is, according to its proponents,the case for “intergenerational equity.”Indeed, as economist Matthew Cole pointsout, “despite the countless definitions, a keycharacteristic of all versions of sustainabledevelopment is the principle of equity. Sucha notion of equity includes not only provid-ing for the needs of the least advantaged oftoday’s society (intragenerational equity) butalso extends to the needs of the next genera-tion (intergenerational equity).”14 One of themost articulate proponents of this argumentis Georgetown University professor of inter-national law Edith Weiss, who argues thatfuture generations have as much right totoday’s environmental resources as we do,and that we have no right to decide whetheror not they should inherit their share ofthose rights.15

Yet the concept of tangible rights to

resources for those not even conceived is dubi-ous to say the least.16 First, it is philosophicallyinconsistent. Those disincorporated beings notyet even a glimmer in someone’s eye are said tohave rights to oil, tin, copper, trees, or whateverbut not, apparently, to life itself (unless, ofcourse, Western societies decide to outlaw abor-tion). Moreover, once individuals are conceived,we do not maintain that they have a right to allthe resources of the parent. If, for example, aretired couple spends $50,000 on a trip aroundthe world, we do not argue that the couple hasviolated the resource rights of their children. Ifintergenerational equity is to be taken seriously,then the claims one generation has on anothershould not be affected by the distance in timebetween the two.

The concept of intergenerational equity,moreover, is hopelessly inconsistent. If thechoice to draw down resources is held exclu-sively by future generations, then are we notsome previous generation’s “future” genera-tion? Why is the present generation bereft ofthat right? If the answer is that no generationhas the right to deplete resources as long asanother generation is on the horizon, thenthe logical implication of the argument isthat no generation (save for the very last gen-eration before the extinction of the species)will ever have a right to deplete any resource,no matter how urgent the needs of the pres-ent may be. If only one generation (out ofhundreds or even thousands) has the right todeplete resources, how is that intergentation-al equity?

Compounding that problem is the factthat future generations will almost certainlybe far, far better off economically than pres-ent generations. If we were serious aboutequality between generations, then, we mighttake economist Steven Landsburg’s adviceand “allow the unemployed lumberjacks ofOregon to confiscate your rich grandchil-dren’s view of the giant redwoods.”17

The math is actually quite simple. If U.S.per capita income manages to grow in realterms by 2 percent a year (a conservativeassumption), then in 400 years, the averageAmerican family of four will enjoy an income

5

Would the sacri-fice of what wasto become theworld’s mostproductive crop-land in order toprotect the greatbuffalo herdshave been ineither the eco-nomic or socialinterest of futuregenerations?

of $2 million a day in 1997 dollars (roughly,Microsoft CEO Bill Gates’s current income).If per capita income grew a bit faster—say, atthe rate reported by South Korea over thepast couple of decades—it would take only100 years for an average family of four to earn$2 million daily. “So each time the SierraClub impedes economic development to pre-serve some specimen of natural beauty,”writes Landsburg, “it is asking people wholive like you and me (the relatively poor) tosacrifice for the enjoyment of future genera-tions that will live like Bill Gates.”18

Furthermore, the notion of resourcerights for future generations is premised onthe argument that one has a right to forciblytake property from someone else in order tosatisfy a personal need. Although that is anargument best left unexplored here, suffice itto say that such a claim is expansive andfraught with moral peril.19

Finally, the belief that the interests offuture generations are more likely to be pro-tected by political than by market agents isdubious. Indeed, any clear-eyed survey of gov-ernment versus market decisionmakingfinds that market agents are far more likelyto invest for the future than governmentalagents.20 As noted by economists PeterHartley from Rice University and AndrewChisolm and Michael Porter of the TasmanInstitute:

Future generations do not take partin elections, but they are representedin the capital market. While manyvoters are concerned about futuregenerations, democratically electedgovernments have a tendency toreflect the wishes of the marginalvoter in the currently marginal elec-torate, so it is unreasonable to expectgovernments to be more conserva-tion-minded than such a voter.Markets, on the other hand, canreflect more extreme views on thefuture value of a resource. Since thevalue of an asset hinges on expecta-tions of what others may pay for

access in the future, speculatorsbecome the representatives of futuregenerations in today’s markets.21

Since advocates of sustainable developmentrely upon governmental action to ensure thesuccess of their agenda, it is unlikely—nomatter how well-intentioned their efforts orsuccessful their political campaigns—thattheir goals will be realized through stateintervention in the economy.

The Chimera of ResourceScarcity

The call for sustainable developmentimplicitly posits that robust stocks of natur-al resources are crucial to economic well-being and that current trends in resourceconsumption are somehow unsustainable.

As to the former claim, it may certainly be thecase that resource sustainability is desirable forsubjective cultural reasons, but natural resourcescarcity is simply not a binding constraint on eco-nomic growth as is commonly asserted.Economist Joseph Stiglitz in a classic study foundthat exogenous technological advances lead tolong-run gains in per capita consumption in less-developed countries under conditions of expo-nential population growth and limited,exhaustible stocks of natural resources.22

Economist Edward Barbier found that even in agrowing economy, technological change isresource augmenting.23 As Barbier and colleagueThomas Homer-Dixon of the University ofToronto put it, “sufficient allocation of humancapital to innovation will ensure that resourceexhaustion can be postponed indefinitely, andthe possibility exists of a long-run endogenoussteady-state growth rate that allows per capitaconsumption to be sustained, and perhaps evenincreased, indefinitely.”24

Regardless, the data clearly show thatmost natural resources are becoming more—not less—abundant with time. In fact, a prop-er understanding of resource economics sug-gests that this trend will actually improvegreatly over time and that resource depletion

6

The belief thatthe interests offuture genera-tions are more

likely to be pro-tected by political

than by marketagents is dubious.

is simply not a significant worry if the correctlegal and economic policies are maintained.Accordingly, “sustainable development”—even if we put aside its theoretical difficul-ties—is a solution in search of a problem.

Agricultural SustainabilityLet’s start by examining the data regarding

the agricultural sustainability. Figure 1 revealsthat, since 1950, food production has greatlyoutpaced population growth. Figure 2 illus-trates the practical effects of figure 1—an overalldecline in the price of food throughout theworld. Figure 3 reveals that this growing abun-dance of food has led to a marked increase indaily per capita intake of calories in both richand poor regions of the world. This massiveincrease in production came primarily fromincreased productivity, not from increased cul-tivation of lands. The amount of land devotedto agricultural purposes expanded by onlyabout 9 percent from 1961 to 1999 while pop-ulation doubled.25 Paul Waggoner of theConnecticut Agricultural Experiment Stationand Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University cal-

culate that, given likely trends, cropland willshrink globally by about 200 million hectares,or more than three times the land area ofFrance, by 2050.26 Ausubel believes that devel-opment will increase global forest cover byabout 10 percent.27

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organiza-tion reports that, as a consequence, the per-centage of the population subject to famineand starvation declined from 35 percent in1970 to 18 percent in 1997 and is expected tofall to 12 percent by 2010.28 Likewise, the per-centage of undernourished children in thedeveloping world has fallen from 40 percentto 30 percent over the past 15 years and isexpected to fall to 24 percent by 2020.29 Thecontinuing existence of large and growingfarm subsidies in the developed world is testa-ment to the fact that glut—not scarcity—is theprevailing problem in the agricultural sector.

The positive trend in food availability isunlikely to reverse itself for several reasons.First, there are tremendous unrealizedopportunities to exponentially expand globalfood production simply through the applica-

7

Given likelytrends, croplandwill shrink glob-ally by about 200million hectares,or more thanthree times theland area ofFrance, by 2050.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Food Production

Population

Figure 1World Food Production vs. World Population Growth

Source: UN Food and Agriculture Organization, data cited in “Loaves and Fishes,” The Economist, March 21, 1998.

Inde

x: 1

950

= 10

0

8

0

50

100

150

200

250

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996

Figure 2Total Food Commodity Price Index, World

0

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

1970 1995

World

Least Developed CountriedDeveloping CountriesIndustrialized Countries

Figure 3Daily per Capita Supply of Calories, 1970 and 1995

Source: World Resources Institute, UN Environmental Programme, UN Development Programme, and WorldBank, World Resources 1998–1999: A Guide to the Global Environment (New York: Oxford University Press,1998), p. 161.

Sources: World Resources Institute, UN Environmental Programme, UN Development Program, and WorldBank, World Resources 1998–1999: A Guide to the Global Environment (New York: Oxford University Press,1998), Table 6.3, as cited in Ronald Bailey, ed., Earth Report 2000 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000), p. 265.

Inde

x: 1

990

= 10

0

tion of existing Western technology and agri-cultural practices in less-developed coun-tries.30 Second, advances in nonexotic tech-nology and information services are begin-ning to radically improve yields as they havein many other industries.31 Third, agricultur-al science is progressing in record leaps andbounds, promising even greater expansionsin agricultural productivity and nutritionalimprovements.32 Fourth, economic growthproduces greater food availability (largely bymaking more capital available for advancedagricultural practices), and few economistsexpect the global economy to stop growing inreal terms in the future.33 Finally, global pop-ulation is now projected to level off at around11 billion by the year 2200,34 a figure wellwithin the agricultural “carrying capacity” ofthe planet.35

Fishery SustainabilityA perennial concern within the subset of

issues pertaining to agricultural sustainabili-ty is the concern over the depletion of theworld’s fisheries. As noted above, however,land-based crop and food production ismore than capable of meeting future needs.This is particularly the case since fish con-sumption makes up less than 1 percent oftotal caloric intake and only 6 percent of pro-tein intake across the global population.36

Regardless, there is little evidence for theoft-stated assertion that global fisheries arenear collapse. Total catches have increased abit more than fourfold since 1950 while totalcatches per capita have doubled over thatsame period (although they’ve held steady bythat measure since about 1965).37 While somecommercially valuable species are in decline,high prices, consumer tastes, and publicawareness campaigns have shifted consump-tion to less scarce species. So what is commer-cially valuable today is often not what is com-mercially valuable tomorrow and visa versa.

Still, there is legitimate concern over thedepletion of some species and species subpopu-lations. Those problems stem from what ecolo-gist Garrett Hardin famously termed “thetragedy of the commons.”38 In short, since

everyone is free to harvest fish but no one ownsthe schools, individual fisherman maximizetheir revenue by increasing their harvest regard-less of what other fishermen might do. Nobodyhas any incentive to efficiently manage fishpopulations. Governments are called in to dothe job, but the proliferation of massive subsi-dies to the fishing industry in virtually all coun-tries and excessively generous allotments forfish harvests demonstrate that well-organizedspecial interests will almost always sacrifice thehealth of fisheries for the economic interests ofthe fishing industry.

Here, we confront for the first time in ourdiscussion (but not for the last time) a majorcause of “unsustainable” resource use—pub-lic ownership and extraction subsidies. Theremedy can be found in simple economics—privatization of fishing rights. The most pop-ular method of privatization involves stateissuance of individual fishing quotas thatcould be traded in secondary markets. Thisapproach, which has the support of bothconservationists and economists, has provensuccessful in Iceland and elsewhere at stabi-lizing fish populations while protecting theeconomic health of the fishing industry.39

Another method is the emerging practiceof “fish farming,” which not only helps to pro-vide resources at minimal ecological cost butalso serves to take the pressure off wild fishstocks.40 Production from such farms hasincreased fivefold since 1984—now constitut-ing about 25 percent of total catches41—andwill continue to grow in the future.42 The pro-duction from such farms could grow evenmore dramatically with the introduction offertilizers. Oceanographers etimate that 60percent of ocean life grows in but 2 percent ofthe ocean’s surface. The limiting factor is pri-marily the lack of nutrients necessary to sus-tain phytoplankton. Adding those nutrients—which is conceptually no more difficult thanland-based fertilization techniques–couldincrease fish yields by a factor of hundreds.43

Mineral SustainabilityNext, let’s consider trends in the availabil-

ity of commercially important metals, fuels,

9

There is legiti-mate concernover the deple-tion of somespecies andspecies subpopu-lations. Thoseproblems stemfrom what ecolo-gist GarrettHardin termed“the tragedy ofthe commons.”

and minerals. Figure 4 demonstrates that,whether you measure the availability of vari-ous mineral resources by inflation-adjustedprices or by the amount of effort necessary toproduce a unit of consumption,44 mineralresources are likewise becoming more abun-dant—not more scarce—and are on a clearlyeconomically sustainable path.

Perhaps the most provocative suggestionfrom Figure 4 is that petroleum is becomingmore abundant, not more scarce as is popu-larly believed.45 This is true even if we exam-ine indicators other than price.46 The bestindicators are development costs and valuesin-ground. The average cost of finding oil fellfrom $12 per barrel in 1980 to just $7 perbarrel in 1998 despite 40 percent inflation inthe interim.47 While data on petroleum assetvalues are hard to come by, what is knownsuggests that those asset values are not trend-ing upwards.48

Secondary indicators are less useful but like-wise reveal positive trends. Proven reserves ofpetroleum, for instance, are 15 times larger

today than when record keeping began in 1948and about 40 percent larger than in 1974.49

Moreover, the amount of those reserves that weuse in any given year has remained steady at 2–3percent since 1950.50 How much oil can wepotentially move from the “unproven” to the“proven” category? One prominent study esti-mates that 6 trillion barrels of recoverable con-ventional oil exist today (a reserve of approxi-mately 231 years given present consumption)and another 15 trillion of unconventional oil—such as tar sands, oil shale, and orimulsion) arerecoverable (808 years at present levels of con-sumption) given favorable economics.51 Theargument that we’re running out of new fieldsto discover and that production will according-ly peak in the near future (the so-calledHubbert’s Curve hypothesis) ignores the poten-tial for unconventional fossil fuel and grosslyunderestimates the availability of oil in existingfields given technological advance and adequatepricing signals.52

Concerns over the finite nature of mineralresources are ill-considered because such con-

10

Whether youmeasure the avail-ability of various

mineral resourcesby inflation-

adjusted prices orby the amount of

effort necessaryto produce a unitof consumption,

mineral resourcesare becoming

more abundant.

-0.05

-0.04

-0.03

-0.02

-0.01

0

0.01

0.02

Prices Deflated by CPI Real Prices Deflated by Wages

Aluminum

Bituminous Coal

CopperIron

LeadNatural Gas

Nickel

OilSilver

SteelTin

Zinc

Figure 4Estimated Annual Trends in Mineral and Metal Prices, 1870–1998 (all commoditiesindexed to 1990 = 100)

Source: Stephen Brown and Daniel Wolk, “Natural Resource Scarcity and Technological Change,” Economic &Financial Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Q1, 2000, p. 7.

cerns ignore the ongoing process of resourcecreation. As economists Harold Barnett andChandler Morse explained in their classicwork Scarcity and Growth, as resources becomemore scarce, people will anticipate futurescarcities, prices will be bid up, incentives willbe created for developing new technologiesand substitutes, and the resource base will berenewed. Indeed, Barnett and Morse’s ideasare now widely accepted in the world ofresource economics and are not even particu-larly controversial among those who specializein that field within academia.53

Is Barnett and Morse’s optimism regard-ing “just in time” delivery of new technolo-gies and resources justified? Well, historicalexperience—as noted above—would certainlyseem to justify their optimism.

Those who find Barnett and Morse’s the-ory impossibly counterintuitive betray a fun-damental misunderstanding of the genesis ofresources. Natural resources do not existindependent of man and are not materials wesimply find and then exploit like buried trea-sure. Natural resources, on the contrary, arecreated by mankind. As resource economistThomas DeGregori points out, “Humans arethe active agent, having ideas that they use totransform the environment for human pur-poses. . . . Resources are not fixed and finitebecause they are not natural. They are a prod-uct of human ingenuity resulting from thecreation of technology and science.”54

Political scientist David Osterfeld thus con-cludes, “since resources are a function ofhuman knowledge and our stock of knowl-edge has increased over time, it should comeas no surprise that the stock of physicalresources has also been expanding.”55

Obsessing nearly exclusively on conserv-ing today’s stock of mineral resources is akinto a farmer who obsesses over conservingeggs rather than the chickens that lay them.

Forest SustainabilityNext, let’s consider the sustainability of

various forests, another perennial environ-mental concern. The longest data series avail-able reveals that global forest cover increased

from 30.04 percent of the planet’s surface areain 1950 to 30.89 percent of the planet’s surfacearea in 1994.56 Moreover, most of the comput-er models that examine future resource trendspredict a constant to slightly increasing rate offorest expansion through 2100.57 Some of themain reasons for this trend include the emer-gence of substitutes for timber,58 increasingreliance on plantation forests for timber, andmore efficient logging practices in general.59

Those trends will likely accelereate in thefuture, returning a tremendous amount oftoday’s forests harvested for human use backto nature.60

Conservationists argue, however, thatpositive macro-trends in forestland healthhide significant micro-problems. But thosealleged micro-problems are generally over-stated. For instance, it has been alleged thatwe’re sacrificing “original forest cover” for“secondary forest cover” and that these sec-ondary-growth forests are poorer ecological-ly. But the planet has only lost about 20 per-cent of its original forest cover since the dawnof agriculture.61 Moreover, secondary forestsare not necessarily ecologically “poorer” thanold growth forests.62

Another concern is that, while tempera-ture forests are expanding,63 tropical rain-forests are disappearing, so while the overalltrends for global forest cover might be slight-ly positive, they mask the decline of the moreecologically important rainforests. But tropi-cal rainforest deforestation is proceeding atbut 0.3 percent a year, a not particularlyalarming sum,64 and only 20 percent of theplanet’s original tropical rainforest cover(compared to about 50 percent of the forestcover in the developed world)65 has beeneffected by man.66

Academics who’ve examined the data con-clude that deforestation—where it indeedexists—is less a problem of global demand fortimber and croplands outstripping supplythan it is a problem of politics. First, the lackof private property rights to forest resourcescorrelates strongly with deforestation prob-lems, suggesting that deforestation is a resultof political mismanagement of economic

11

Obsessing nearlyexclusively onconservingtoday’s stock ofmineral resourcesis akin to afarmer whoobsesses overconserving eggsrather than thechickens that laythem.

resources (an old story that could be toldabout any number of industries in any num-ber of socialist states).67 Second, deforestationcorrelates strongly with poverty.68 Economistshave discovered, for instance, that once percapita incomes exceeded $4,760 in Africa and$5,420 in Latin America, deforestation ratesactually moderated slightly.69

That’s largely because the main driver fordeforestation in the developing world is theneed for more agricultural land—land thatwouldn’t be necessary if modern agriculturalpractices were available to increase yieldsfrom existing agricultural lands.70 Yet mod-ern agricultural practices require capitalinputs that are often beyond the means ofpoor economies.71

Another way poverty contributes to defor-estation is the demand for wood fuel thatresults from the lack of an electricity grid.72 InWest Africa, for instance, 80 percent of domes-tic energy consumption is met by wood fuel.In sub-Saharan Africa, wood fuel accounts for63.5 percent of total energy use.73

Poverty in the developing world, however,is a legacy of the lack of property rights, theabsence of the rule of law, and counterpro-ductive state interventions in the economy.74

Species SustainabilityOne of the oft-heard alarm bells rung by

conservationists is the assertion that the worldis in the midst of a biodiversity crisis. Massextinctions, it is charged, are decimating floraand fauna populations with dangerous impli-cations for ecosystem health throughout theworld. It’s worth bearing in mind, however,that even if we accept the alarms about currentextinction rates, the number of species livingon the planet today is far, far greater than atany other period in earth’s history, and eventhe most dramatic projections of species lostwill not bring species diversity below theearth’s historic norm.75

Alarming figures pertaining to speciesextinctions, however, are based not on obser-vation but on extrapolation from a host ofassumptions. The standard methodemployed is to first guess the absolute num-

ber of species on earth (many of which are yetto be discovered). Biologists then calculatehow much habitat from various ecosystemsis disappearing a year. From there, biologistscalculate how many species thought to live inthose habitats go extinct from such habitatlosses. The speculative nature of those calcu-lations is illustrated by the fact that only1,000 identifiable species since 1600 A.D. areknown to have gone extinct, which works outto about 2–3 extinctions a year.76 The aboveextrapolations, however, suggest that from17,000 to 100,000 species are going extinctevery year.77

The assumptions upon which thoseextrapolations are based, however, are highlyuncertain. For instance, biologists have identi-fied 1.6 million species to date, and they arefairly confident that they’ve accounted for vir-tually all of the birds and mammals in exis-tence.78 The great unknown is the number ofunidentified insects, fungi, bacteria, and virus-es yet to be catalogued. Estimates of the ulti-mate size of the species pool, therefore, rangefrom 3 million to 100 million,79 although evi-dence suggests that the lower-bound esti-mates are more likely to be correct.80 The larg-er the size of the species pool, the greater thenumber of calculated extinctions, but most ofthose extinctions will necessarily be amonginsect, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.

Habitat loss is more easily quantifiable, buteven so, the more alarmist projections of extinc-tion rates greatly overestimate losses and defor-estation trends.81 More to the point, however,the alleged relationship between habitat lossand species extinction, which appears intuitiveat first glance, does not withstand scrutiny. Forinstance, biodiversity in Puerto Rico is the clear-est and best investigated test case of the habitat-loss-equals-species-extinction model. Fully 99percent of the primary forests there have beenwiped out by human development over the past400 years, but only 7 of the original 60 speciesof birds living in those forests have disappeared,while the overall number of avian species inPuerto Rico actually increased over that sameperiod of time.82 Similarly, primary easternforestland in the United States lost 98–99 per-

12

Alarming figurespertaining to

species extinc-tions are based

not on observa-tion but on

extrapolationfrom a host ofassumptions.

cent of its original coverage in the period sincethe arrival of European colonialists, but onlyone species extinction resulted.83

Clearly, the most crucial linchpins of thebiologists’ model of extinction dynamics areseriously flawed. At best, the alarmist projec-tions of species loss are hypotheses still waitingfor proof.84 At worst, they are classic cases ofjunk science. The best review of the data, under-taken by the International Union forConservation of Nature and Natural Resources,finds that “actual extinctions remain low” andthat close examination of known facts do notback up alarmist claims.85

In addition, there is growing doubt withinthe ecological community whether ecosys-tems are naturally stable at all.86 This hasimportant implications. For instance, ifecosystems do not tend toward stabilization,then policies that are intended to promotespecies preservation through sustainableecosystems are unnatural and without ecolog-ical merit. Furthermore, if ecosystems are notfunctionally and structurally complete, then“sustainable management” of those stockswill prove suboptimal. Finally, if ecosystemsdo not tend toward stability, then calculationsabout the economic or ecological value of nat-ural capital are impossible on a macro level.

Accordingly, conclusions about whether ornot certain economic activities are sustainableare more problematic than some would like tothink. As economists Robert Costanza of theUniversity of Maryland and Bernard Patten ofthe University of Georgia concede:

A system can only be known to be sus-tainable after there has been time toobserve if the prediction holds true.Usually there is so much uncertainty inestimating natural rates of renewal,and observing and regulating harvestrates, that a simple prediction at this asLudwig et al. (“Uncertainty, ResourceExploitation, and Conservation:Lessons from History,” Science, 260: 17,36) correctly observe, is always highlysuspect, especially if it is erroneouslythought of as a definition.87

A second implication is that preservingcertain ecological states indefinitely is less amatter of ecological necessity than socialpreference. Geographer M. J. Harte of theUniversity of Waikato, New Zealand, point-edly notes:

Discussions of natural capital musthave an anthropocentric componentwhich incorporates human prefer-ences for various ecosystem states.Without this anthropocentric dimen-sion, economists cannot claim thatany one ecological state is superior toanother because their recommenda-tions are not clearly supported by eco-logical theory and practice. . . . It istherefore possible to suggest thatcollective social preferences regard-ing desirable system attributes andtheir contribution to human well-being should be given a weighting atleast comparable to environmentalconstraints when describing the eco-logical-economic dimensions ofdevelopment.88

Freshwater SustainabilityWhile it’s certainly true that some regions

of the globe suffer more from water scarcitiesthan others, from a global perspective thesupply of freshwater is more than adequate.Only 17 percent of the accessible water avail-able annually from precipitation is with-drawn for extended periods of time forhuman use and that figure is expected to riseonly to 22 percent in 2025.89 Moreover,desalination technologies, which convert saltwater to freshwater, are increasingly afford-able and employed throughout the world,90

ensuring that freshwater resources are indef-initely sustainable.91

According to calculations by the WorldBank and the World Resources Institute,only 15 countries, containing 3.7 percent ofthe world’s population in 2000 (Algeria,Burundi, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Kenya,Kuwait, Libya, Oman, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia,

13

Clearly, the mostcrucial linchpinsof the biologists’model of extinc-tion dynamics areseriously flawed.At best, thealarmist projec-tions of speciesloss are hypothe-ses still waitingfor proof. Atworst, they areclassic cases ofjunk science.

Singapore, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates,and Yemen) suffered from “chronic waterscarcity,” which is defined as lacking theamount of freshwater necessary (2,740 litersof water per person per day) for routinehousehold needs, agriculture, modern indus-try, and energy production.92 Even this mod-est calculation, however, ignores the freshwa-ter delivered through desalination plants (amajor source of freshwater for many of thosecountries) and assumes water needs that areinflated by gross—but unfortunately, com-mon—inefficiencies.93

If all this water is available, then why do weexperience occasional water shortages? First,many parts of the developing world lack theinfrastructure necessary to deliver freshwaterresources to users, resulting in unsafe drink-ing water and poor sanitation. Still, trends arepositive. The proportion of people in develop-ing countries with access to safe drinkingwater increased from 30 percent in 1970 to 80percent in 2000 while access to sanitationincreased from 23 percent in 1970 to 53 per-cent in 2000.94 Providing universal access towater in the developing world would costapproximately $200 billion, suggesting thatthe problem will soon disappear given evenmodest economic growth.95

Second, governments in both developedand developing nations heavily subsidizewater services, promoting excessive con-sumption and waste.96 Most countries, forinstance, apply flat annual fees for access toirrigation services (which account for 90 per-cent of water use in the developing world butjust 37 percent in developed countries)97 anddon’t charge according to the amount ofwater consumed.98 Given such subsidies, itshouldn’t surprise that most irrigation sys-tems waste significant amounts of waterthrough poor maintenance and inefficientapplication practices.99

Municipal water prices are also heavilysubsidized. Households in the developingworld pay only 35 percent of the actual priceof water services on average,100 while subsi-dies in the developed world are smaller butnot insignificant.101 Where subsidies for

water services have been eliminated, greaterefficiency and conservation have resulted.102

Freshwater supplies, in sum, are plentifuland not in danger of running out. What pre-vents them from reaching users is extremepoverty, poorly designed markets, and coun-terproductive subsidies.103

The Sustainability ofPollution

Another set of resources that environmen-talists worry about sustaining is the variouslocal air, water, and land-based “pollutionsinks” across the planet. The ability of theplanet to assimilate industrial waste prod-ucts is largely predicated upon the “carryingcapacity” of those pollution sinks. Modernenvironmentalism is if anything more con-cerned today with the sustainability of natur-al environmental waste disposal services thanit is with the hard environmental resourceinputs that once occupied the attention ofthe conservation movement.104

Air Shed SustainabilityWill the carrying capacity of local air sheds

be great enough to assimilate industrial pollu-tants given current trends without endangeringhuman health and the environment? In thedeveloped world, the data unequivocallydemonstrate that the answer is “yes.” Considerthe pollutants identified by the U.S.Enviromental Protection Agency as most worri-some from a human health perspective: partic-ulate matter (smoke, soot, and fine particles inthe air), sulfur dioxide, ozone (smog), lead,nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide. Theconcentration of all these contaminants in theair over developed nations has for the most partbeen trending dramatically downward for aslong as data have been available.

Unfortunately, data regarding the concen-tration of air pollutants are limited. The bestdata set available pertains to the United States.

• Concentrations of particulate matterdecreased by between 40 and 50 per-

14

Freshwater sup-plies are plentifuland not in danger

of running out.What prevents

them from reach-ing users is

extreme poverty,poorly designed

markets, andcounterproduc-

tive subsidies.

cent in 1957–1997, the most recent yearfor which data are available105

• Concentrations of PM-10 (particu-late matter less than 10 micrometersin size, which is now thought to bemore harmful than larger particulatematter) declined by 25 percent from1988 to 1997, the most recent year forwhich data are available.106

• Concentrations of lead increased from1965 to 1971 but plummeted by 95percent from 1974 to 1997.107

• Concentrations of sulfur dioxide fellalmost fivefold between 1962 (whendata first became available) and 1997,the most recent year for which data areavailable.108 The most robust part ofthat data set, running from 1974 to1997, reveals a 60 percent decline in sul-fur dioxide concentrations over thatperiod.109

•Concentrations of ozone (popularlyknown as summertime smog) are hard tocome by because they are measured indi-rectly. The reigning metric is the concen-tration of ozone during the second-high-est one-hour reading of the year above agiven locale.110 By this imperfect measure,the severity of ozone concentrationsdeclined by 30 percent from 1974 to1997, the most recent year for which dataare available111 The number of days inwhich the second-highest one-hour read-ing exceeds federal air quality standardsdeclined by about 50 percent nationwidefrom 1989 to 2000.112

• Concentrations of carbon monoxidedeclined by 75 percent between 1970and 1997, the most recent date for rea-sonably comprehensive data.113 Half ofthat decline, interestingly enough,occurred within the past 10 years.114

• Concentrations of nitrogen oxidesdeclined by about 20 percent from1974 to 1997, the most recent year forwhich data are available.115

• Concentrations of various other toxicair pollutants are poorly and incom-pletely monitored, but for every moni-

toring station showing a statisticallysignificant increase in concentrations,more than six monitoring stationsshow a statistically significant declinein concentrations.116

The economic costs imposed by air pollu-tion in the United States from 1977 to 1999dropped almost two-thirds from $3,600 perperson per year to $1,300 per person peryear.117

Empirical examination of the data demon-strates a clear relationship between per capitaincome growth in the United States andabsolute reduction of air emissions.118 Datafrom Europe are far more fragmentary butconsistent with trends in the United States.119

Clearly, when economic growth reaches a cer-tain level, air pollution begins to fall rapidly.

Data from the developing world suggestthat this same dynamic is already at work.Numerous economists have studied the rela-tionship between economic growth, popula-tion, and industrialization, on the one hand,and environmental quality, on the other(known in the economics community asEnvironmental Kuznets Curves, or EKCs)120

and found that, beyond a certain point, eco-nomic development does indeed reduce air pol-lution burdens.

• Ambient concentrations of sulfur diox-ides were found to decline when percapita incomes reach between $3,670and $8,916.121

• Ambient concentrations of particulatematter were found to decline when percapita incomes reach between $3,280 to$7,300.122

• Ambient concentrations of nitrogenoxides were found to decline once percapita incomes reach between $12,041and $14,700.123

• Ambient concentrations of carbonmonoxide were found to decline whenper capita incomes reach between$6,241 and $9,900.124

• A survey of “megacity” air quality datagathered by the Global Environmental

15

Numerous econo-mists have stud-ied the relation-ship between eco-nomic growth,population, andindustrialization,on the one hand,and environmen-tal quality, on theother, and foundthat, beyond acertain point, eco-nomic develop-ment does indeedreduce air pollu-tion burdens.

Monitoring System of the WorldHealth Organization shows that pollu-tion concentrations stabilize aftercities reach a moderate level of devel-opment, and air quality then improvesas cities become more wealthy.125

•Data compiled by the World Bankdemonstrate an unmistakable correlationbetween per capita income and access tosafe drinking water and sanitation as wellas declining urban concentrations of par-ticulate matter and sulfur dioxide.126

“Poverty and environmental degradationgo hand in hand. . . . Economic develop-ment, on the other hand, provides thefinancial and technical resources neededfor the protection of human health andnatural ecosystems.”127

There are competing explanations for whylocal air quality improves when per capitaincome reaches a certain point. Economicgrowth may increase the demand for environ-mental quality, which is in many respects aluxury good.128 The increased demand forenvironmental quality manifests itself notonly in the marketplace (by increased demandfor low-polluting technologies and variousenvironmental goods and services) but also inpolitical demands for more aggressive pollu-tion controls.129 Advanced economies also relyless on heavy manufacturing and more on ser-vice industries, which reduces national emis-sions.130 Moreover, the manufacturing sectorin advanced economies is far more efficient—and thus, less pollution intensive—than inless-developed economies. 131 Advancedeconomies are also generally characterized bymore vigorous enforcement of propertyrights, contracts, and the rule of law, whichmay play a significant role in pollution con-trol.132 Controlling for each of these variablesin an attempt to explain the correlationbetween rising per capita income and declin-ing pollution levels is obviously difficult.

The relationship between growth in percapita income and improvements in local airquality is now widely accepted within acade-mia.133 Fortunately, per capita income has

grown dramatically in the developing worldsince 1972—by 13 percent in Africa, 72 percentin Asia and the Pacific, and 35 percent in LatinAmerican and the Caribbean. Only West Asiaexperienced a decline (6 percent) over thatperiod.134 Unfortunately, many nations arestill for the time being on the “wrong” side ofthe curve. That is, air pollution may well gettemporarily worse with economic growthbefore it gets better.135 EKCs, however, demon-strate that air quality is sustainable in the faceof future economic growth.

Watershed SustainabilityData pertaining to water quality are

unfortunately far less comprehensive androbust than data pertaining to air quality.Still, the fragmentary data we have point in apositive direction.

Information on coastal water pollution isquite spotty for each of the three items trackedby scientists: fecal bacteria, dissolved oxygenlevels, and toxic contaminants. Since it’s diffi-cult to monitor for the presence of all the possi-ble pathogens and substances of concern, theindicator most commonly used to measurecoastal pollution is fecal bacteria.136 Within theEuropean Union, 21 percent of all beaches werepolluted by high levels of fecal bacteria in 1992.By 1999, only 5 percent of EU beaches were sopolluted.137 Similar data are not available forthe United States because each local communi-ty maintains its own monitoring standards andresults are not comparable between communi-ties.138 Data for the developing world are gener-ally unavailable.

Oxygen depletion is the second problem ofconcern in coastal waterways.139 Oxygen deple-tion, however, has not reduced fish or shrimpcatches—it may actually have increased certainfishery stocks—and has had no discernibleeffect on total coastal biomass.140

Moreover, the use of nitrogen-based fertiliz-ers—which significantly contribute to oxygendepletion—has declined in absolute terms inthe United States since 1980. Similarly, nitrateconcentrations in the northeast Atlantic andBaltic have declined by 25 percent since 1985.141

Global nitrogen use peaked in 1988 while total

16

The relationshipbetween growth

in per capitaincome and

improvements inlocal air quality is

now widelyaccepted within

academia.

world fertilizer use (which includes phosphatesand potash) is 10 percent below the peakreached a decage ago.142

Toxic substances are the third contaminantsof concern in coastal water bodies.143 Data fromthe United States show that toxic metals incoastal fish and shellfish declined dramaticallyfrom 1986 to 1995.144 The only Europeanequivalent to that database measures the con-centration of DDT and PCBs in cod. It likewisereveals a massive reduction in concentrationsfrom 1973 to 1992.145 Data for the developingworld are again unavailable.

Somewhat better data are available forfreshwater resources, which look very muchlike the data we examined for air quality.Again, three issues are of primary concern:fecal bacteria, dissolved oxygen levels, andtoxic contaminants.

The World Bank examined trends in fecalbacteria concentrations in 52 rivers in 25countries and found that when per capitaincomes reaches about $1,375, water qualitybegins to improve. Yet, after per capitaincomes reach $11,500, water quality beginsto deteriorate again.146 Bjorn Lomborg con-cludes, “The explanation seems to be that wesee a general downwards trend in fecal pollu-tion so long as people are dependent on river water.However, when countries get rich enoughthey use groundwater to a much greaterextent, which diminishes the urgency andpolitical inclination to push for even lowerfecal pollution standards.”147 Even so, theU.S. Geological Survey finds no worsening ofU.S. waters as far as fecal contamination isconcerned.148 Moreover, Princeton econo-mists Gene Grossman and Alan Kreuger findthat the concentration of fecal coliform bac-teria in rivers begins to decline when per capi-ta income reaches $7,955 (in 1985 dollars).149

Levels of dissolved oxygen, however, areconsidered the most important indicator ofwater quality.150 Major rivers in the developedworld, such as the Thames and the Rhine,and New York City’s harbor have shownrapid increases in dissolved oxygen contentover the past 50 years, rendering them fish-able and swimmable again and home to an

exploding population of flora and fauna.151

The European Environment Agency founddeterioration in 23 percent of rivers surveyedbut improvement for 73 percent of those sur-veyed.152 The U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency likewise reports that the number ofrivers and lakes deemed “fishable and swim-mable” has doubled since 1972.153 Invest-ments in expensive wastewater treatmentfacilities are the primary factor contributingto improvement.154 Economists Grossmanand Kreuger find that oxygen levels begin toincrease in bodies of water when per capitaincome meets a certain threshold, suggestingthat—here again—EKCs can be found.155

Toxic contaminants in rivers and lakes arealso trending downward in the developedworld, but data are generally unavailable forthe developing world. In the United States,for instance, the number of fish in the GreatLakes contaminated by various toxic sub-stances has declined about fivefold.156 Andalthough the data are mixed, Grossman andKreuger again find that trends in toxic waterpollution in the developing world conformto the EKC hypothesis.157

Although the data are incomplete, positivetrends in water quality in the developed world,as well as the correlation between per capitaincome and water pollution, suggest thatfreshwater quality is sustainable in the face ofeconomic growth. The main cause of waterpollution, after all, is insufficiently treatedsewage effluent. This is a problem almostcompletely remediable given sufficient capitalinvestments, but those investments willincrease only with improvements in economicgrowth in the developing world.158

Human Health SustainabilityThe best measure of whether pollution is

or is not sustainable from a human healthperspective is trends in life expectancy. If pol-lution were posing a greater and greaterthreat to human health, we would expect tofind data evidencing increases in early mor-tality, disease burdens, and the like, particu-larly when examining populations in thoseareas where pollution is on the rise. But given

17

The main causeof water pollu-tion is insuffi-ciently treatedsewage effluent.This is a problemalmost complete-ly remediablegiven sufficientcapital invest-ments, but thoseinvestments willincrease onlywith improve-ments in eco-nomic growth inthe developingworld.

that pollution burdens in most of the worldare generally declining, not rising, and giventhat per capita income in most countries isincreasing, not decreasing, it should not sur-prise us that life expectancy is going up, asillustrated in Figure 5. A child born today canexpect to live eight years longer than oneborn 30 years ago.159

If sustainable development pertains large-ly to the material well-being of both presentand future generations, it’s hard to identify abetter index of material well-being than theindex illustrated in Figure 5. In short, thedata clearly demonstrate that human healthcontinues to improve with time, suggesting asustainable present and future.

The Sustainability of UrbanizationThere is also general concern about whether

the developing world can sustain “megacities”given the widespread belief that human healthand the environment are natural resource casu-alties of rapid Third World urbanization.Although it’s certainly true that governmentalinterventions in the less-developed countries

often indirectly foster the growth of megacitiesat the expense of the agricultural economy andthe efficiency of the economy as a whole,160

megacities are, as a general matter, an impor-tant component of economic growth, particu-larly in the less-developed world.161 Their emer-gence is a sign not of demographic disaster butof economic development.162 Urban growth isso important to the developing world thatscholars believe restricting urbanization tocombat pollution will do more economic harmthan good.163 Moreover, there is good reason tobelieve that restricting city size would actuallyincrease overall national pollution rates by fos-tering resource-costly inefficiencies and increas-ing overall transportation costs and attendantfuel-based emissions.164

Fortunately, such hard choices are proba-bly unnecessary. Extensive analysis of thedata by Vibhooti Shukla at the University ofTexas and Kirit Parikh of the Indira GandhiInstitute of Development Research showsthat “the positive association between poorair quality and city size is not inevitable andtends to diminish with economic growth and

18

The data clearlydemonstrate that

human healthcontinues to

improve withtime, suggesting asustainable pres-

ent and future.

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

1950/55 1955/60 1960/65 1965/70 1970/75 1975/80 1980/85 1985/90 1990/95

Developed Regions

Less-Developed RegionsLeast-Developed Regions

Figure 5Estimated Life Expectancy at Birth, 1955–95

Yea

rs

Source: UN Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 1996 Revision (draft), 1997.

the capacity for undertaking pollution abate-ment measures. It follows that restrictingurban growth in developing countries maybe neither necessary nor sufficient for achiev-ing environmental gains.”165 Moreover,another Environmental Kuznets Curve canbe found at work in the population data:ambient concentrations of sulfur dioxide,particulate matter, and smoke increase incities until population reaches 4–6 million,upon which those concentrations tend todecline as population grows further.166

Shukla and Parikh ask:

Is there, then, a compelling argu-ment for pollution control throughcity size restriction in developingcountries? Our characterization ofthe international development expe-rience, which indicates that pollu-tion has fallen without regard to citysize, but rather in conjunction withhigh incomes, suggests not. This isnot to minimize the gravity of thepollution problem facing cities ofdeveloping countries, but to ques-tion the sagacity of policies thatwould seek to “solve” it withoutappreciation of the large implicitcosts involved in this particularchoice of instrument. For, as we haveseen, curbing urban growth isfraught with productivity losses,which are higher both in magnitudeand relative importance in the LDCs.On the other hand, facilitating high-er urban incomes is likely to result inspontaneous dispersal, a strongerpublic “demand” for abatement andgreater societal wherewithal toundertake it as a matter of policy.Nor is it necessarily true that restrict-ing city size would, by itself, guaran-tee lower pollution levels.167

“Leapfrogging” the Industrial Revolution?A standard prescription for minimizing

environmental damages in the developingworld is for preindustrial economies to

“leapfrog” the industrial revolution altogeth-er. Since businesses now have access toadvanced pollution control technologies tominimize emissions at their source—tech-nologies not available to the West when itindustrialized more than a century ago—whyshouldn’t less-developed economies skip theold industrial stage of development altogeth-er and move directly into a 21st-centuryeconomy? The Worldwatch Institute’sMegan Ryan and Christopher Flavin, forinstance, believe that “China has three energypaths open to it: copy the worst of the West(the nineteenth century coal path), copy thebest of the West (an oil-based system similarto the U.S. or German ones), or leap past theWest, directly to an efficient, decentralized,twenty-first century system. The third pathwould involve a portfolio of new energysources and technologies, including naturalgas, solar energy, wind power, and improvedenergy efficiency.”168

To some extent, of course, leapfrogging isexactly what is happening in various industri-al sectors today. China’s rapid adoption of cel-lular phones in lieu of a traditional wire-basedtelephone system is but one example of thisphenomenon.169 India’s rapid advance in com-puter software programming is another.170

Still, to continue with Ryan and Flavin’sargument, China’s living standard is so lowcompared to the West that some industrialgrowth is not only inevitable but also vitallynecessary for simple human comfort. Forexample, the typical Chinese household usesonly 0.03 percent of the energy consumed bythe typical American household, a shortfalllargely owing to a lack of even the most basicmodern household appliances.171 No matterhow energy efficient new appliances mightprove, per capita energy consumption isbound to rise dramatically along withdemand for electricity. An industrial “energyrevolution” will be required irrespective ofadvanced technology.172

The decision whether to embrace advancedtechnological practices or industries, however,must be made by market agents, not govern-ment planners. When it makes economic sense

19

The decisionwhether toembraceadvanced techno-logical practicesor industriesmust be made bymarket agents,not governmentplanners. Whenit makes econom-ic sense to do so,the private sectorwill adoptleapfrog tech-nologies withoutgovernmentencouragement.

to do so, the private sector will adopt leapfrogtechnologies without government encourage-ment. It is important to remember that priceslargely reflect relative scarcity. If the price ofsolar-powered electricity, for example, is greaterthan the price of coal-fired electricity, it meansthat greater resources are necessary to deliversolar power than coal-fired power.173

Unfortunately, many of the enthusiasmsof the environmental community—such asrenewable energy—are far more expensivethan conventional alternatives, the main rea-son why the West has yet to widely adoptthem.174 Not only could China scarcelyafford to embrace what Western economiesfind prohibitively expensive, but to do sowould deplete the very resource base sustain-able development is supposed to protect.

A few opportunities to leapfrog old tech-nologies indeed exist. Most cars sold in China,for instance, lack even the most basic emissioncontrols and continue to rely on leaded fuel.Although Beijing has only one-eighth thenumber of cars on the street as does Tokyo,the two auto fleets emit the same amount ofcarbon monoxide.175 The undoubted increasein auto prices that would result from banningleaded gasoline and requiring basic tailpipepollution controls would help achieve aninternalization of the costs of auto emission(the legitimate goal of making the polluter payfor his or her pollution), achieving a relativelylarge amount of pollution reduction for aminimum public cost.

The Sustainability of AtmosphericTemperature and Climate

A review of the literature pertaining to sus-tainable development finds that, for manyanalysts, the ultimate threat to the sustain-ability of the planet is the advent of globalwarming. Unfortunately, space does not per-mit a thorough review of the debate regardingthe scientific case (or lack thereof) for alarm.176

In general, however, the argument that globalclimate change will significantly reduce theavailability of resources is spurious.

First, it’s not entirely clear that globalwarming will prove to be the major event

advertised in the media. In short, the amountof warming over the past 100 years has beenmoderate (about a degree Fahrenheit) and farless than the computer models suggestshould have occurred by now.177 Since all thecomputer models rightly predict that warm-ing will occur in a linear fashion (a phenom-enon that conforms to atmospheric physics),we can reasonably project future warmingbased upon an extrapolation of the tempera-ture trends observed in the 20th century.Doing so yields an additional warming of1.17 to 1.35 degrees Fahrenheit by 2050 and,if we use projections from the UN’sInternational Panel on Climate Change as apoint of departure, a rather modest 3.0 to 5.3inch rise in sea level.178

Second, the moderate warming we haveexperienced has been concentrated over thenorthern latitudes during the winter night. Inother words, nighttime, wintertime lows in thefar north have not been quite as cold as usual.The rest of the globe does not show significantlong-term warming trends.179 If warming con-tinues to manifest itself along those lines (andthere are good meteorological reasons for it todo so), then the apocalyptic vision of global cli-mate change is wrong.180 In fact, polar night-time warming has already begun to show sig-nificant economic benefits.181

Third, even if a greater degree of warmingis spread out evenly across time and space,the world is unlikely to feel much economicor ecological pain. For instance, RenZhenqiu, a research fellow of the ChineseAcademy of Meteorological Science, notesthat a warmer climate would cause the pre-vailing westerly summer wind to move far-ther inland, bringing much-needed rainfallto China’s drought-plagued areas and, conse-quently, better crop yields.182 Both he andprofessor Zhang Piyuan of the Institute ofGeography of the Chinese Academy ofSciences have found through historicalresearch that warmer periods in Chinese his-tory correlate with prosperity.183 Zhang, forinstance, found that agricultural output washigher during the 1750–1790 warm periodthan during the 1841–1890 cold period.184

20

In general theargument thatglobal climate

change will signif-icantly reduce the

availability ofresources is

spurious.

Ren concluded overall that “warm periodsare the economically and culturally prosper-ous periods of mankind.”185

Those findings are representative of what awarmer world would likely mean for resourceavailability throughout most of the world.Yale forestry professor Robert Mendelsohn,for instance, finds that warming will likelyincrease resource availability in the UnitedStates.186 A thorough review of both agricul-tural history and the economic literature byeconomist Thomas Gale Moore confirmsthose conclusions on a global scale.187 Eventhe UN Environment Programme concedesthat, “based on simulation models, the mostlikely impacts are net favorable effects for thecooler margins of the temperate zone andadverse consequences for the sub-tropical andsimi-arid zone.”188

Fourth, it’s important to keep in mind thatcontinuing improvements in per capitaincome will occur regardless of global climatechange, improvements that will almost cer-tainly swamp any localized negative effect onresoruce availability. Even if, for instance,world economic output were reduced by 10percent annually as a consequence of globalwarming by the end of the century (a far high-er estimate than those offered by even mostmainstream alarmists, who postualte a 1 to 2percent annual reduction in global economicoutput by 2100), per capita income givenrecent trends would be only 3.95 times largerthan today rather than 4.4 times larger aswould be the case absent global climatechange.189 Similarly, global cereal productionwill likely rise by 83 percent between 1990 and2060. Given mean estimates of climatechange, that figure would only be changed by-1.1 percent to +2.4 percent under an “equiva-lent doubling” of carbon dioxide concentra-tions in the atmosphere.190

Finally, it should be noted that controllinggreenhouse gas emissions would prove lesssustainable than a policy that left them unad-dressed.191 Economist Deepak Lal notes thatmodernization is simply not possible withoutthe substitution of an organic (subsistence)economy by a mineral-based economy, and

that any attempt to block this transitionwould “leave little hope for the world’spoor.”192 As Lawrence Summers, former chiefeconomist at the World Bank and former sec-retary of the treasury, once famously observed,“Poverty is already a worse killer than any fore-seeable environmental distress. Nobodyshould kid themselves that they are doingBangladesh a favor when they worry aboutglobal warming.”193

Sustainability Metrics:Smoke and Mirrors

If resources are growing more abundantwhile the concentration of pollutants in airsheds and watersheds continues to decline,how can we explain the proliferation of vari-ous stylized sustainability indices that pointto a deterioration of the planet’s resourcebase? There are five common weaknesseswith such reports. First, they are almostalways built upon a selective but fundamen-tally arbitrary or irrelevant set of indicators.Second, they are often built not upon actualresource data but upon hypotheses or theo-ries about resource health that do not com-port with the data or that rest upon highlysuspect data fundamentally inconsistentwith the larger data sets available to analysts.Third, they ignore the well-documentedpropensity of capitalist societies to create andinvent new resources when old resourcesbecome relatively more scarce (that is, theyassume that resources are fixed and finitewhen they are not). Fourth, they are highlyaggregated and often subjective calculationsof data sets that lack common denomina-tors. Finally, they are frequently heavilybiased by ideological assumptions about pol-itics and government action. Accordingly,they provide little help to policy analysts orpolitical leaders.

Although space does not permit a completereview of the various sustainability indices thathave been published,194 a brief examination ofsome of the more prominent reports shouldsuffice to demonstrate the problems.

21

The moderatewarming we haveexperienced hasbeen concentrat-ed over thenorthern lati-tudes during thewinter night. Therest of the globedoes not showsignificant long-term warmingtrends. If warm-ing continues tomanifest itselfalong those lines,then the apoca-lyptic vision ofglobal climatechange is wrong.

The “IPAT” CalculationPerhaps the longest standing method of

calculating environmental sustainability(albeit indirectly) is a formula known as the“IPAT Identity.” Originally forwarded by BarryCommoner, the formula works as follows:

Environmental Impact (I) = Population (P) ?Affluence (A) ? Technology (T)

Although the formula is widely celebratedwithin environmental circles, its premiseshave not held up well over the years. As notedearlier, affluence can worsen or improve envi-ronmental quality depending upon whereper capita income falls on the Environmen-tal Kuznets Curve for particular pollutants.Technology likewise can have positive or neg-ative effects, but our discussion earlier findsthat the former today is far more prevalentthan the latter.

Accordingly, Waggoner and Ausubel haverevised the IPAT formula in order to make itmore useful.195 The revisions have produced afar more robust and empirically accurate cal-culation: the “ImPACT Identity”:

Environmental Impact (I) = Population (P) ? percapita GDP (A) ? intensity of use (C) ? efficiency (T)

The renovated IPAT identity—now theImPACT formula—comports nicely with theempirical observations forwarded in this paper.Waggoner and Ausubel conclude from that for-mula that “an annual 2–3 percent progress inconsumption and technology over many decadesand sectors seems a robust, understandable, andworkable benchmark for sustainability.”196

Unfortunately, most alternatives toWaggoner and Ausubel’s suggested index—aswe shall see below—fall far short of robost,understandable, or workable.

Living Planet “Index”The World Wildlife Fund offers a Living

Planet Index by which it purports to measurethe health of the world’s ecosystems. Theindex is an average of three other indices,which purport to measure the abundance of

various forestland, freshwater, and marineanimal species. According to WWF, theLiving Planet Index declined by 37 percentbetween 1970 and 2000.197

WWF arbitrarily chose 282 species popula-tions to represent forest ecosystem health, 195species to represent freshwater ecosystemhealth, and 217 species to represent coastalecosystem health. There are many more speciesthan that. Why did WWF choose some speciesas indicators and not others? The report does-n’t say. Even worse, the report doesn’t say whichspecies were chosen as indicators.198 The oppor-tunity for sleight of hand should be immedi-ately obvious. Choose white-tailed deer as anindicator and American forestlands lookrobust and healthy. Choose wolves as thespecies indicator and American forestlandlooks sickly and diseased.

The report claims that the species popula-tion data for whatever species it used as indi-cators “were gathered from numerous pub-lished sources,” but concedes that confidencelimits cannot be ascribed to the claims“because of uncertainties within the underly-ing population data.”199 Suffice it to say thatthis doesn’t inspire much confidence.

Moreover, why is the ecological “exchangerate” between forest health and, say, oceanichealth presumed to be 1.0? WWF doesn’t say.One could argue that forest health is moreimportant to the human population but thatoceanic health is more important to somemythic “Mother Earth” given that 70 percentof the earth is covered by water. It may be ana-lytically convenient to aggregate the results ofall three indices but there’s no obvious scien-tific or ecological reason for doing so.

An even bigger question, however, is whymeasure environmental health by an arbitraryselection of animal population data? There are,after all, a number of equally plausible alterna-tives. We could measure the amount of theplanet covered by forestland (it’s increasing, asnoted previously). We could measure trends inwater pollution (it’s decreasing in many parts ofthe globe, also as noted previously). We couldmeasure ecosystem health by plant populations(there are, after all, far more plants than ani-

22

Although theIPAT formula is

widely celebratedwithin environ-

mental circles, itspremises have notheld up well over

the years.

mals, and plants are even more fundamental tothe food chain). We could measure trends in thediversity of life within these ecosystems (itremains essentially unchanged, as noted previ-ously). We could measure the availability ofresources produced by these ecosystems (pricedata illustrate growing resource abundance,not increasing scarcity, as previoulsy noted).

Ecological FootprintsSeveral studies purport to measure the

“ecological footprint” of humanity, whichentails assessing total human demand on theplanet and comparing that demand with thesupply of resources the planet has to provide.This exercise is performed by the WWF in thesame report that featured the aforemen-tioned Living Planet Index, but it appears tobe only a brief summary (without attribu-tion) of a study authored by MathisWackernagel and others that was publishedin a recent edition of the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences.200

Wackernagel et al. conclude that “humandemand may well have exceeded the bios-phere’s regenerative capacity since the1980s.”201 In particular, they suggest that asof 1999 humans were harvesting 20 percentmore of the planet’s renewable resourcesthan the planet can regenerate in a year.202

While this conclusion implies that thoserenewable resources are becoming morescarce, there is little empirical data to sup-port the claim. As noted earlier, most of thedata available regarding trends in renewableresources point in the opposite direction.

As far as resource consumption is con-cerned, the study reports correctly that theamount of the earth’s surface used for grow-ing crops, grazing animals, harvesting timber,fishing, and supporting various human infra-structure has grown only slightly over the past40 years (about 35 percent of the planet’s sur-face, in fact, which is pretty remarkable giventhat global population exploded over thatperiod as did the size of the global economyand the demand for various resources). Butthe amount of land that Wackernagel et al.claim is used to produce energy has shot

through the roof, essentially doubling over 40years. According to the study, we now usetwice as much of the planet’s space to produceenergy as we use to produce food of all kinds.

Wackernagel et al., however, didn’t simplycalculate how much land was being used toproduce oil, gas, and coal (which is, in fact, triv-ial). They calculated how much forestland is nec-essary to absorb the carbon dioxide generatedby fossil fuel consumption. By only the wildeststretch of the imagination can one discern ahuman “footprint” in wild and uninhabitedforests sucking up carbon dioxide (which, afterall, is plant food). If anything, those emissionsare contributing to forest health by fertilizingthem mightily, an argument made convincing-ly by Sylvan Wittwer, former chairman of theNational Research Council’s Board onAgriculture.203 Moreover, this human use offorests as carbon sinks does not preclude anyother ecological or economic use of forestlandresources.

In essence, the Wackernagel study’s actualfinding is that the planet’s ability to sequestercarbon dioxide from the atmosphere is limitedand that greenhouse gases are building up inthe atmosphere. But there is not and has neverbeen any dispute about that. The question ofwhether the buildup of greenhouse gases in theatmosphere is sustainable is really a questionabout the science of global climate change andthe ramifications of global warming, a subjectunaddressed by the study. If one dismisses theargument that a “human footprint” is left inthe ecosystem by carbon sequestration, theWackernagel study finds no ecological over-shoot at all.204In fact, trends in agricultural pro-ductivity suggest that, by 2070, an area the sizeof Amazonia currently being husbanded forhuman use will likely be returned to nature.205

Even a conservative scenario—which postulatesproductivity gains half those experienced since1960 and dramatic increases in world meat con-sumption—finds that land about half the sizeof Amazonia (the equivalent of three areas thesize of Spain) would be returned to nature by2070.206

Another reason for optimism is, onceagain, growing per capita income. The UN

23

Trends in agricul-tural productivitysuggest that, by2070, an area thesize of Amazoniacurrently beinghusbanded forhuman use willlikely be returnedto nature.

Environment Programme, for instance,points out that “land degradation is instri-cately linked to poverty.”207 As per capitaincome grows, land degradation is sure todecline.

Environmental Sustainability IndicesA host of reports purport to rank the sus-

tainability of individual countries by aggregat-ing sets of largely subjective environmental,social, and political indicators. The mostprominent such indices include the “2002Environmental Sustainability Index,” a productof the World Economic Forum in collaborationwith the Yale Center for Environmental Lawand Policy and the Center for InternationalEarth Science Information Network ofColumbia University,208 the “Well-Being Index”from consultant Robert Prescott-Allen,209 andthe “Dashboard of Sustainable DevelopmentIndicators” produced by the ConsultativeGroup on Sustainable Development Indicatorsin collaboration with the UN Commission onSustainable Development.210

Although space does not permit a com-plete review of each of those three reports,they are similar enough to one another that adiscussion of the strengths and weaknessesof one of them will suffice for our purpos-es.211 Consider, then, what is probably themost prominent report of the three, the“2002 Environmental Sustainability Index”issued by the World Economic Forum.

The index calculates the environmentalsustainability of nations by using 20 indica-tors, each of which combines 2 to 8 sets ofdata for a total of 68 underlying data sets.The index ranks the sustainability of nationsrelative to one another, and although theauthors concede that “scientific knowledgedoes not permit us to specify precisely whatlevels of performance are high enough to betruly sustainable,”212 they nonetheless assertthat “no country can be said to be on a sus-tainable path.”213

The study has a host of serious problems.First, only 6 of the 20 indicators used to cal-culate sustainability pertain to actual dataregarding environmental conditions,214 and

there are severe problems with the data setsused to produce even those findings.215 Onlyone of the indicators—“basic human suste-nance”—measures resource availability(through calculations of malnourishmentand safe drinking water availability).216 Noneof them purports to measure resource cre-ation or even net resource consumption.Three indicators are of secondary impor-tance, reflecting expertise in science and tech-nology,217 the degree of civil and political lib-erties within each nation, and the extent towhich environmental regulations areenforced fairly and environmentally destruc-tive subsidies are kept to a minimum.218

Thus, only half the indicators are directlyrelevant to the question of sustainability. Therest are irrelevant, counterproductive, redun-dant, blatantly ideological, or various combi-nations of those four.

Irrelevant variables include the following:

• Renewable water use—Without referenceto water availability, it’s impossible toknow whether water use figures aresustainable or not;

• Water inflow from other countries—Ifdomestic water supplies are sufficient,what difference does water inflowmake?

• Air emissions, industrial organic pollutants,coal consumption, and radioactive wastegeneration—Without reference to thecapacity of local or regional air sheds toassimilate emissions, it’s impossible toknow whether or not those emmis-sions are problematic. The question ofwhether emissions are worrisome isbest answered by measurements ofambient concentrations of air pollu-tants, which the study does elsewhere;

• Renewable energy production—Whetherrenewable energy is worth producing ornot is an economic question.219

Moreover, most renewable energy tech-nologies are extremely land intensive,which poses its own set of environmen-tal problems ignored by this variable.220

• Total marine fish catch—Whether catches

24

Only half theindicators are

directly relevantto the question of

sustainability.The rest are irrele-vant, counterpro-

ductive, redun-dant, blatantlyideological, or

various combina-tions of those

four.

are sustainable or unsustainable is afunction of both total catch and thesize of the individual schools in ques-tion. Without information about thelatter, we can’t draw conclusions aboutthe former. Moreover, it would seemthat large and growing catches couldjust as easily be a sign of resource abun-dance and sustainability as not.

• Seafood consumption—Not only does theprior argument apply here, but also onecould argue that, given the nutritionalvalue of seafood and the relativelyminor contribution of seafood to theaverage diet, high levels of seafood con-sumption might well indicate nutri-tional health.

Counterproductive variables include thefollowing:

• Population growth and fertility rates—A grow-ing population would suggest specieshealth and sustainability, but the authorsimply exactly the opposite by using it as anegative indicator. Moreover, as dis-cussed previously, there is no correlationbetween population growth or popula-tion density and environmental qualityor resource availability.

• Land “protected” from private use—Theimplicit assumption here is that publicownership in whole or in part is a form ofecological stewardship superior to pri-vate ownership. The environmental con-sequences of such ownership patterns orregulatory controls on private use ofresources in the socialist world apparent-ly escaped the authors’ attention.221

• Vehicle use—The suggestion that societiesbuilt upon animal transport and laborare more sustainable than societies builtupon modern transportation technolo-gies and farm equipment is ratherbizarre. Even more to the point, the envi-ronmental damage and public healthproblems associated with animal trans-port dwarf those associated with motor-ized vehicles.222

• Fertilizer and pesticide use—Without thegreen revolution, which was driven bymodern agricultural chemicals, theamount of additional land necessary tofeed the planet (or the size of the human“ecological footprint,” if you will) wouldbe immense. If agricultural technologywere frozen at 1910 levels in the UnitedStates, for instance, farmers would haveto harvest about 1.2 billion acres of land(or 54 percent of the land mass of theUnited States including Alaska), ratherthan the 297 million acres actually har-vested, to produce the same amount offoodstuffs produced by American farm-ers in 1988.223 Alternatively, if technolo-gy were frozen at 1961 levels, land devot-ed to agriculture would have had toexpand by 80 percent from that pointthrough 1993 to meet the world’s foodneeds by that same year (by comparison,croplands increased by only about 8 per-cent in that period given technologicaladvances). That would have meant con-verting an additional 3,550 millionhectares—27 percent of the world’s landarea outside of Antarctica—to food pro-duction.224 Ausubel estimates that by1995, improvements in grain yields duelargely to fertilizer and pesticide usesince 1960 saved as much land as theAmazon Basin.225 Accrdingly, it’s wrongto argue that the world’s ecosystemswould be healthier or more sustainablewithout fertilizers, pesticides, or othermodern agricultural practices.

Redundant variables include the dubiousaforementioned “ecological footprint” calcu-lations from Wackernagel et al.226 Ideologicalvariables of dubious merit (11 in all) includethe number of domestic corporations thatare involved in various left-of-center advoca-cy groups,227 corporate subscription to vari-ous left-of-center business practices and pro-tocols,228 citizen membership in various left-of-center environmental advocacy groups,229

and national involvement in, and compliancewith, a host of international environmental

25

If technologywere frozen at1961 levels, landdevoted to agri-culture wouldhave had toexpand by 80percent fromthat pointthrough 1993 tomeet the world’sfood needs (bycomparison,croplandsincreased byonly about 8 percent in thatperiod).

organizations and agreements.230

Finally, there are tremendous gaps in thedatabase relied upon by the authors. Fiftycountries had to be eliminated from thestudy because reliable data were not avail-able.231 Even after they were removed, 22 per-cent of the 9,656 data points relied upon forthe calculations in this study were missing. Inthose cases, the authors estimated what thedata might be “based on a judgment thatthese variables were significantly correlatedwith other variables in the data set, and witha small number of external predictive vari-ables.”232 Even so, the study found significantcorrelations between a nation’s environmen-tal sustainability and the degree of civil andpolitical liberty maintained by its citizens,per capita gross domestic product, the preva-lence of democratic institutions, and the con-tainment of political corruption.233

The weakness of the stylized environmentalsustainability index (ESI) can be easily demon-strated by the rankings produced. After all, if weposit that a more sustainable country is prefer-able to a less sustainable country, then it logi-cally follows that citizens of the United States(with an ESI of 53.2) should prefer living inBotswana (with an ESI of 61.8), Slovenia (58.8),Albania (57.9), Paraguay (57.8), Namibia (57.4),Laos (56.2), Gabon (54.9), Armenia (54.8),Moldova (54.5), Congo (54.3), Mongolia (54.2),or even the Central African Republic (54.1).234

Does anyone seriously think that Botswana ismore sustainable than the United States? Only byconcentrating exclusively on resource use whileignoring resource creation could such a dubiousassertion even be entertained.

An Affirmative Agenda forSustainable DevelopmentA review of data concerning resource

availability and environmental quality clearlyillustrates that the developed world is on aneminently sustainable path: resources arebecoming more abundant, environmentalquality is improving, and per capita incomesare rising. While the data also strongly sug-

gest that economic growth along its currenttrajectory is sustainable in the developingworld, many of those countries are either onthe “wrong side” of the relevant EKCs for thetime being or are experiencing far less eco-nomic growth than is necessary to acceleratetrends in both human and environmentalwell-being.

The earlier discussion regarding variousresources of concern suggests a number offruitful policy steps that could be taken toenhance environmental quality and resourceabundance. A few broader policies wouldalso prove beneficial.

The Necessity of Economic Liberalization In order to best advance sustainable

growth, the developing world should adoptthe lessons learned from a recent World Bankstudy of 11 developing nations (China, CostaRica, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco, thePhilippines, Poland, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, andZimbabwe). The study found that nationaleconomic policies have a tremendous sec-ondary impact on environmental health andresource conservation.235 Economic policiesthat led to the greatest amount of ecologicalsustainability were “altering the rates ofexchange or interest, reducing governmentbudget deficits, promoting market liberaliza-tion, fostering international openness,enhancing the role of the private sector, andstrengthening government and market insti-tutions, often coupled with pricing and otherreforms in key sectors such as industry, agri-culture, and energy.”236 Although this study isbut one of many to reach the conclusion thateconomic liberalization is absolutely vital forenvironmental protection, a detailed review ofits findings is illuminating.237

First, the study found that state interven-tion in the economy creates inefficiencies andthat economic inefficiency leads to resourcewaste and excessive pollution.238 For instance,“in many developing countries, misplacedefforts to promote specific regional or sectoralgrowth and general economic developmenthave created complex webs of commodity, sec-toral, and macroeconomic price distortions,

26

Economic liberal-ization is

absolutely vitalfor environmen-

tal protection.

resulting in economic inefficiency and stagna-tion,” which generally “promote resource over-exploitation and pollution.”239 As an example,it has been estimated that 30 percent or moreof all pollution in China is a result of the inef-ficiencies of its centralized economy.240 Suchill-advised policies are rife throughout thedeveloping world.241

The problem is not just inappropriate sub-sidies; it is socialism itself. Economist MikhailBernstam found overwhelming evidence thatfree-market economies use energy and othernatural resources far more efficiently thanplanned economies.242 As Pearce and Warfordstress, “Centralization of power precludes anappreciation of the effects of environmentaldegradation. . . . Central planning poses seri-ous risks for the environment and hence forsustainable industrial and agricultural pro-duction. The stress on meeting output quotasand the rewards for exaggerating performancework against environmental concerns.”243

Moreover, economic intervention engen-ders uncertainty about property and contractrights, which also has an unintended adverseeffect on resource use.244 In China, forinstance, “one major agricultural input,namely land, is still subject to command andcontrol and, in some communities, arbitrari-ness in its allocation. In such circumstances,the uncertainty about land allocation tendsto encourage short-run profit maximizationand exploitation of land at the expense ofsustainability in agricultural production.”245

Mohamed El-Ashry, the World Bank’s envi-ronmental director and the chairman of theGlobal Environmental Facility, observes sim-ilarly that “the security of [people’s] tenuremay also make it easier to obtain the creditnecessary for such investments. Thus, afterslum dwellers in Bandung, Indonesia, wereassigned property titles, household invest-ment in sanitation facilities tripled.”246

Second, the study found that a mixedreform agenda of liberalization and industrialsubsidy can have negative environmental andresource consequences. “The remedy does notgenerally require reversal of the originalreforms,” the authors note, “but rather the

implementation of additional complemen-tary measures (both economic and non-eco-nomic) that remove such policy, market, andinstitutional difficulties.”247 For example:

• The adoption of export promotion ortrade liberalization programs withouta corresponding elimination of statesubsidies or economic preferences forvarious natural resources will lead tooverexploitation of that resource; and

• Economic liberalization—coupled withpoor environmental accountability forstate-owned enterprises, inadequatelydefined property rights, or weak finan-cial intermediation—will tend toundermine incentives for economicallyefficient resource management.248

Third, the study found that “measuresaimed at restoring macroeconomic stabilitywill generally yield environmental benefits,since instability undermines sustainableresource use.”249 For example, “high interestrates associated with economic crises canseverely undermine the value of sustainableproduction, as resource outputs in the futurelose most of their expected value. Thus, tothe extent that adjustment policies can helprestore macroeconomic stability, theirimpact will be unambiguously beneficial forlong-term natural resource management andenvironmental concerns.”250

That finding was echoed by Chisolm,Hartley, and Porter in their paper for theAustralian-based Tasman Institute:

Activist monetary and fiscal policyhave, in recent decades and in mostmarket-oriented economies, been themost potent and persistent causes ofan undervaluation of the interests offuture generations by keeping interestrates higher than they would otherwisebe. . . . Tax policies also have a signifi-cant effect on intergenerational equity.. . . Relative to an expenditure or a con-sumption tax, an income tax encour-ages current consumption as opposed

27

Economic inter-vention engen-ders uncertaintyabout propertyand contractrights, which alsohas an unintend-ed adverse effecton resource use.

to saving for future consumption. Theincome tax results in a double taxationof savings, in that tax is paid on theprinciple and again on the interestyield. An expenditure tax, on the otherhand, taxes current and future con-sumption by the same amount.251

Fourth, the study found that developingcountries (and even, in many respects,advanced industrialized countries) rarelyhave the institutional capacity to provide thekind of command-and-control environmen-tal regulation advocated by much of the envi-ronmental community.252 “Regulating largenumbers of potentially environmentallydegrading activities is especially difficult,even for industrialized country governments.Substantial reductions in institutional andmonitoring needs may be achieved with theuse of indirect measures or modified pricing-regulation approaches.”253

Decentralized regulatory policies are alsoimportant in order to maximize the efficien-cy of environmental protection. Concerningurban air pollution, for example, the WorldResources Institute says, “Given the complex-ity of the problem, strategies for reducing airpollution must be tailored to a particularcity, bearing in mind both the key contribu-tors and the city’s priorities and resources.”254

Likewise, giving industrial emitters thepower to choose how to meet their pollutiontargets is far more efficient and less econom-ically burdensome than empowering regula-tors to make those decisions in lieu of plantmanagement.255

Fifth, the study found that crash pro-grams for economic liberalization may haveunforeseen adverse (but only short-term)effects on various “open access” naturalresources by weakening the ability of thestate to protect those resources againstoveruse by the poor.256 Although the authorsconcluded that special attention should thusbe given to state enforcement efforts undersuch circumstances, one could just as easilyargue that privatizing those environmentalcommons (where possible) would be a more

efficient, less burdensome, and economicallypreferable alternative.

And finally, the study found once againthat economic liberalization leads to eco-nomic growth, which in turn “generate[s]new economic opportunities and sources oflivelihood, thereby alleviating poverty andreducing pressures on the environment dueto over-exploitation of fragile resources bythe unemployed.”257 The link between eco-nomic growth and environmental as well ashuman health improvement has already beenwell established above.

Expand and Protect Free TradeLess-developed nations are frequently told

to restrict resource exports in order to pro-tect their ecosystems. Advocates of sustain-able development frequently contend thatsuch exports are a sort of international eco-logical colonialism, a means of despoilingThird World resources to fulfill the excessconsumption of developed nations.Moreover, many believe that trade allowsdeveloping countries to export their pollu-tion-intensive industries to less-developedcountries and thus creates excessive healthharms to the world’s poor.258

The latter argument can be quickly dis-missed. As we saw earlier, industrializationand economic growth are a vital componentof—not a terrible obstacle to—environmentalprogress. In 1994, for instance, exports pro-vided 12.6 percent of the GDP of developingnations. 259 To the extent that free trade fos-ters industrialization, it is a good thing froman ecological perspective.

Moreover, the argument that free trade pro-motes the creation of “pollution havens” indeveloping countries ignores the fact that thecosts of complying with environmental regula-tions are a very small part of the costs of doingbusiness for most industries (especially whencompared to the cost of labor). Uncertaintiesregarding the stability of legal and economicinstitutions in many developing countries—such as the ability to repatriate profits—and thelack of commercially important infrastructurealso mitigate against the migration of indus-

28

In 1994 exportsprovided 12.6 per-

cent of the GDPof developing

nations. To theextent that free

trade fostersindustrialization,it is a good thingfrom an ecologi-

cal perspective.

tries to developing countries regardless of dif-ferentials in environmental regulation.260

The former argument is only slightly lessspecious. In 1994, for instance, tropical andsubtropical nations exported only 1.4 percentand 8.2 percent of their total industrial round-wood production, respectively.261

The attack on trade is misplaced. First,restricting trade would in many circumstancesforce an increased reliance on native naturalresources. Government policies that discrimi-nate against export crops (in order to encour-age subsistence crops for food security) alsogenerally encourage environmental degrada-tion because those crops (palms, coffee, andcocoa) have typically low erosion factorswhereas subsistence crops (maize, sorghum,and millet, for example) have erosion factorsof 30 to 90 percent.262 Likewise, policies torestrict or ban log exports and to steer exportstoward finished products tend to depress theprice of logs, causing the value of wood itselfto decline, which makes forestland moreattractive for alternative uses and unattractivefor improvement or investments.

Similarly, agricultural imports help reducethe burden on native cropland and marginallands that might have to be cultivated to meetfood needs. Since many of those developingnations most reliant upon agriculturalimports are in tropical and subtopical regions,the net effect of trade on global biodiversity(which is richest in the equatorial regions) isalmost certainly postive.263

This points to a larger issue. Because oftrade, an individual family unit, community,or country no longer has to be self-sufficientin basic necessities, so long as it has the abili-ty to obtain them through either direct pur-chase or exchange. Trade essentially global-izes sustainability, providing consumers withfaster, cheaper, and easier access to food.Indur Goklany points out that “Japan’simportation of cereals illustrates how, withtrade and affluence, otherwise unsustainableentities become more sustainable, and lessvulnerable to fluctuations in production,whatever their cause.”264

Second, trade is an important source of

new and more efficient technologies, whichnot only reduce the amount of resources nec-essary to produce a unit of goods or servicesbut also reduce emissions. Likewise, theincreased economic competition that comesfrom trade leads to constant improvementsin production efficiency.265

Third, the competitive pressure exerted byforeign imports helps undermine domesticsubsidies, which, as we have seen, are harmfulto the cause of environmental protection.

The Danger of Western RegulationAlthough less-developed countries might

be tempted to consider advanced Western reg-ulatory practices as models for domestic law,that impulse should be rejected. Developingnations simply do not have the economicresources necessary to pay for such policieseven if they were more efficient than moremarket-friendly alternatives. Accord-ingly, thedeveloping world should explore low-costenvironmental protection strategies instead.

An excellent example of the imperative ofcontrolling environmental protection costsrelates to water pollution. As Pearce andWarford note, “Wastewater and non-pointsource pollution can be mitigated in largepart through inexpensive, low-technologymethods that increase the oxygen of waterand improve its self-purification properties(weirs, aeration equipment, and constructedwetlands); the typical high-cost westernmodel for intensive wastewater treatment isnot a good example.”266

The eastern European experience shouldbe considered instructive before businesses inthe developing world (private or publiclyowned) are put under the regulatory gun.Pearce and Warford explain:

So far, [Western environmental regu-lation standards adopted in the East]have not been based on a serious con-sideration of costs and benefits. Sincemany of their standards are quitestrict but not enforced, the whole sys-tem of environmental regulations hasnot been taken seriously . . . because

29

Trade essentiallyglobalizes sus-tainability, pro-viding consumerswith faster,cheaper, and easi-er access to food.

enterprises are more concerned aboutmeeting their production targetsthan about improving their financialperformance. Indeed, the price-set-ting regime allows them to build thecost of fees into the cost base used todetermine the prices they charge fordomestic sales. These prices are subsi-dized (by means of a so-called softbudget), and part of the subsidiesactually support pollution. Further,the fees and fines are consistently wellbelow the average cost of reducingemissions and are not systematicallyadjusted for inflation. They are trivialin real terms. . . . Clearly, furtherefforts to make economic incentivesworkable are warranted, but majorreliance upon them, particularly insystems in which prices in general donot adequately reflect costs and val-ues, will not be possible for someyears.267

Likewise, advanced regulatory ideas such asemission taxes or tradable permits in lieu ofcommand-and-control regulation require aregulatory infrastructure that is beyond thereach of the developing world.268

Again, it must be emphasized that envi-ronmental costs in Western economies—given their abundant wealth—have a dispro-portionately small effect on living standardscompared to the developing world. The elim-ination of poverty and subsistence agricul-ture must be the paramount concern of envi-ronmental policy in the developing world,and Western-style environmental regulationwould pose a serious obstacle to that goal.Thus, prioritization is necessary. Particulateemissions from electricity generation andmanufacturing, for example, are a majorhealth risk and cost little to solve (1 to 2 per-cent of capital costs) compared with sulfurdioxide emissions, which cost much more toreduce and cause less health damage.269

The Imperative of Private Property RightsAs noted repeatedly throughout this

study, secure property rights are a prerequi-site for optimal investment in various humanhealth and environmental infrastructures.They are also vital to the health of ecologicalresources. Notes Mohamed El-Ashry:

Where access to natural resources isentirely open, no individual userbears the full cost of environmentaldegradation and resources are conse-quently overused. But if open accessis replaced with some ordered systemof use or ownership rights, then it islikely that individuals—or groups—holding such rights will both sufferthe consequences of failing toaccount for environmental factors intheir decisionmaking and reap thebenefits of successfully investing inenvironmental protection.270

Indeed, private property rights are animportant means by which the public desirefor resource conservation and preservationcan be realized.271 Moreover, they can providean important corrective to seeminglyintractable problems related to environmen-tal commons such as ocean fisheries, as dis-cussed earlier. Laws establishing rights arenot enough; vigorous enforcement of proper-ty rights in the Third World is vital.272

Nevertheless, it is important to rememberthat, although private property rights pro-vide exactly the right incentives to optimizethe efficiency of resource use, naturalresources might still be more profitablyexploited than conserved. As noted by Rice,Guillison, and Reid, secure land tenure“makes investments in regeneration possiblefor timber companies to consider; it does not,however, make these investments economi-cally worthwhile.”273 Attempts to reduce theconsumption of wood harvested in an envi-ronmentally damaging way by labeling theproducts of environmentally sensitive har-vests were similarly found wanting.“Consumers appear to be willing to spend, atmost, 10 percent more for certified timberthan the price they would pay for uncertified

30

Secure propertyrights are a pre-

requisite for opti-mal investment in

various humanhealth and envi-

ronmental infra-structures. Theyare also vital to

the health of eco-logical resources.

wood products,” they wrote. “The gap isenormous.”274

Resource use per se should not be worri-some. The economy must have access to nat-ural resource inputs in order to producebasic goods and services.275 Property rightscan help ensure that resources are not wast-ed, but they cannot guarantee that they willnot be used at all.

Conclusion

If sustainable development is the answer,what is the question? Society has managed to“sustain” development now for approximate-ly 3,000 years without the guidance of“green” state planners. The result is not onlya society that is both healthier and wealthierthan any other in history but also a societywith more natural resources at its disposalthan ever before.

The overwhelmingly positive trends inenvironmental quality and resource availabil-ity in the developed and developing worldssuggest that the best way to sustain develop-ment—or to maximize human welfare—is to

• ensure that productivity continues toimprove in both the agriculture andresource extraction industries,

• facilitate continuing improvements inthe efficiency of resource use, and

• promote wealth creation and gains inper capita income.

It’s important to remember that condi-tions in the developing world are similar tothose in the West a century ago. As the WorldResources Institute observes:

Just a century ago, health conditionsin Europe, North America, andJapan were similar to those of theleast developed countries today, aswas environmental quality.Conditions in London and othermajor centers were squalid; sewage-filled rivers, garbage-strewn streets,

and overcrowded and dank housingwere the norm. Much of the popula-tion lacked access to fresh water oradequate sanitation. Epidemics oftyphus, cholera, tuberculosis, andmeasles swept these cities. Indeed, inthe world’s most prosperous cities atthe time, the infant mortality rate—the number of children who diebefore their first birthday—was morethan 100 per 1,000 live births, and insome places it exceeded 200.Diarrheal and respiratory diseasesand other infections were the maincause of death.276

The environmental plight of cities such asLondon might not have been indefinitely“sustainable,” but industrialization wasaccompanied by an increase in life expectancyand an improved standard of living. Incomesrose so that people were able to afford moreenvironmental amenities, better health care,modern sanitary investments, and animproved diet. Economic growth spawnednew manufacturing technologies that weremore efficient, less resource intensive, andhence less polluting. Moreover, these gains inhuman welfare accelerated over time.

Indeed, it is the lack of economic growth—not the pollution spawned by growth—that isthe root cause of most health-related prob-lems in the less-developed world today. Again,as the World Resources Institute notes:

Of all the factors that combine todegrade health, poverty stands outfor its overwhelming role. Indeed,WHO [the World Health Organiza-tion] has called poverty the world’sbiggest killer [The World Health Report1995: Bridging the Gaps (Geneva:World Health Organization, 1995),p. 1]. Statistically, poverty affectshealth in its own right: just beingpoor increases one’s risk of ill health.Poverty also contributes to diseaseand death through its second-ordereffects; poor people, for instance, are

31

Society has man-aged to “sustain”development nowfor approximate-ly 3,000 years.The result is notonly a society thatis both healthierand wealthierthan any other inhistory but also asociety with morenatural resourcesat its disposalthan ever before.

more likely to live in an unhealthyenvironment.277

Indeed, the most serious environmentalproblems today are manifestly the conse-qunce of poverty and lack of development.Approximately 2 million people in develop-ing countries die every year from exposure tohigh concentrations of particulate matter inindoor environments in rural areas, a directresult of burning primitive biomass fuels.278

Electrification would save far more lives thanany conceivable set of environmental regula-tory initiatives, but electrification cannotoccur without further economic develop-ment. Another 3 million people die every yearin Africa due to poor water quality, anotherproblem that could be easily remedied byinvestment in water treatment facilities.279

But those investments will not come withouteconomic growth.

Improvements in productivity, efficiency,and per capita income, however, are not pre-ordained. Economists largely agree that theyare manifestations of political systems thatprotect economic liberty and proscribe theboundaries of state authority to protectinglife, liberty, and property.280

The alternative to allowing the world’s less-developed countries to follow the trajectories ofthe Environmental Kuznets Curve—that is, tofacilitate a rise in per capita income in order toimprove not only human health but also envi-ronmental quality—is to authorize centralizedplanning of the economy to achieve somevision (or, as Costanza et al. correctly put it,some “highly suspect prediction”) of sustain-able development. But state planning has neverbeen able to replicate the gains in productivity,efficiency, and per capita income produced byfree market economies. Moreover, environmen-tal planning would impose an incredible infor-mational burden on government that is unlike-ly to be met in the real world. As Chisholm,Hartley, and Porter note:

Planned intervention to ensure eco-logical sustainability makes centralplanning of the economy, as conven-

tionally practiced until recently inEastern Europe and many othercommand economies, appear as acomparatively unambitious exercise.Government “ecologically-minded”planners wishing to regulate a rangeof environmental outcomes wouldneed the vast information on con-sumer tastes, production techniques,and resource availability required ofa conventional central planner,information that is typically notavailable at any reasonable cost. Theywould need detailed information onmyriad dynamically evolving andinteracting ecosystems. 281

There are other obstacles to ecologicalcentralized planning beyond those related toinformation gathering. William Mellor III,president of the Institute for Justice, asks sev-eral pointed questions that are seldomaddressed by the advocates of sustainabledevelopment:

Who will decide what is good growth?Who will reconcile competing envi-ronmental, social, and economic con-cerns while anticipating environmen-tal problems rather than reacting tothe crisis of the moment? Is it con-ceivable that the bureaucratic regula-tory and enforcement apparatus nec-essary for such ecologically directedeconomic policy would be immunefrom rent-seeking, budget-maximiz-ing, inefficiency, and coercion? If so, itwould be a unique experience in all ofpublic choice scholarship.282

As an all-encompassing governing philoso-phy, sustainable development is a dubiouspipe dream. Even promoters of the conceptare increasingly in agreement that sustainabledevelopment must ensure that economic andsocial considerations are balanced with envi-ronmental concerns and are not trumped bythem.283 As a policy admonition, sustainabledevelopment is, at best, but one well-under-

32

“Planned inter-vention to ensure

ecological sus-tainability makescentral planning

of the economyappear as a com-paratively unam-bitious exercise.”

stood and unexceptional consideration in thequest to maximize public welfare. At worst, itis inconsistent and dangerous.

Notes1. Representative interpretations of the challengeposed by sustainable development include the fol-lowing:

Our nation’s economic system evolved in anera of cheap energy and careless waste dis-posal, when limits seemed irrelevant. Noneof us today, whether we’re managing ahouse or running a business, is living in asustainable way. It’s not a question of goodguys and bad guys. There is no point in say-ing “If only those bad guys would go out ofbusiness, then the whole world would befine.” The whole system has to change.There is a huge opportunity for reinvention.

Joan Magretta, “Growth through GlobalSustainability: An Interview with Monsanto’sCEO, Robert Shapiro,” Harvard Business Review(January/February 1997): 80–81.

Can we move nations and people in thedirection of sustainability? Such a movewould be a modification of society compa-rable in scale to only two other changes:the agricultural revolution of the lateNeolithic and the Industrial Revolution ofthe past two centuries. Those revolutionswere gradual, spontaneous, and largelyunconscious. This one will have to be afully conscious operation, guided by thebest foresight that science can provide—foresight pushed to its limit. If we actuallydo it, the undertaking will be absolutelyunique in humanity’s stay on the earth.

Former EPA administrator William Ruckelshaus,“Toward a Sustainable World,” The EnvironmentalEthics and Policy Book (Belmont, Calif: WadsworthPublishing, 1994), p. 348. Lester Brown, former presi-dent of Worldwatch Institute, believes that sustainabledevelopment would mean a “fundamental restructur-ing of economies” and “sweeping revisions in regula-tory and economic policies. Emily Smith, “Growth vs.Environment,” Business Week, May 11, 1992, p. 68.Donella Meadows et al. believe a sustainable societywould “abandon the social norms, goals, incentives,and costs that cause people to want more than areplacement number of children . . . that maldistributeincome and wealth, that make people see themselvesprimarily as consumers and producers, that associatesocial status with material accumulation, and thatdefine human growth in terms of getting more.” This

would apparently require “a fundamental revision ofhuman behavior and, by implication, the entire fabricof present-day society.” Donella Meadows et al., TheLimits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project onthe Predicament of Mankind (New York: New AmericanLibrary, 1972), p. 9.

2. World Commission on Environment and Dev-elopment, Our Common Future (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1987), p. 8.

3. For a summary of the various economic, eco-logical, and sociocultural conceptions of sustain-able development, see Mohan Munasinghe,“Environmental Economics and SustainableDevelopment,” World Bank Environmental Paperno. 3, Washington, D.C., 1993, p. 3.

4. J. N. Pretty, Regenerating Agriculture (London:Earthscan, 1995), p. 11, cited in Matthew Cole, “Limitsto Growth, Sustainable Development, and Environ-mental Kuznets Curves: An Examination of theEnvironmental Impact of Economic Development,”Sustainable Development 7, 1999, p. 90.

5. David Pearce and Jeremy Warford, World with-out End: Economics, Environment, and SustainableDevelopment (New York: Oxford University Press,1993), p. 8.

6. Robert Costanza, “Ecological Economics: AResearch Agenda,” Structural Change Economics 2,pp. 335–42, cited in M. J. Harte, (“Ecology, Sus-tainability, and Environment as Capital,” Ecolog-ical Economics 15 (1995): 158.

7. Robert Hahn, “Toward a New EnvironmentalParadigm,” Yale Law Journal 102, no. 7 (May 1993):1750.

8. Harte, p. 160.

9. This interpretation of strong sustainability isno mere straw man. At a planning conference forthe World Summit on Sustainable Developmentheld in Bali May 24–27, 2002, four of the six envi-ronmental nongovernmental organizationsattended a session titled “Mining & SustainableDevelopment—Two Apparently ContradictoryConcepts,” which argued for an immediate mora-torium on new mining operations across theglobe in order to achieve mineral sustainability.“State-ment of the International MiningWorkshop,” undated (available from the author).

10. Richard Rice, Raymond Guillison, and JohnReid, “Can Sustainable Management Save Tropic-al Forests?” Scientific American, April 1997, p. 46.

11. David Pearce, Economic Values and the NaturalWorld (London: Earthscan Press, 1993), p. 48,

33

cited in Wilfred Beckerman, Through Green-ColoredGlasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered (Washing-ton: Cato Institute, 1996), p. 147.

12. Andrew Chisholm, Peter Hartley, and MichaelPorter, “Slogans or Policies: A Critique of ‘EcologicallySustainable Development,’ ” Occasional Paper B3,Tasman Institute, October 1990, pp. 6–7.

13. Munasinghe, p. 3.

14. Cole, “Limits to Growth,” p. 90.

15. Edith Weiss, In Fairness to Future Generations(Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.: Transnational Publishers,1989). For a summary and a sympathetic critiqueof Weiss, see Paul Barresi, “Beyond Fairness toFuture Generations: An IntragenerationalAlternative to Intergenerational Equity in theInternational Environmental Arena,” TulaneEnvironmental Law Journal 11, no. 1 (winter 1997):59–88.

16. For a thorough review of the theoretical andpractical difficulties in defining and assigningrights to future generations, see A. Baier, “For theSake of Future Generations,” in Earthbound: NewIntroductory Essays in Environmental Ethics, ed. T.Regan (New York: Random House, 1984); B. Barry,“Justice between Generations,” in Law, Morality, andSociety: Essays in Honour of H. L. A. Hart, ed. J. M. S.Hacker and S. Raz (Oxford: Clarendon Press,1977); and Martin Golding, “Obligations to FutureGenerations,” The Monist 56, no. 1, (1972): 85–99.

17. Steven Landsburg, “Tax the Knickers off YourGrandchildren,” Slate, March 6, 1997, www.slate.com/Economics97.

18. Ibid.

19. See Gerald MacCallum Jr., “Negative andPositive Freedom,” Philosophical Review 76 (July1967): 312–34; Roger Pilon, “Ordering RightsConsistently: Or What We Do and Do Not HaveRights To,” Georgia Law Review 13 (1979):1171–96; and David Kelley, A Life of One’s Own:Individual Rights & The Welfare State (Washington:Cato Institute, 1998).

20. Richard Stroup, “Political Control vs.Sustainable Development” (paper submitted forthe Cato Institute conference “Global Environ-mental Crises: Science or Politics?” Washington,D.C., June 5–6, 1991) (available from author); andFred Smith, “The Market and Nature,” TheFreeman, September 1993, pp. 350–56.

21. Chisholm, Hartley, and Porter, p. 17.

22. Joseph Stiglitz, “Growth and Exhaustible

Natural Resources: Efficient and OptimalGrowth Paths,” in Review of Economic Studies,Symposium on the Economics of ExhaustibleResources, 1974, pp. 123–38.

23. Edward Barbier, “Endogenous Growth andNatural Resource Scarcity,” EEEM DiscussionPaper 9601, Department of EnvironmentalEconomics and Environmental Management,University of York (U.K.), 1996.

24. Edward Barbier and Thomas Homer-Dixon,“Resource Scarcity, Institutional Adaptation, andTechnological Innovation: Can Poor Countries AttainEndogenous Growth?” American Association for theAdvancement of Science, 1996, p. 3.

25. Land dedicated to agricultural production andgrazing grew from 4,490,920,000 hectares in 1961to 4,961,289,000 hectares in 1999. Food andAgriculture Organization of the United Nations,Production Yearbooks, online data query availableat www.apps.fao.org/page/form?collection=LandUse&Domain=Land&servlet=1&language=EN&hostname=apps.fao.org&version=default.

26. Paul Waggoner and Jesse Ausubel, “How MuchWill Feeding More and Wealtheir People Encroachon Forests?” Population and Development Review27:2, June 2001, p. 253.

27. Jesse Ausubel, “On Sparing Farmland andSpreading Forest,” in Forestry at the Great Divide:Proceedings of the Society of American Foresters 2001Naitonal Convention, T. Clark and R. Staebler, eds.,Society of American Foresters, Bethesda, Md.,2002, p. 127.

28. World Food Summit: Technical BackgroundDocuments, vols. I–VX, p. 1, table 3; Food andAgriculture Organization of the United NationsThe State of Food Insecurity in the World, 1999 (Rome:Food and Agriculture Organization of the UnitedNations, 1999), p. 29, available at www.fao.org/FOCUS/E/SOFI/home-e.htm; and FAO, The Stateof Food Insecurity in the World, 2000 (Rome: Food andAgriculture Organization of the United Nations,2000), p. 27, available at www.fao.org/news/2000/001002-e.htm. All sources cited in BjornLomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist (New York:Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 61.

29. Unfortunately, there are no data on actualmalnourishment among children ages five yearsand younger, so international agencies use dataon “underweight” children as an indicator of mal-nourishment, which seems reasonable enough.United Nations Development Programme,Human Development Report, 1996 (New York:Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 149, cited inLomborg, p. 61.

34

30. For a summary of the literature, see DavidOsterfeld, Prosperity versus Planning (New York:Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 61–83. For adefense of high-yield agriculture in less-developedregions, see Dennis Avery, Saving the Planet withPesticides and Plastic (Indianapolis: HudsonInstitute, 2000); and Thomas DeGregori, BountifulHarvest: Technology, Food Safety, and the Environment(Washington: Cato Institute, 2002). For a rebuttalto the claim that trends in soil erosion will reverseor significantly moderate current agricultural pro-ductivity trends, see Bruce L. Gardner andTheodore Schultz, “Trends in Soil Erosion andFarmland Quality,” in The State of Humanity, ed.Julian Simon (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1995),pp. 416–24; and Pierre Crosson, “Cropland andSoils: Past Performances and Policy Challenges,” inAmerica’s Renewable Resources: Historical Trends andCurrent Challenges, ed. Roger Sedjo and KennethFrederick (Washington: Resources for the Future,1991), pp. 169–203.

31. As Jesse Ausubel, the director of the programfor human environment at the RockefellerUniversity observes: “Globally, the future for bothlifting means and reducing variability lies withprecision agriculture. This approach to farmingrelies on technology and information to help thegrower use precise amounts of inputs—fertilizer,pesticides, seed, water—exactly where they areneeded. Precision agriculture includes grid soilsampling, field mapping, variable rate applica-tion, and yield monitoring—tied to global posi-tioning systems. It helps the grower lower costsand improve yields in an environmentally respon-sible way. Technology revolutionized agriculturetwice in the 20th century. The tractor and othermachines caused the first. Nitrogen and otherchemicals were responsible for the second. Thethird agriculural revolution is coming from infor-mation.” Jesse Ausubel, “The Great Reversal:Nature’s Chance to Restore Land and Sea,”Technology in Society 22, 2000, pp. 289–301,www.phe.rockefeller.edu/great_reversal.

32 Regarding the agricultural promise ofbiotechnology, see Biotechnology, Poverty Reduction,and Food Security (Manila: Asian DevelopmentBank Publications, 2001); Gabrielle Persley andM. M. Lantin, eds., Agricultural Biotechnology and thePoor (Washington: Consultative Group onInternational Agricultural Research and the U.S.National Academy of Sciences, 1999); GarbriellePersley, ed., Biotechnology for Developing-CountryAgriculture: Problems and Opportunities (Washing-ton: International Food Policy Research Institute,1999); House Committee on Science, Seeds ofOpportunity: An Assessment of the Benefits, Safety, andOversight of Plant Genomics and AgriculturalBiotechnology, April 13, 2000; and NationalResearch Council, Board on Agriculture and

Natural Sciences, Genetically Modified Pest-ProtectedPlants: Science and Regulation (Washing-ton:National Academy Press, 2000). For a survey ofthe scientific literature regarding the environ-mental consequences of biotechnology—whichare found to be positive—see Council forAgricultural Science and Technology, “Compara-tive Environmental Impacts of Biotechnology-derived and Traditional Soybean, Corn, andCotton Crops,” Ames, Iowa, June 2002, www.cast-science.org/pubs/biotechcropsbenefit.pdf. For anargument about how to properly apply the “pre-cautionary principle” to the uncertainties sur-rounding the environmental consequences ofbiotechnology, see Indur Goklany, ThePrecautionary Principle: A Critical Appraisal ofEnvironmental Risk Assessment (Washington: CatoInstitute, 2001), pp. 29–55.

33. Food supplies per capita increase with per capitaGDP until they level off at approximately 3,500 calo-ries a day once per capita income reaches about $7,000in 1985 dollars. The converse is also true. Declines inper capita income lead to declines in agricultural pro-ductivity. T. Poleman and L. T. Thomas, “Report:Income and Dietary Change,” Food Policy 20, 1995, pp.149–59. Cited in Indur Goklany, “Saving Habitat andConserving Biodiversity on a Crowded Planet,”BioScience 48:11, November 1998, p. 942.30. UnitedNations Development Programme, Human Develop-ment Report, 1999 (New York: Oxford University Press,1999), cited in Lomborg, p. 47.

34. United Nations Development Programme,Human Development Report, 1999 .

35. Roger Revelle of Harvard University suggests,for instance, that simply increasing the efficiencyof water use in the arable lands of the tropics inless-developed parts of the world could produceyields capable of feeding 35–40 billion people ayear with 2,500 calories a day. Calculation per-formed by Osterfeld, p. 83, based on data in RogerRevelle, “The World Supply of AgriculturalLand,” in The Resourceful Earth, ed. Julian Simonand Herman Kahn (New York: Basil Blackwell,1984), pp. 184–201.

36. Brian Berry, Edgar Conkling, and D. MichaelRay, The Global Economy: Resource Use, LocationalChoice, and International Trade (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice Hall, 1993), p. 126; and Food andAgriculture Organization of the United Nations, TheSixth World Food Survey (Rome: FAO, 1996), p. 101.All cites from Lomborg, p. 106.

37. Lester Brown et al., Vital Signs 1998 (New York:W.W. Norton); U.S. Bureau of the Census, Interna-tional Data Base, www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html; Food and Agriculture Organization of theUN, “Fisheries Update,” www.fao.org/fi/statist/

35

summtab/default.asp; and The State of the WorldFisheries and Aquaculture 2000 (Rome: FAO, 2001),available at Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe UN, www.fao.org/docrep/003/x8002e/x8002e00.htm. All cites from Lomborg, p. 107.

38. Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,”Science 162, no. 1 (1968): 243–48.

39. See Birgir Runolfsson, “Fencing the Oceans: ARights-Based Approach to Privatizing Fisheries,”Regulation 20:3 (Summer 1997); Peter Emerson, senioreconomist, Environmental Defense Fund, Testimonybefore the Subcommittee on Fisheries Conservation,Wildlife, and Resources, of the House Committee onResources, U.S. House of Representatives, February 13,2002, www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/1447_PeteEmerson ITQtestimony.pdf; and NationalResearch Council,l Sharing the Fish: Toward a NationalPolicy on Individual Fishing Quotas (Washington, D.C.:National Academy Press, 1999). See also Nichael DeAlessi, “Sustainable Development and MarineFisheries.” in Sustainable Development: Promoting Progressor Perpetuating Poverty? ed. Julian Morris (London:Profile, Books, 2002), pp. 194–221.

40. See Per Heggelund and Thomas Trzyna,“Ocean Farming: An Emerging Aquabusiness?”Regulation 18, no. 4 (Fall 1995): Michael MarkelsJr., “Fishing for Markets: Regulation and OceanFarming,” Regulation 18, no. 3, (Summer 1995):and Michael Markels, “Farming the Oceans: AnUpdate,” Regulation 21, no. 2 (Spring 1998).

41. Jesse Ausubel, "Maglevs and the Vision of St.Hubert," in Challenges of a Changing Earth, W. Steffen,J. Jaeger, and D. Carson, eds. (Hiedelberg: Springer,2002), www.phe.rockefeller.edu/sthubert.

42. Brown et al., Vital Signs 1998; and FAO,“Fisheries Update.” All cites from Lomborg, p. 108.

43 “Fertilizing 250,000 square kilometers of barrentropical ocean, the size of the USA state of Colorado,in principle might produce a catch matchingtoday's fish market of 100 million tons. Coloradospreads less than 1/10th of 1 percent as wide as theworld ocean,” Ausubel, “Maglevs and the Vision ofSt. Hubert.” See also Ausubel, “The Great Reversal.”

44. An analytic method is championed as the supe-rior approach in William Nordhaus, “WorldDynamics: Measurement without Data,” EconomicJournal 83, December 1973, pp. 1156–83.

45. For an excellent review of the literature pertainingto the ongoing debate about petroleum scarcity, seeRobert Arnott, “Supply Side Aspects of Depletion,”Journal of Energy Literature 8, no. 1 (June 2002): 3–21.

46. It’s also true for other fossil fuels such as coal

and natural gas. For a summary of the increasingabundance of those fuels, see Robert L. Bradley Jr.,Julian Simon and the Triumph of Energy Sustainability(Washington: American Legislative ExchangeCouncil, 2000). The weakness of price data, how-ever, is that prices can be distorted by governmentinterventions—such as the exercise of monopolypower by OPEC—which results in false signals toconsumers and analysts regarding scarcity.Government intervention in oil markets in theUnited States, for instance, has had the net effectof distorting oil prices in an upward direction. SeeJerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren, “The Soft Casefor Soft Energy,” Journal of International Affairs 53,no. 1 (Fall 1999): 222–26. The OPEC cartel hasalso served to keep world oil prices about threetimes higher than they would otherwise be with-out producer collusion and more volatile to boot.See Morris Adelman, Genie out of the Bottle: WorldOil Since 1970 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1996), pp. 11–39.

47. Robert L. Bradley, “The Increasing Sustainability ofConventional Energy,” Cato Institute Policy Analysisno. 341, April 22, 1999, p. 6.

48. Adelman, pp. 22–24.

49 Data are compiled from various sources byBradley, Julian Simon, figure 2, p. 29, with sourcesdetailed in appendix B, p. 150. The weakness ofreserve data is that reserve estimates reflect onlyresources that can be recovered under present andexpected local economic conditions with existingavailable technology. Thus, data about oilreserves are akin to data about what is presentlyin your kitchen cupboard. Many exploitable fieldsare not “proven reserves” because they have yet tobe developed (usually because of the lack of prof -it opportunities in the current market). Moreover,projections based on such data presume no fur-ther advances in extraction or energy efficiencytechnology (more than offsetting the presumedlack of increasing annual consumption). This setof assumptions, of course, is a wildly unrealistic.For a good discussion of the real economic mean-ing of “proven reserves,” see Paul Ballonoff,Energy: Ending the Never-Ending Crisis (Washington:Cato Institute, 1997), pp. 7–8, 17–22.

50. Adelman, p. 27; and BP/Amoco “StatisticalReview of World Energy,” 2000, pp. 4–7.

51. Michael Lynch, Facing the Elephant: Oil MarketEvolution and Future Oil Crises (Boulder, Colo.:IRCEED, 1998), p. 2, cited in Bradley, “IncreasingSustainability of Conventional Energy,” p. 13.The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) accepts such estimates by andlarge. That organization estimated recently thatthe total consumption of hydrocarbons from

36

1850 to 1995 represents just 1.1 percent of whatremains in the ground. IPCC, Climate Change 2001:Mitigation (Cambridge, U.K.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2001), p. 236. The weakness ofsuch data, however, is that it is thoroughly specu-lative and ultimately not particularly useful. Wecan’t with any authority estimate the amount ofoil we have yet to discover. Moreover, the impor-tant thing is not how much oil exists but howmuch profitably exploitable oil exists. And thequestion of “profitable exploitation” is connectedto the issue of price and technology, which willsurely shift over time as it always has.

52. See, for instance, a critical review of KennethDeffeyes’s Hubbert’s Peak: The Impending World OilShortage (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UniversityPress, 2001), by Thomas Ahlbrandt in The Journalof Energy Literature 8, no. 1 (June 2002): 47–49. Seealso Arnott.

53. Harold Barnett and Chandler Morse, Scarcityand Growth: The Economics of Natural ResourceAvailability (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1963). For additional texts that have builtupon Barnett and Morse’s work, see V. KerrySmith, ed., Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1979); Orris Herfindahl, in Resource Economics:Selected Works, ed. David Brooks (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1974); RichardGordon, “Conservation and the Theory ofExhaustible Resources,” Canadian Journal ofEconomics and Political Science 32, no. 3 (August1966): 319–26; Richard Gordon, “A Reinterpre-tation of the Pure Theory of Exhaustion,” Journalof Political Economy, 75, no. 3 (June 1967): 274–86;and Adelman, pp. 11–39.

54. Thomas DeGregori, “Resources Are Not; TheyBecome: An Institutional Theory,” Journal of EconomicIssues 21, no. 3 (September 1987): 1243, 1247.

55. Osterfeld, p. 99.

56. Food and Agriculture Organization of the UnitedNations, Production Yearbooks 1949–1995, cited inLomborg, p. 111. Estimates of forest cover, however,may vary depending upon how one definesforested land. See, for instance, United NationsEnvironment Programme, Global Environment 3:Past, Present, and Future Perspectives (London:Earthscan, 2002), pp. 91–92.

57. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaption, and Vulnerabil-ity, Contribution of Working Group II to the ThirdAssessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panelet al., on Climate Change, ed. J. J. McCarthy et. al.(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), cited inLomborg, p. 283.

58. For instance, the average American today annu-ally consumes only half the lumber for all uses thatthe average American consumed in the year 1900.Ausubel, “The Great Reversal.”

59. Roger Sedjo, “The Role of Forest Plantations inthe World’s Future Timber Markets,” ForestryChronicle 77, no. 2 (March/April 2001): 221–25;Roger Sedjo and Daniel Botkin, “Using ForestPlantations to Spare Natural Forests,” Environment39, no. 10 (December 1997): 15–20, 30; and BrentSohngen et al., “An Analysis of Global TimberMarkets,” Discussion Paper 97-37, Resources for theFuture, Washington, D.C., May 1997.

60. “At likely planting rates, at least one billioncubic meters of wood—half the world's supply—could come from plantations by the year 2050 . . .an industry that draws from planted forests ratherthan cutting from the wild will disturb only one-fifth or less of the area for the same volume ofwood. Instead of logging half the world's forests,humanity can leave almost 90 percent of themminimally disturbed. And nearly all new trew plan -tations are established on abandoned croplands,which are already abundant and accessible.”Ausubel, “Maglevs and the Vision of St. Hubert.”

61. See Andrew Goudie, The Human Impact on theNatural Environment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p.43; John Richards, “Land Transformation,” in B. L.Turner et al., The Earth as Transformed by HumanAction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1990), pp. 163–80; and Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change, Special Report on EmissionScenarios, Special Report on Working Group III ofthe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,2001, p. 3.2.2.2, www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/ emis-sion. Michael Williams, however, estimates only a7.5 percent loss of original forests since the dawn ofman. See Michael Williams, “Forests,” in Turner etal., p. 164. All cites from Lomborg, p. 112.

62. See Roger Sedjo, “Marion Clawson’s Contribu-tions to Forestry,” Discussion Paper 99-33, Resourcesfor the Future, Washington, D.C., April 1999. Evenplantation forests contribute a great deal to the eco-logical health of global forestlands generally. “TheRole of Forest Plantation in the World’s FutureTimber Supply,” Forest Chronicle 77, no. 2(March–April 2001): 221–226; and Sedjo and Botkin,pp. 15–20, 30. The UN Environment Programmelikewise reports that, “while plantation forests areusually a poor substitute for natural forests in termsof maintaining biodiversity, they can supplementand substitute wood and other supplies from natur-al forests, thereby reducing pressure on and disrup-tion to the latter. They also perform many of theenvironmental services of natural forests, includingcarbon sequestration, watershed protection, andland rehabilitation.” United Nations Environment

37

Programme, Global Environment Outlook 3: Past,Present, and Future Perspectives (London: Earthscan,2002), p. 103. See also Mark Lacey, “Learning to Livewith Logging and (Gasp!) Even Liking It,” New YorkTimes, August 20, 2002, p. D3.

63 For more on the subject, see Roger Sedjo, AlbertoGoetzl, and Steverson Moffat, Sustainability ofTemperate Forests (Washington: Resources for theFuture, 1998).

64. Frederic Achard et al., “Determination ofDeforestation Rates of the World’s HumidTropical Forests,” Science 297, August 9, 2002, p.999; and Jocelyn Kaiser, “Satellites Spy MoreForest Than Expected,” ibid., p. 919.

65. Lomborg, p. 114.

66. W. V. Reid, “How Many Species Will ThereBe?” in T. C. Whitmore and J. A. Sayer, TropicalDeforestation and Species Extinction (London:Chapman & Hall, 1992), p. 60, cited in Lomborg,p. 114.

67. Peter Morrisette, “Political Structure and GlobalResource Use: A Typology,” ENR92-04, Resourcesfor the Future, Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 20; M.Edelman, "Rethinking the Hamburger Thesis:Deforestation and the Crisis of Central AmericanBeef Exports," in The Social Causes of EnviornmentalDestruction in Latin America, M. Painter and W. H.Durham, eds. (Ann Arbor: University of MichiganPress, 1995), pp. 25–62; S. Schwartzman and M.Kingston, “Global Deforestation, Timber, and theStruggle for Sustainability: Making the LabelStick,” Environmental Defense Fund, Washington,D.C., 1997; and The State of the World's Forests, 1997(Rome: Food & Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations, 1997). Government policies thatdeny land tenure rights unless forestland is clearedhave also been indicted as a major cause of ThirdWorld deforestation. See Douglas Southgate,Rodrigo Sierra, and Lawrence Brown, “The Causesof Tropical Deforestation in Ecuador: A StatisticalAnalysis,” Paper 89–09, London EnvironmentalEconomics Centre, 1989. The UN EnvironmentProgramme, for instance, reports that deforestationof the Brazilian Amazon “could not have been suc-cessful without the strong support of governmentsthrough the provision of tax incentives (the ‘LegalAmazon’ in Brazil), the construction of roads, andthe availability of skilled and cheap labor.” GlobalEnvironment 3, p. 79. Also see ibid., p. 108; andDouglas Southgate, “Forest Conservation andDevlopment: The Role of Institutions,” inSustainable Development: Promoting Progress orPerpetuating Poverty? pp. 194–205.

68. As per capita income rises, deforestation ratestend to decline. See T. Panayotou, “Environmen-

tal Degradation at Different Stages of EconomicDevelopment,” in Beyond Rio: The EnvironmentalCrisis and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Third World,ed. I. Ahmed and J. A. Doeleman (London:Macmillan Press, 1995); J. M. Antle and G.Heidebrink, “Environment and Development:Theory and International Evidence,” EconomicDevelopment and Cultural Change 43, no. 3 (1995):603–25; and M. Cropper and C. Griffiths, “TheInteraction of Population Growth andEnvironmenal Quality,” American Economic Review84, no. 2 (1994): 250–54. All cites from EdwardBarbier, “Introduction to the EnvironmentalKuznets Curve Special Issue,” Environment andDevelopment Economics 2, no. 4 (1997): 373. Seealso Pearce and Warford, pp. 184, 188; C. H.Murray, “Joint Action Is Path to Rescue ofForests,” Forum for Applied Research and PublicPolicy 7, no. 4 (Winter 1992): 13–15; and MalcomGillis, “Tropical Deforestation: Poverty,Population, and Public Policy” (speech deliveredto the Rice Environmental Conference, RiceUniversity, Houston, Texas, February 1, 1996),reprinted in Vital Speeches, April 1996, p. 374.

69. Maureen Cropper and Charles Griffith, “TheInteraction of Population and Growth andEnvironmental Quality,” American EconomicReview 82, no. 2, (1994): 250–54.

70. “Livestock expansion and mechanized agri-culture account for more loss of forest cover thanwood production, which is concentrated in rela-tively few countries.” Global Environment Outlook 3,p. 108. During the 1990s, for instance, 70 percentof the forestland that disappeared was convertedto agricultural production. Ibid., pp. 70, 92.Moreover, “the expansion of permanent arableland on soils previously covered by forests is stillthe main cause of deforestation in the BrazilianAmazon.” Ibid., p. 79.

71. The State of the World's Forests, 1997; and IndurGoklany and Merritt Sprague, “Sustaining Develop-ment and Biodiversity,” Cato Institute Policy Analysisno. 175, August 6, 1992; and Avery, pp. 315–332.

72. “Many countries are highly dependent on woodto meet national energy needs and this use accountsfor some three-quarters of total roundwood pro-duction.” Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 102.

73. “Rural electrification is being promoted insome countries but the rural poor often cannotafford the tariffs or the costs of electrical appli-ances.” Ibid., p. 100.

74. See, for instance, Peter Bauer, Dissent on Devel-opment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,1972); James Gwartney and Robert Lawson,Economic Freedom of the World: 2002 Annual Report

38

(Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 2002); and WilliamEasterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2001).

75. United Nations Environmental Programme,Global Biodiversity Assessment, ed. V. H. Heywood(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),pp. 204, 206, 207, cited in Lomborg, p. 249.

76. “Only about 1,000 species are recorded as hav-ing become extinct in recent years (since 1600).”Nigel Stork, “Measuring Global Biodiversity andIts Decline,” in Biodiversity II, ed. Edward Wilsonand Frances Peter (Washington: National Academyof Sciences, 1997), pp. 45, 60. Dividing that figureby 400 (the number of years between 1600 and2000) results in an average of 2.5 extinctions a year.

77. Estimates typically range from 17,000 to100,000 species extinctions a year. See, for instance,Edward Wilson, The Diversity of Life (New York:W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 255; and Richard Leakeyand Robert Lewin, The Sixth Extinction (New York:Anchor Books, Doubleday, 1995), p. 236.

78. Jonathan Ballie and Brian Groombridge, eds., 1996IUCN Red List of Threatened Animals, compiled by WorldConservation Monitoring Centre (Gland, Switzerland:IUCN—World Conservation Union, 1997) (searchabledatabase available online at www.wcmc.org.uk/species/animals/animal_redlist.html);K. S. Walter and H. J. Gillet, eds., 1997 IUCN Red List ofThreatened Plants, compiled by World ConservationMonitoring Centre (Gland, Switzerland: IUCN—World Conservation Union, 1998); Robert May, JohnLawton, and Nigel Stork, “Assessing Extinction Rates,”in John Lawton and Robert May, Extinction Rates(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 1–24; andReid in Whitmore and Sayer, p. 56. All cites fromLomborg, table 6, p. 250.

79. Stork, “Measuring Global Biodiversity,” p. 47;Virginia Morell, “The Variety of Life,” NationalGeographic, February 1999, p. 16; and Laura Tangley,“How Many Species Are There?” U.S. News & WorldReport, August 18–25, 1997, p. 79.

80 W. Wayt Gibbs, “On the Termination of Species,”Scientific American, November 2001, pp. 40–49.

81. Biologist Thomas Lovejoy, for instance, came tohis widely referenced 40,000 extinctions a year figureby assuming that tropical deforestion is in theprocess of eliminating 50 to 67 percent of all rainforests on the planet. Habitat loss on that scale, hecalculated, would reduce the overall number ofspecies by 20 percent. But as noted earlier, tropicaldeforestation is progressing far more modestly thanLovejoy postulates. Thomas Lovejoy, “A Projectionof Species Extinctions,” in The Global 2000 Report to

the President of the United States: Entering the 21stCentury, 3 vols., ed. Gerald Barney (New York:Pergamon Press, 1980) pp. 328–31.

82. Ariel Lugo, “Estimating Reductions in the Diver-sity of Tropical Forest Species,” in Biodiversity, ed.Edward O. Wilson and Frances Peter (Washington:National Academy Press, 1988), pp. 58–70.

83. D. Simberloff, “Do Species-Area Curves PredictExtinction in Fragmented Forest?” in Whitmoreand Sayer, p. 85, cited in Lomborg, p. 254.

84. Even biologist Norman Myers concedes, “Wehave no way of knowing the actual extinction ratein the tropical forests [where most of the extinc-tions are allegedly taking place], let alone anapproximate guess.” Norman Myers, The SinkingArk: A New Look at the Problem of DisappearingSpecies (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1979), p. 43,cited in Lomborg, p. 254.

85. V. H. Heywood and S. N. Stuart, “Species Extinc-tions in Tropical Rainforests,” in Whitmore andSayer, p. 102, cited in Lomborg, p. 255.

86. See generally J. J. Kay, “The Concept of EcologicalIntegrity, Alternative Theories of Ecology andImplications for Decision-Support Indicators,” inEconomic, Ecological, and Decision Theories: Indicators ofEcological Sustainable Development, ed. P. A. Victor, J. J.Kay, and H. J. Ruitenback (Ottawa: CanadianEnvironmental Advisory Council, 1991), pp. 23–58; S.T. A. Pickett, V. T. Parker, and P. L. Fiedler, “The NewParadigm in Ecology: Implications for ConservationBiology above the Species Level,” in Consevation Biology:The Theory and Practice of Nature Conservation Preservationand Management, ed. P. L. Fiedler and S. K. Jain(London: Chapman and Hall, 1992), pp. 66–88; B. H.Walker, “Biodiversity and Ecological Redundancy,”Conservation Biology 6 (1992): 19–23; and R. F. Noss,“Indicators for Monitoring Biodiversity: AHierarchical Approach,” Conservation Biology 4 (1990):355–64, all cited in Harte, p. 161.

87. Robert Costanza and Bernard Patten, “Definingand Predicting Sustainability,” Ecological Economics15 (1995): 194.

88. Harte, p. 162.

89. Igor Shiklomanov, “Appraisal and Assessmentof World Water Resources,” Water International 25;no. 1 (2000): 22; William Cosgrove and FrankRijsberman, eds. World Water Vision: Making WaterEverybody’s Business (London: Earthscan Publica-tions, 2000), p. 26, cited in Lomborg, p. 150.Approximately 30 percent of the annual amount of“accessible” water provided by nature is harnessedfor human purposes, but almost half that amountis returned quickly to the natural water cycle,

39

which makes use of water withdrawal figures lessindicative of the actual burden being placed onwater resources. See Lomborg, p. 150.

90. Raphael Semiat, “Desalination: Present andFuture,” Water International 25, no. 1 (2000): 54, 62,cited in Lomborg, p. 153.

91. In principle, the earth’s entire present water con-sumption could be met with a single desalinationplant located on the coast of the Sahara Desert.Moreover, that plant could be run by solar cells tak-ing up less than 0.3 percent of the Sahara’s expanse.Calculation done by Lomborg in footnote 1095 (p.384) based on data from John Hille, SustainableNorway: Probing the Limits and Equity of EnvironmentalSpace (Oslo: Project for an Alternative Future, 1995),p. 242; Peter Gleick, Water in Crisis: A Guide to theWorld’s Fresh Water Resources (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993), p. 372; and S. E. Aly, “GasTurbine Total Energy Vapour CompressionDesalination System,” Energy Conversion &Management 40, no. 7 (1999): 729–41. Providingdesalination services for total municipal water with-drawal across the globe would cost about 0.5 percentof GDP. Calculation performed by Lomborg in foot-note 1097 (p. 384) based on data from InternationalMonetary Fund, International Statistical Yearbook(Washington: IMF, 2000), p. 113 (updates availableonline at www. imf.org/external/np/res/commod/index.htm).

92. World Resources Institute et al., World Resources1998–99: A Guide to the Global Environment (New York:Oxford University Press, 1998), cited in Lomborg,table 4, p. 152.

93. For a summary of the problems with the def-inition, see Lomborg, pp. 153–54. One of theauthors of a UN background report on waterneeds in 1997 confessed that the benchmark forwhat constitutes “chronic water scarcity” is “mis-guidedly considered by some authorities as a crit-ical minimum amount of water for the survival ofa modern society.” Hille Shuval, “Israel: NationalWater Resources Conservation Planning andPolicies for Rapid Economic Development andConditions of Severe Scarcity,” in J. Lundqvistand Peter Gleick, “Sustaining Our Waters into the21st Century,” background document for UNCommission for Sustainable Development, Com-prehensive Assessment of the Freshwater Resources of theWorld (Stockholm: Stockholm EnvironmentInstitute, 1997), p. 37, cited in Lomborg, p. 153.

94. World Bank, World Development Report 1994:Infrastructure for Development (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1994), p. 26; World HealthOrganization, The International Drinking Water Supplyand Sanitation Decade: Review of Regional & Global Dataas of 31 December, 1983, (Geneva: World Health

Organization 1986), pp. 15–18; Peter Gleick, TheWorld’s Water 1998–1999: The Biennial Report onFreshwater Resources (Washington: Island Press, 1998),pp. 262, 264; and Kofi Annan, “Progress Made inProviding Safe Water Supply and Sanitation for AllDuring the 1990s: Report of the Secretary-General,”Economic and Social Council, Commission onSustainable Development, 8th Session, 2000, p. 5(available online at www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd8/wss4rep.pdf). Calculations performed by Lomborgin figure 5, p. 22.

95. Calculations performed by Lomborg in footnote154, p. 357, based on data from Annan, p. 5, andWorld Bank, World Development Report 1994, p. 11.

96. David Pimentel et al., “Water Resources: Agricul-ture, the Environment, and Society,” BioScience 47,1997, pp. 97–106.

97. World Bank, World Development Report 1992: Devel-opment and the Environment (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1992), p. 16, cited in Lomborg, p. 155.

98. Ariel Dinar, Mark Rosegrant, and Ruth Meinzen-Dick, “Water Allocation Mechanisms: Principles andExamples,” World Bank and International FoodPolicy Research Institute, 1997, p. 12, cited inLomborg, p. 155.

99. For case studies, see World Resources Institute etal., World Resources 1996–97 (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1996), p. 303; Malin Falkenmarkand Carl Widstrand, “Population and WaterResources: A Delicate Balance,” Population Bulletin 47,no. 3 (1992): 15; Sandra Postel, Pillar of Sand: Can theIrrigation Miracle Last? (New York: Norton, 1999), p.174; Lester Brown et al., eds. State of the World 1993(New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), p. 34; andEuropean Environmental Agency, Environment in theEuropean Union at the Turn of the Century(Copenhagen: European Environmental Agency,1999), p. 160. All cites from Lomborg, p. 154.

100. World Bank, World Development Report 1992,p. 16, and World Development Report, 1994, p. 47.Cited in Lomborg, p. 155.

101. Water subsidies to cities across the developedworld are estimated at $22 billion annually. WorldBank, World Development Report 1994, pp. 121–22,and A. P. G de Moor, “Perverse Incentives:Subsidies and Sustainable Development,” 1998,chapter 5, www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/subsidies. All cites from Lomborg, p. 156.

102. M. W. Rosegrant, R. G. Schleyer, and S. N. Yadav,“Water Policy for Efficient Agricultural Diversifica-tion: Market-Based Approaches,” Food Policy 20, 1995,pp. 203–23; and I. Serageldin, “Toward SustainableManagement of Water Resources,” World Bank,

40

Washington, D.C., 1995. Both citations from Goklany,“Saving Habitat,” p. 949.

103. This is, in fact, the prevailing view amongexperts. For instance, the most recent UN report onthe subject finds that water shortages occur “largelyas a result of poor water allocation, wasteful use ofthe resource, and lack of adequate managementaction.” UN Commission for Sustainable Develop-ment, Comprehensive Assessment of the FreshwaterResources of the World, p. 1. The World Water Councilargues: “There is a water crisis today. But the crisis isnot about having too little water to satisfy our needs.It is a crisis of managing water so badly that billionsof people—and the environment—suffer badly.”Cosgrove and Rijsberman, World Water Vision: MakingWater Everybody’s Business, p. xix. All cites fromLomborg, p. 157.

104. “What environmentalists mainly say on thistopic [of resource scarcity] is not that we are run-ning out of energy but that we are running out ofenvironment—that is, running out of the capacityof air, water, soil and biota to absorb, withoutintolerable consequences for human well-being,the effects of energy extraction, transport, trans-formation and use” Joe Holdren, “Energy: Askingthe Wrong Question,” Scientific American, January2, 2002, p. 65, www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F3D47-C6D2-1CEB-93F6809EC5880000&pageNumber= 5&catID=2

105. Calculation performed by Indur Goklany,Clearing the Air: The Real Story of America’s War on AirPollution (Washington: Cato Institute, 1999), based ondata published by the U.S. Council on EnvironmentalQuality and the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency, various sources (see footnote 10, p. 168), p. 54.

106. Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards,U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, National AirQuality and Emission Trends Report, 1994, DataAppendix, EPA 454/R-95-XXX, cited in Goklany,Clearing the Air, p. 55.

107. Calculation performed by Goklany based ondata from the U.S. Council on EnvironmentalQuality, U.S. Department of Commerce, and theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency (varioussources). See Goklany, Clearing the Air, figure 3-6,p. 64.

108. Calculation performed by Goklany based ondata from the U.S. Council on EnvironmentalQuality, U.S. Department of Commerce, and theU.S. Environmental Protection Agency (varioussources). Ibid., figure 3-2, p. 57.

109. Ibid., pp. 56–57.

110. The metric is not particularly helpful

because it provides no information about ozoneconcentrations during the majority of time spentoutdoors and is highly subject to meteorologicalfactors. Ibid., pp. 58–59.

111. Calculation performed by Goklany based ondata from the U.S. Council on EnvironmentalQuality and the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency (various sources). Ibid., figure 3-4, p. 61.

112. EPA data cited in Steven Hayward and JulieMajeres, Index of Leading Environmental Indicators,7th ed. (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute,2002), figure 6, p. 20.

113. Calculation performed by Goklany based on datafrom the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, U.S.Department of Commerce, and the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency (various sources). SeeGoklany, Clearing the Air, figure 3-3, p. 59.

114. Ibid.

115. Calculation performed by Goklany based ondata from the U.S. Council on EnvironmentalQuality, the U.S. Department of Commerce, andthe U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (vari-ous sources). Ibid., figure 3-5, p. 63.

116. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,National Air Quality and Emission Trends Report1998, 2000, p. 77, www.epa.gov/oar/aqtrnd98,cited in Lomborg, p. 166.

117. Calculation by Lomborg in figure 87, p. 166,based on data from the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency, U.S. Department of Labor, and economistsAlan Krupnick and Dallas Butraw of Resources for theFuture. For methodological qualifications, seeLomborg, footnote 1166, p. 386.

118. For a regression analysis demonstrating therelationship, see Richard Carson, Yongil Jeon, andDonald McCubbin, “The Relationship between AirPollution Emissions and Income: U.S. Data,”Working Paper 97/08, Department of Economics,University of California, San Diego, February 1997.

119. For a review of the data, see OECD, "KeyEnvironmental Indicators," OECD EnvironmentDirectorate, May 2001, pp. 16–17.

120. Environmental Kuznets Curves are so namedbecause the inverted U-shaped relationships dis-covered when per capita income and environmen-tal indicators are put in graph form bear a strikingresemblance to the relationship between incomeinequality and economic development discoveredby economist Simon Kuznets in 1955.

121. Mathew Cole, A. J. Rayner, and J. M. Bates,

41

“The Environmental Kuznets Curve: AnEmpirical Analysis,” Environment and DevelopmentEconomics 2, no. 4 (1997): 401–16; Thomas Seldonand Daqing Song, “Environmental Quality andDevelopment: Is There a Kuznets Curve for AirPollution?” Journal of Environmental Economics andManagement 27, no. 2 (1994): 147–62; N. Shafik,“Economic Development and EnvironmentalQuality: An Econometric Analysis,” Oxford EnergyPapers 46 (1994): 757–73; and Gene Grossmanand Alan Kreuger, “Economic Growth and theEnvironment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics (May1995): 353–77. All cites from Cole, “Limits toGrowth,” table 1, p. 92. See also T. Panayotou,“Environmental Degradation,” and T. Panayotou,“Demystifying the Environmental KuznetsCurve: Turning a Black Box into a Policy Tool,”Environment and Development Economics 2, no. 4(1997): 465–79.

122. Shafik; Seldon and Song; Panayotou,“Environmental Degradation”; Cole, Rayner, andBates; and Grossman and Kreuger.

123. Cole, Rayner, and Bates; Seldon and Song;and Panayotou, “Environmental Degradation.”

124. Seldon and Song; and Cole, Rayner, andBates.

125. “Air Pollution in the World’s Megacities,”Environment 36, no. 2 (March 1994): figure 5, p. 33.

126. Mohamed T. El-Ashry, “Balancing EconomicDevelopment with Environmental Protection inDeveloping and Lesser Developed Countries,”Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association 43(January 1993): 18.

127. Ibid, p. 23.

128. Wilfred Beckerman, “Economic Growth andthe Environment: Whose Growth? WhoseEnvironment?” World Development 20 (1992):481–96, cited in Barbier, “Introduction to theEKC Special Issue,” p. 370; and Goklany, Clearingthe Air, pp. 87–109. The contention that environ-mental quality is a “luxury” good, however, issomewhat difficult to substantiate. For a critique,see K. E. McConnell, “Income and the Demandfor Environmental Quality,” Environment andDevelopment Economics 2, no. 4 (1997): 383–99.

129. M. Komen, S. Gerking, and H. Folmer,“Income and Environmental R&D: EmpiricalEvidence from OECD Countries,” Environmentand Development Economics 2, no. 4 (1997):505–515; and Carson, Jeon, and McCubbin.

130. Beckerman, “Economic Growth and theEnvironment”; and Panayotou, “Demystifying

the EKC.”

131. Beckerman, “Economic Growth and theEnvironment;” and S. M. DeBruyn, “Explainingthe Environmental Kuznets Curve: StructuralChange and International Agreements inReducing Sulphur Emissions,” Environment andDevelopment Economics 2, no. 4 (1997): 485–503.

132. Panayotou, “Demystifying the EKC.”

133. The only study that did not find a relationshipbetween per capita income and pollution pertained toan analysis of Malaysia. See J. R. Vincent, “Testing forEnvironmental Kuznets Curves within a DevelopingCountry,” Environment and Development Economics 2,no. 4 (1997): 417–31. All others have confirmed therelationship. Analysts, however, find no relationshipbetween per capita income growth and carbon dioxideemission reductions, suggesting that income growthwill not slow emissions of those greenhouse gases. SeeDouglas Holtz-Eaken and Thomas Selden, “Stokingthe Fires? CO2 Emissions and Economic Growth,”Working Paper 4248, National Bureau of EconomicResearch, December 1992; and Cole, Rayner, andBates, pp. 401–16 (which otherwise finds support forthe EKC hypothesis).

134. Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 32.

135. Barbier, “Introduction to EKC Special Issue,”p. 374.

136. Fecal bacteria primarily enter coastal watersfrom sewage treatment centers, stormwaterrunoff, and sewage overflows.

137. European Union, Bathing Water Quality:Annual Report, 1999 Bathing Season, 2000 (avail-able online at www.europa.eu.int/water/water-bathing/report.html). Cited by Lomborg in figure104, p. 194.

138. Lomborg, p. 195. A national database is compiledby the Natural Resources Defense Council, but giventhe great differences between the number of commu-nities monitored by that organization from year toyear, NRDC itself concedes that “it is impossible tomake direct comparisons between states or to assesstrends over time based on this closure data.” NaturalResources Defense Council, “Testing the Waters—1999: A Guide to Water Quality at Vacation Beaches,”1999, www.nrdc.org/water/oceans/ttw/titinx.asp,cited in Lomborg, p. 195. The U.S. EnvironmentalProtection Agency also maintains a database oncoastal water quality and beach closings, but it, too, ishobbled by changes in the number of beaches moni-tored from year to year, disparate standards, and a lim-ited data set. “EPA’s BEACH Watch Program: 2001Swimming Season,” EPA 823-F-02-008, Office ofWater (4305), May 2002, www.epa.gov/waterscience/

42

beaches/2001surveyfs.pdf.

139. Oxygen depletion occurs when excessiveamounts of nutrients run off from farmland intocoastal waters, causing algae blooms that “suffo-cate” large flora and fauna. This condition,referred to as “eutrophication,” is decried by theUnited Nations as the main threat to coastalecosystems. European Environmental Agency,Europe’s Environment: The Second Assessment(Copenhagen: European Environmental Agency,1998), p. 210, cited in Lomborg, p. 196.

140. “The economic assessment based on fisheriesdata, however, failed to detect effects attributable tohypoxia. Overall, fisheries landings statistics for at leastthe last few decades have been relatively constant. Thefailure to identify clear hypoxic effects in the fisheriesstatistics does not necessarily mean that they areabsent.” Robert Diaz and Andrew Solow, “Gulf ofMexico Hypoxia Assessment: Topic #2. Ecological andEconomic Consequences of Hypoxia,” Hypoxia WorkGroup, White House Office of Science andTechnology Policy, Committee on Environment andNatural Resources for the EPA Mississippi River/Gulfof Mexico Watershed Nutrient Task Force, NOAACoastal Ocean Program, 1999, pp. 8–9, cited inLomborg, p. 198.

141. Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 195.

142. Ausubel, “The Great Reversal.”

143. The UN Environment Programme, however,cautions against exceesive concern. "High levelsof mercury in tuna and swordfish, for example,have been shown to have natural sources; themost dramatic effects of oil spills have proved tobe localized and relatively transient; and heavymetal contamination, except for lead and mer-cury, has been found to be highly localized andhas relatively minor impacts except at high con-centrations." Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 183.

144. Tom O’Connor, “1998 State of the CoastalEnvironment: Chemical Contaminants inOysters and Mussels,” National Oceanic andAtmospheric Administration, 1998, cited inLomborg, figure 105, p. 195.

145. Danish Veterinary and Food Administration,“Pesticide Residues in Danish Food 1993,” 1994,p. 78, cited in Lomborg, p. 195.

146. World Bank, World Development Report 1992;and Shafik, p. 764; both sources cited in Lomborg,figure 109, p. 202.

147. Lomborg, p. 203. Emphasis in original.

148. F. Smith et al., “Estimating Extinction Rates,”

Nature 364 (1993): 494–96, cited in Lomborg, p. 204.

149. Grossman and Kreuger, cited in Cole,“Limits to Growth,” table 1, p. 92.

150. Smith et al.; and Department of EnvironmentalProtection, Bureau of Wastewater Pollution Con-trol, Marine Sciences Section, “1998 New YorkHarbor Water Quality Survey,” New York City, 1998,p. 5, cited in Lomborg, p. 204.

151. Goudie, p. 224; Peter Kristensen and Hans OleHansen, eds., European Rivers and Lakes: Assessment ofTheir Environmental State (Copenhagen: EuropeanEnvironmental Agency, 1994), p. 49; Organizationfor Economic Cooperation and Development,OECD Environmental Data Compendium 1999 (Paris:OECD 1999), p. 85; Department of EnvironmentalProtection, Bureau of Wastewater PollutionControl, Marine Sciences Section, “1997 New YorkHarbor Water Quality Survey,” New York City,1997, pp. 38, 57; and “1998 New York HarborWater Quality Survey,” p. 7. All cites fromLomborg, figure 110, p. 203.

152. David Stanners and Philippe Bourdeau, eds.,Europe’s Environment: The Dobris Assessment(Copenhagen: European Environment Agency,1995), pp. 82, 87. For a report on the strongimprovements in U.K. water quality, see UnitedKingdom Environment Agency, 2000, cited inLomborg, p. 204.

153. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Officeof Wastewater Management, “Water PollutionControl: 25 Years of Progress and Challenges forthe New Millennium,” EPA 833-F-98-003, June1998, p. 1. For an excellent snapshot of overallfreshwater quality in the United States, see U.S.Environmental Protection Agency, “NationalWater Quality Inventory: 1998 Report toCongress,” 1998, www.epa.gov/305b/98report.

154. Ibid.

155. Grossman and Kreuger, cited in Barbier,“Introduction to EKC Special Issue,” table 1, p. 373.

156. National Containment BiomonitoringProgram, “NCBP Fish Database,” 2000, www.cerc.usgs.gov/data/ncbp/fish.htm); National Con-tainment Biomonitoring Program, “NCBPStarling Database,” 2000, www.cerc.usgs.gov/data/ncbp/starling/starling.htm); President’sCouncil on Environmental Quality, Environment-al Quality 1996 (1997): 334–38; and “State of theGreat Lakes 1995,” State of the Great LakesEcosystem Conference, 1995. All cites fromLomborg, figure 112, p. 205.

157. Grossman and Kreuger, cited in Barbier,

43

“Introduction to EKC Special Issue,” table 1, p. 373.

158. Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 181.

159. Ibid., p. 32.

160. See generally John Powelson and RichardStock, The Peasant Betrayed: Agricultural and LandReform in the Third World (Washington: CatoInstitute, 1990); and Romeo Bautista and AlbertoValdes, eds., The Bias against Agriculture: Trade andMacroeconomic Policies in Developing Countries (SanFrancisco: Institute for Contemporary StudiesPress, 1993).

161. M. Montgomery, “How Large Is Too Large?Implications of the City Size Literature forPopulation Policy and Research,” EconomicDevelopment and Cultural Change 36 (1988):691–720; and A. C. Kelly and J. G. Williamson,What Drives Third World City Growth? (Princeton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984).

162. H. Chenery, S. Robinson, and M. Syrquin,Industrialization and Growth: A Comparative Study(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); and E.S. Mills and C. M. Becker, Studies in Indian UrbanDevelopment (New York: Oxford University Press,1986). Environmental quality is also frequentlybetter in “megacities” than in the rural regions ofthe developing world. For instance, 84 percent ofAfricans in urban areas have access to reasonablygood sanitation compared to only 45 percent ofthose Africans living in rural areas. GlobalEnvironment Outlook 3, p. 159.

163. Vibhooti Shukla and Kirit Parikh, “TheEnvironmental Consequences of Urban Growth:Cross-National Perspectives on EconomicDevelopment, Air Pollution, and City Size,” UrbanGeography 13, no. 5 (1992): 425.

164. E. S. Mills and P. E. Graves, The Economics ofEnvironmental Quality (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986).

165. Shukla and Parikh, p. 422. Analysis of the dataalso led Pearce and Warford to conclude that “trendsin air pollution are determined as much by policy mea-sures and the nature of the urban economy as by pop-ulation density.” Pearce and Warford, p. 170.

166. Ibid., pp. 429–40.

167. Ibid., p. 442.

168. Ryan and Flavin, p. 125.

169. Magretta, p. 87.

170. Ibid.

171. William Chandler, Alexei Makarov, and Zhou

Dadi, “Energy for the Soviet Union, EasternEurope, and China,” Scientific American 263, no. 3(September 1990): 121.

172. Even if the world market share of nonfossilfuels doubled by the year 2020 (about all that istechnically feasible even if economic considera-tions were discarded), coal and oil were the fossilfuels that were the primary market “losers,” andenergy efficiency investments were maximized,fossil fuel consumption would still increase sub-stantially as would world carbon dioxide emis-sions. See William Leffler and Renata Karlin,“Energy and the Environment: Is a SustainableEnergy Path Possible?” written remarks deliveredat the Global Tomorrow Coalition: 21st CenturyDialogue, February 25, 1993, pp. 11–12.

173. The traditional answer to this observation isthat certain commodities impose external costs—such as pollution—that must be internalized inthat commodity’s price if economic efficiency is tobe served. Given the extreme difficulty of pricingnonmarket goods, however, most economistsbelieve prices should be left unmolested by govern-ment. On this point, see generally JamesBuchanan, “Introduction: LSE Cost Theory inRetrospect,” in LSE Essays on Cost, ed. Buchananand Thirlby (New York: New York University Press,1981); Roy Cordato, Welfare Economics andExternalities in an Open-Ended Universe (Boston:Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992); and IsraelKirzner, Market Theory and the Price System(Princeton: D. Van Nostrand, 1963). Instead, expost regulation of potential external harms wouldbe easier and indirectly affect commodity prices sothat the same end—internalization of environmen-tal externalities —is achieved.

174. Jerry Taylor and Peter VanDoren, “Evaluatingthe Case for Renewable Energy: Is GovernmentSupport Warranted?” Cato Institute Policy Analysisno. 422, January 10, 2002.

175. Ian Johnson, “Beijing Ends Roast MuttonSmog,” Baltimore Sun, January 7, 1997, p. A2.

176. For a review of the arguments against scien-tific alarmism, see Patrick J. Michaels and RobertBalling, The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air aboutGlobal Warming (Washington: Cato Institute,2000).

177. John Christy et al., “Differential Trends inTropical Sea Surface and AtmosphericTemperatures since 1979,” Geophysical Research Letters28 (2001): 183–86; Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change, “Summary for Policymakers:International Panel on Climate Change WorkingGroup I Third Assessment Report,” 2001, pp. 1–2;and Michaels and Balling.

44

178. Michaels and Balling, pp. 104–7, 210–11.

179. Ibid., pp. 88–90

180. Ibid., pp. 50–54, 111–157.

181. John Fialka, “Global Warming Bad? Not toSome Farmers in Alaska’s Far North,” Wall StreetJournal, June 10, 1998, p. A1.

182. “The Benefits of Climate Change? China’sTake on Global Warming,” article appearing in“Weathervane,” a website maintained by Resourcesfor the Future (www.weathervane.rff. org/), report-ed in “China May Benefit from Climate Change,”May Cooler Heads Prevail; A Bi-Weekly NewsletterCovering Climate Change Issues (Washington:Competitive Enterprise Institute), September 3,1997, pp. 2–3.

183. Ibid.

184. Ibid.

185. Ibid.

186. Robert Mendelsohn, ed. Global Warming andthe American Economy: A Regional Assessment ofClimate Change Impacts (Northampton, Mass:Edward Elgar, 2001).

187. Thomas Gale Moore, Climate of Fear: Why WeShouldn’t Worry about Global Warming (Washing-ton:Cato Institute, 1998).

188. Global Environment Outlook 3, pp. 65–66.

189. Beckerman, p. 112.

190. C. Rosenzweig and M. L. Perry, “Potential Impactof Climate Change on World Food Supply,” Nature367, January 13, 1994, pp. 133–138; Through Green-Colored Glasses; and International Panel on ClimateChange, Climate Change 1995: Impacts, Adaptations, andMitigation of Climate Change: Scientific and TechnicalAnalyses (New York: Cambridge University Press,1996). Both citations from Goklany, “Saving Habitat,”p. 950.

191. For a thorough review of the argument, seeGoklany, The Precautionary Principle, pp. 57–88.

192. Deepak Lal, “Ecological Imperialism: TheProspective Costs of Kyoto for the Third World,” in TheCosts of Kyoto, ed. Jonathan Adler (Washington:Competitive Enterprise Institute, 1997), pp. 83–84.

193. Sylvia Nasar, “Cooling the Globe Would BeNice, but Saving Lives Now May Cost Less,” NewYork Times, May 31, 1992, p. E6.

194. Other sustainability indicators not examined

here include the OECD's “Key EnvironmentalIndicators”; “Sustainable Development in theUnited States: An Experimental Set ofIndicators,” September 2001 Final Report, U.S.Interagency Working Group on SustainableDevelopment Indicators, Washington, D.C., July2002; “Draft 2002 Sustainability ReportingGuidelines,” Global Reporting Initiative, April 1,2002; “Indicators of Sustainable Development:Guidelines and Methodologies,” United NationsCommission on Sustainable Development(undated); and The Little Green Data Book 2001,International Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment (Washington, D.C.: World Bank,2001).

195. Paul Waggoner and Jesse Ausubel, "A Frame-work for Sustainability Science: A Renovated IPATIdentity," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences99:12, June 11, 2002, pp. 7860–65.

196. Ibid., p. 7865.

197. World Wildlife Federation International,“Living Planet Report 2002,” 2002, p. 3.

198. Ibid.

199. Ibid.

200. Mathis Wackernagel et al., “Tracking theEcological Overshoot of the Human Economy,”Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99, no. 44,(July 9, 2002): 9266–71.

201. Ibid., p. 9266.

202. Ibid.

203 Sylvan Wittwer, Food, Climate, and CarbonDioxide (Boca Raton, Fla.: CRC Press, 1995). Seealso Michaels and Balling, pp. 177–90.

204. See figure 2 in Wackernagel et al., p. 9270.

205. “If the world farmer reaches the average yieldof today's U.S. corn grower during the next 70years, ten billion people eating as people now onaverage do will need only half of today's cropland.The land spared exceeds Amazonia. This will hap -pen if farmers sustain the yearly 2 percent world-wide yield growth of grains achieved since 1960,in other words, if social learning continues asusual. If the rate falls by one half, an area the sizeof India, globally, can still revert from agricultureto woodland or other uses. If the ten billion in2070 prefer a meaty diet of 6,000 primary calo-ries/day for food and fuel (twice today's averageprimary calories), they roughly halve the landspared. A cautious global scenario of sustainedyield growth and more calories still offers more

45

than 10 percent of present world farmland, morethan 10 Iowas or 3 Spains, for the GreatRestoration.” Ausubel, “The Great Reversal.”

206. Ibid.

207. Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 71.

208. Global Leaders of Tomorrow Environment TaskForce et al., “2002 Environmental SustainabilityIndex,” 2002, www.ciesin.columbia.edu/indicators/ESI.

209. Robert Prescott-Allen, The Well-being ofNations (Washington: Island Press, 2001).

210. Cited in “2002 Environmental SustainabilityIndex,” pp. 18–19.

211. For a comparison of the indices used in eachstudy and the strong correlations between thefindings of these reports, see ibid., pp. 18–21.

212. Ibid., p. 6.

213. Ibid., p. 1.

214. Those include air quality (determined byconcentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen diox-ide, and total suspended particulates); water qual-ity (determined by dissolved oxygen concentra-tions, phosphorus concentrations, suspendedsolids, and electrical conductivity); biodiversity(the percentage of mammals and birds currentlythreatened); land use (the percentage of landbeing used by man); “ecosystem stress” (definedby the percentage of change in forest cover from1990 to 2000 and the percentage of the countryexperiencing significant acidification), and “envi-ronmental health” (defined as the child death ratefrom respiratory diseases, the death rate fromintestinal infectious diseases, and the under-fivemortality rate). Ibid., table 3, pp. 7–8.

215. The problems are legion. A brief review of themost important issues follows.

Although the air and water quality indicatorsare reasonable, the data from specific monitoringstations are not selected by any consistent criteria.Moreover, because monitoring stations are mostlikely to be sited where pollution problems exist(and to be absent from those areas where envi-ronmental quality is not an important concernfor whatever reason), the data are almost certain-ly unrepresentative of mean pollution concentra-tions. Ibid., p. 32. Moreover, data about concen-trations of air and water pollution are sparse. Thereport, for instance, acknowledges that 101 coun-tries lacked data regarding the concentration ofsuspended solids in water, 100 countries lackeddata regarding the electrical conductivity of

water, 94 countries lacked data regarding the con-centration of phosphorus in water, 93 countrieslacked data regarding urban concentrations ofparticulate matter, 91 countries lacked dataregarding concentrations of sulfur dioxide andnitrogen dioxide, and 90 countries lacked dataregarding the concentration of dissolved oxygenin water bodies. Yet the authors estimated valuesfor those indicators anyway. Ibid., table A3.1, p.51. For a discussion of regression analysis used togenerate the missing numbers crucial to thereport, see ibid., pp. 52–55. Unfortunately, thosecalculations are highly speculative.

The calculations regarding biodiversity arehobbled by the fact that the overwhelming major-ity of species are neither mammalian or avian, andthe health of the species monitored does not nec-essarily imply anything about the health of the farmore numerous insect or plant species of concern(for instance, the wolf population in the easternUnited States is low despite the fact that otherspecies are doing quite well in those same ecosys-tems). Furthermore, the authors concede that the“biodiversity indicator is vulnerable to distortionamong countries that have very small number ofspecies (Haiti has only four mammals, for exam-ple). In these countries, a small difference in thenumber of endangered species makes a big differ-ence in the percentage.” Ibid., p. 33.

The consideration of “land use” as an indicator(defined as “combining layers of information onland cover, population density, stable ‘lights atnight’ and human infrastructure in a geographicinformation system,” ibid., p. 34) is dubiousbecause it reveals nothing about the health of sur-rounding ecosystems or pollution sheds, impliesthat development beyond primitive hunter-gath-erer societies is undesirable, and disregards theresources created by such infrastructures.

The use of child death rates from respiratorydiseases, the death rate from intestinal infectiousdiseases, and the under-five mortality rate is prob-lematic because, as the authors concede, “not allof those deaths are attributable to environmentalconditions.” Ibid., p. 39.

216. Unfortunately, the authors measure drink-ing water supply by assuming a correlationbetween certain technologies—such as boreholesand water pumps—and safe drinking water (ibid.,p. 38). Yet relying upon open water sources suchas lakes and streams is not necessarily unsafe orsuboptimal. After all, northern Virginia andWashington, D.C., rely almost exclusively on thePotomac River for drinking water supply with noill effect. Another indicator—“reducing waterstress”—relies on four variables, one of which iswater stress. While that variable is a reasonablereflection of resource availability, it’s offset bythree other variables (fertilizer consumption, pes-ticide use, and industrial organic pollutants per

46

unit of available freshwater) that are generallycorrelated with increased—not decreased—resource availability. Accordingly, that indicator isworthless as a reflection of resource availability.

217. The variables for this index include a stylized“technology achievement index,” a “technologyinnovation index,” and mean years of education.This index is only marginally useful because anation does not have to invent its own technolo-gies to take advantage of advances or innovationsin other, more scientifically advanced nations.

218. Eight variables go into this “environmentalgovernance” index: data from surveys regardingregulatory enforcement practices, land under“protected status,” the number of state guidelinesissued to private industries, the amount of forest-land being protected from “unsustainable” uses,the control of corruption, the ratio of gasolineprices to the international average, subsidies forenergy and materials use, and subsidies to thecommercial fishing sector. Ibid., table 3, p. 8.Although such an index would be useful, conta-minating it with assumptions about the relativeecological value of public versus private lands,fuel taxes, and biases toward certain kinds of reg-ulatory approaches rather than others renders itnot particularly helpful.

219. See Taylor and VanDoren, “Evaluating theCase for Renewable Energy.”

220. See for instance Robert L. Bradley Jr.,“Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green,’” CatoInstiute Policy Analysis no. 280, August 27, 1997;and Howard Hayden, The Solar Fraud: Why SolarEnergy Won’t Run the World (Pueblo West, Colo.:Vales Lake Publishing, 2001).

221. Murray Feshbach and Alfred Friendly Jr.,Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature under Siege(New York: Basic Books, 1992).

222. For a review of the health and environmentalproblems posed by horse transport, see Joel Tarr,"The Horse: Polluter of the City," in The Search forthe Ultimate Sink: Urban Pollution in HistoricalPerspective (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press,1996); Martin Milosi, Garbage in the Cities: Refuse,Reform, and the Environment 1880–1980 (Chicago:Dorsey Press, 1988); Edwin Burrows and MikeWallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898(Oxford: Oxford University Press: 1999), p. 787;Thomas DeGregori, A Theory of Technology (Ames:Iowa State University Press, 1985), pp. 182–83; M.G. Lay and James Vance Jr., Ways of the World: AHistory of the World's Roads and of the Vehicles That UsedThem (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UniversityPress, 1992), pp. 131–32; and “America'sHighways, 1776 to 1976: Pollution in the Horse

and Buggy Era,” Federal Highway Administration,U.S. Department of Transportation, 1976.

An excerpt from the FHWA report (p. 366) isindicative: “As the number of horses multipliedthey began to be denounced as polluters of theenvironment in harsh terms similar to thoseapplied to automobiles today. Nineteenth centuryurban life generally moved at the pace of horse -drawn transportation. Evidence of the horse couldnot be missed. It was seen in the piles of manure lit-tering the streets, attracting swarms of flies andcreating a stench, and in the numerous livery sta-bles that let loose an odor that could only mean‘horse.’ . . . Carcasses added another dimension tothe smells and swarms of flies. In 1880 New YorkCity removed some 15,000 dead horses from itsstreets, and Chicago carted away 10,000 horses aslate as 1912. Because of this problem the cities con -stantly feared epidemics of cholera, smallpox, yel-low fever, or typhoid. Medical authorities blamedthe spread of these diseases on filth in the atmos-phere and believed that the horse was the chiefoffender. . . . Even in 1908 Appleton's Magazine in anarticle “The Horse v. Health” blamed most of thesanitary and economic problems of cities on thehorse. The article calculated that the horse prob-lem cost New York City some $100 million eachyear. . . . The solution to these problems, criticsagreed, was the horseless carriage. As the motor carand the truck began to replace the horse, benefitswere clearly seen. Streets were cleaner, pollutionfrom manure was diminished, the number of fliesdropped, goods were transported more cheaplyand more efficiently, and traffic moved faster. Bythe early part of this century, the advantages of themotor vehicle over the horse were accepted in near-ly every quarter.”

223. Goklany and Sprague, pp. 4–5.

224. The calculation is actually quite conservative.It assumes that productivity on pre-1961 landscould have been maintained without additionaltechnological improvements and that new agricul-tural lands would have been, on average, as pro-ductive as pre-1961 lands. Both assumptions areimprobable. Goklany, “Saving Habitat,” p. 941.

225. Jesse Ausubel, "Can Technology Spare theEarth? American Scientist 84, 1996, pp. 166–178,cited in ibid.

226. Beside the fact that the findings produced byWackernagel et al. poorly reflect the phenomenonthey purport to measure, their use by the authorsof the 2002 “Environmental Sustainability Index”double counts the CO2 emissions and land-usedata already incorporated in their index.

227. Membership in the World Business Councilfor Sustainable Development, for instance,

47

denotes support for a policy agenda generally atodds with the conclusions of this study. “2002Environmental Sustainability Index,” table 3, p. 8.

228. Variables that fall under this categoryinclude the number of domestic firms that arecertified in compliance with “ISO 14001” stan-dards, the number of domestic firms that are apart of the “Dow Jones Sustainability GroupIndex,” and the average “EcoValue” rating ofdomestic companies. Ibid.

229. The variable used is IUCN (the WorldConservation Union, a coalition of various non-governmental organizations active on environ-mental issues) member organizations per millionpopulation. Ibid.

230. Variables include the number of memberships inintergovernmental environmental organizations; thepercentage of CITES (the Convention onInternational Trade in Endangered Species of WildFauna and Flora) reporting requirements met; thelevel of participation in the UN Climate ChangeConvention, the Montreal Protocol multilateral fund(which pertains to the use and release of ozone-deplet-ing chemicals), and the UN Global EnvironmentalFacility; and compliance with miscellaneous interna-tional environmental agreements. Ibid.

231. Ibid., p. 5.

232. Ibid., p. 6. For a summary of the methodolo-gy used, see ibid., pp. 52–55.

233. Ibid., p. 18.

234. Ibid., table 1, p. 3.

235. Mohan Munasinghe and Wilfredo Cruz,“Economywide Policies and the Environment:Lessons from Experience,” World Bank Environ-ment Paper no. 10 Washington, D.C., 1995.

236. Ibid.

237. For a good review of the literature under-scoring the importance of economic liberaliza-tion for sustainable development, see Pearce andWarford, pp. 173–93, 217–32, 235–58.

238. Munasinghe and Cruz, p. 2.

239. Ibid., p. 15.

240. World Resources Institute et al., WorldResources 1994–95 (New York: Oxford UniversityPress, 1994) p. 74.

241. Environmentally destructive subsidies areestimated at between $700 billion and $2 trillionworldwide. Vijay Vaitheeswaran, “How Many

Planets? A Survey of the Global Environment,”The Economist, July 6, 2002, Special Insert, p. 16.

242. Mikhail Bernstam, The Wealth of Nations andthe Environment (London: Institute of EconomicAffairs, 1991).

243. Pearce and Warford, p. 219.

244. See, for example, Yongyuth Chalamwongand Gershon Feder, “Land Ownership Securityand Land Values in Rural Thailand,” World Bank,Working Paper 790, 1986; Gershon Feder andRaymond Noronha, “Land Rights Systems andAgricultural Development in Sub-Sahara Africa,”World Bank Research Observer 2, no. 2 (1987):143–69; and Pearce and Warford, pp. 30–31.

245. Ibid., p. 24.

246. El-Ashry, p. 20.

247. Ibid., p. 2.

248. Ibid., pp. 2–3.

249. Ibid., p. 3

250. Ibid., p. 27.

251. Chisholm, Hartley, and Porter, pp. 32–33.

252. For a review of common administrative andpolitical problems facing environmental regula-tors in the developing world, see J. Eugene Gibsonand Faith Halther, “Strengthening Environmen-tal Law in Developing Countries,” Environment36, no. 1 (January/February 1994): 40–43.

253. Munasinghe and Cruz, p. 26.

254. World Resources Institute, World Resources1998–99, p. 91.

255. Keith Schneider, “Unbending RegulationsIncite Move to Alter Pollution Laws,” New YorkTimes, November 29, 1993, p. A1; Tom Tietenberg,Environmental and Resource Economics, 3d ed. (NewYork: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 360–421; andThomas Schelling, Incentives for EnvironmentalProtection (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983).

256. Ibid.

257 Ibid.

258. For a brief summary of the environmentalarguments against free trade, see Hilary French,“Reconciling Trade and the Environment,” inState of the World 1993, ed. Lester Brown (New York:W.W. Norton, November 1993), pp. 158–79; andHerman Daly, “The Perils of Free Trade,” Scientific

48

American 269, no. 5 (November 1993): 50–57.

259. Goklany, “Saving Habitat,” p. 946.

260. Ibid.

261. FAO, The State of the World's Forests, 1997, citedin ibid.

262. Pearce and Warford, p. 191.

263. Goklany, “Saving Habitat,” p. 943.

264. Indur Goklany, “Strategies to EnhanceAdaptability: Technological Change, SustainableGrowth, and Free Trade,” in Climate Change(Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers,1995), vol. 30, p. 441.

265. For example, overseas competition is widelythought to have speeded up the introduction ofautomobile tailpipe controls and more fuel-effi-cient vehicles in the United States. E. P. Seskin,“Automobile Air Pollution Policy,” in CurrentIssues in U.S. Environmental Policy, ed. Paul Portney(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1978), pp. 68–104; and I. G. Barbour, Technology,Environment, and Human Values (New York:Praeger, 1980), cited in Goklany “Strategies toEnhance Adapt-ability,” p. 442.

266. Pearce and Warford, p. 227.

267. Ibid., pp. 228–29.

268. Ibid., p. 213.

269. Ibid.

270. El-Ashry, p. 20.

271. See generally the publications of theCompetitive Enterprise Institute documenting

the success of private conservation and its superi-ority to command-and-control approaches,www.cei.org/sections/section35.cfm.

272. “A major policy failure leading to land degrada-tion is insecure land title.” Global EnvironmentOutlook 3, p. 74. See also Pearce and Warford, p. 279.

273. Rice, Guillison, and Reid, p. 47.

274. Ibid.

275. For a discussion of the implications of thatobservation, see Shmuel Amir, “The Environmen-tal Cost of Sustainable Welfare,” DiscussionPaper QE92-17-REV, Resources for the Future,Washington, D.C., September 1992.

276. World Resources 1998–99, data table 8.2, p. 259.

277. Ibid., p. 8.

278. Global Environment Outlook 3, p. 211.

279. Ibid., p. 159.

280. See generally Osterfeld as well as DavidLandes, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why SomeAre So Rich and Some Are So Poor (New York: W.W.Norton, 1998); Nathan Rosenberg and L. E.Birdzell Jr., How the West Grew Rich: TheTransformation of the Industrial World (New York:Basic Books, 1986); and The Revolution inDevelopment Economics, James Dorn, Steve Hanke,and Alan Walters, eds. (Washington: CatoInstitute, 1998).

281. Chisholm, Hartley, and Porter, p. 19.

282. William Mellor III, letter to the editor, PolicyReview (Winter 1990): 7.

283. Munasinghe and Cruz, p. 7.

49

Published by the Cato Institute, Policy Analysis is a regular series evaluating government policies and offer-ing proposals for reform. Nothing in Policy Analysis should be construed as necessarily reflecting the viewsof the Cato Institute or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before congress. Contact theCato Institute for reprint permission. Additional copies of Policy Analysis are $6.00 each ($3.00 each for fiveor more). To order, or for a complete listing of available studies, write the Cato Institute, 1000 MassachusettsAve., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001, call toll free 1-800-767-1241 (noon - 9 p.m. eastern time), fax (202) 842-3490, or visit our website at www.cato.org.