Values and Assumptions Embedded in Sustainable Development

In the last few blogs I’ve focused attention on the assumptions and values hiding behind the Tea Party critique of sustainable development.  Here I focus attention on the assumptions and values hiding behind sustainable development.   I do this because I believe being open, honest, and reflective about values creates opportunities for self-learning and mutual respect.

Sustainability advocates, like the Tea Partiers, are not one homogenous bunch, so the following generalizations do not apply equally to every advocate of sustainable development.  But, more often than not, sustainability advocates tend to:

– Err on the side of precaution

– Advocate equity and wealth redistribution

– Be communitarians

– Find value in both nature and humans

Err on the side of precaution:

–       Advocates of sustainable development believe scientific reports of degraded environmental conditions (i.e., climate change, ocean fisheries collapse, biodiversity decline, toxic pollution).  They are grounded in ecological science, and therefore see the biosphere as dense, complicated, and unpredictable sets of connections among resources, energy, species, organisms, and ecosystem processes that make up the biosphere and create conditions conducive to human life.  They also accept from ecological science that ecological systems are nonlinear, and if jolted too much by human actions, can “flip” or change dramatically to an entirely different set of conditions, which likely will not be as conducive to thriving human civilization.  That is, they see a clear and present danger, one deserving robust and immediate response, even actions that challenge life styles and standards of living that have come to be accepted and expected by many Americans.

–       They accept US Census population projections that there will be about 150 million more people in the US—approximately a 50% increase—by 2050.  This rapid and dramatic increase in a relatively short amount of time will strain our decaying infrastructure.  We will be growing, they say, so let’s do it smartly.  We will be developing, so let’s do it sustainably. They believe sustainable development and smart growth planning efforts provide the best tools for using our limited financial and natural resources to welcome our new neighbors.

–       Sustainable development advocates also tend to be more cautious in their expectations that technological advancements will solve today’s pressing problems.   The search for safe, clean, abundant energy has proved elusive and even the most optimistic scenarios still require massive increases in our use of polluting, politically destabilizing, and climate changing fossil fuels.  The Green Revolution in agriculture that fed a doubling world population during the last 50 years seems to have run its course.  Soil infertility, rising cost of fertilizers, water shortages, and climate change pose huge challenges for food security, especially as the world’s rising middle class switch to high-calorie, meat-oriented diets.

–       Sustainability development advocates are more likely to accept that Creation Care is a religious duty, that Earth was put here by God for humans to steward not exploit, that God’s promise that He will provide does not absolve us from cautious and careful stewardship of resources, and that any material action we take, whether to purchase a new TV, fill up a tank of gas, or flip on an electric light, emits pollutants and degrades the environment in ways that causes harm where the pollution and degradation occurs and must be interpreted through the Golden Rule: do onto others as you would have them do onto you.  I am not suggesting that sustainable development advocates have less faith in God than Tea Party advocates, but I am suggesting that their interpretations of their responsibilities differ.

Equity and wealth redistribution

–       Sustainability advocates are deeply troubled by global poverty, by extreme conditions that seem to trap people and regions in poverty.  Billions of people live on just a few dollars a day and have limited access to clean drinking water, adequate sanitation, reliable food, employment opportunities, or dignity. While wonderful progress has been and is being made in many regions, the progress for others has stalled, never materialized, or reversed, and that seems unacceptable when there is so much wealth in the world.  Resource exploitation, colonialism, and climate changing gas emissions produced much of the world’s financial wealth.  They also worsened and will worsen conditions of people living in poverty.  With wealth comes responsibility.  Yes, welfare and foreign aid programs deserve critique, but nothing justifies abandonment of those in need.

–       Nationally, the widening gap between rich and poor is problematic. The parallel trends of massive unemployment among the working class and sky rocketing wealth among the moneyed class are creating serious tensions.  The solutions are not obvious, but I sense that advocates of sustainable development are more disposed towards Keynesian economic philosophy and policies, which see a major role for government investment.

Communitarianism over individualism

–       This value system is a tricky one to navigate.  Charges of socialism and communism resonate loudly with a baby boomer population conditioned to fear the Soviet menace.  As children we held drills during school, at least I did growing up outside DC, to practice climbing under our desks whenever sirens sounded for protection from rockets fired by communists.  That sort of experience leaves marks on the psyche that can be exploited with rhetoric that pushes buttons to trigger emotions.

–       I can find no evidence from my many, many conversations with advocates of sustainable development that they are socialist, communists, Marxist, or as some misguided critics claim, Nazis.  They do NOT advocate state ownership and management OF all property.  They are patriotic Americans.  They cherish liberty and freedom.  They appreciate entrepreneurship and celebrate individual achievement.  They applaud the rags to riches American Dream.  They believe in democracy and the critical and cherished role of educated, citizens acting freely as individuals to influence our shared future.

–       They also see the pressures seven billion humans are exerting on our life-support system.  They have seen or believe reports of repeated tragedies of the commons where individual actions, unconstrained by shared governance, have completely destroyed ecological systems that once provided people with abundant food, resources, beauty and solace.  They therefore believe that it is in our enlightened self-interests to impose restraints on some of our behaviors.  Like Tea Partiers, they recognize the inefficiencies and corruptibility of government, but they nonetheless accept the need for shared governance in determining the limits that need to be placed on individual actions and market forces.  Rather than see government as a problem, they accept it as an imperfect solution that needs our investment, attention, and participation.

–       They believe that membership in a community gives you access to its resources, rights, and privileges.  But with membership comes responsibilities.  You must agree to rules and norms of the community. If not, you get punished or expelled.  The United States, like every community, struggles to find the right balance between individual rights and community conformance.  Sustainability advocates and Tea Partiers would agree that the US should err on the side of protecting individual rights.  However, when some individual actions threaten the community, as sustainable development advocates believe is currently the case, then the community must act to restrict those rights and control those actions.  So, advocates of sustainable development feel it is time to rebalance and restrict some rights and liberties in order to protect the community.  To critique sustainable development with the argument that it privileges the community over individual rights makes no sense.  All communities impose conditions on their members, even communities that don’t practice sustainable development; otherwise you don’t have a community, you have anarchy.  The more important question about sustainable development is whether the proposed threats to our community warrant curtailment to individual rights, and if so, how do we go about it in ways that best respect individual liberties and rights.  To advocates of sustainable development, the curtailment of rights in the name of Homeland Security are a greater cause for concern.

Nature’s rights versus human rights

–       The relationship between humans and nature is a defining characteristic of  civilization and a source for philosophical debates echoing down the ages.  How we treat and value our environment reflects who we are as a people. Is nature valueless without human work, ingenuity, and attention or does it have inherent value that exists independent of humanity?  Does every organism have a right to life, or do only humans?  Is nature limitless and will God always provide what is needed for humans to be fruitful and multiply?  Or, does God value nature independently of humans and expect us to exercise dominion over it and help it thrive, like he exercises dominion over us?

–       I hear some advocates of sustainable development answer these questions in ways that clearly assign values to nature that exist independently of humans.  These values may come from God, or not.  Many of the values embedded in arguments for conservation of biological diversity and preservation of wilderness, for example, make explicit reference to the inherent value of species and a spiritual connection to God’s Cathedral.

–       Do advocates of sustainability value nature more than humans, or do they simply not care about people?  Bumper stickers with slogans such as “Save the World; Kill Yourself” justifiably raise concerns about priorities.  Some organizations such as Earth First! do claim to be misanthropic defenders of Earth, with goals to end nature-destroying modern civilization.  But these groups are not part of the sustainable development movement.  Sustainable development has as its goal the sustainable development of humanity and earth.