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“We still think of air as free.  But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water.  The price tag on pollution control is high.  Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.”

--President Richard M. Nixon

Asking is the worst possible way to find out what someone values.  If you really want to know what someone believes, don’t ask them, watch them.  What you spend your time doing, what you spend your money buying, what you spend your energy daydreaming about, these are the things you cherish.  These are your values.  These are your Gods.  We all claim we have a certain set of principles, a certain theology, but what we say is invariably different in some fundamental ways from what we do, and it is not what we say, but what we do which reflects what we really believe.

This is as true of groups of people as it is for individuals. 

There are frequently political clamorings for government to have to balance its budget because “We have to live within our means, why shouldn’t the federal government?”  The disconnect in this statement never quite seems to percolate through to our cultural awareness… Do individuals really have to live within their means?  Are they doing so?  And what does “live within our means” really mean?  Is it as simple as a calculation of financial ways and means, or is there more to the equation? 

After all, the American obesity epidemic really comes down to people not living within our means, consuming far more calories in Big Macs than we are expending via getting out and exercising.   There are other debts besides monetary debts, and we are collectively running up huge deficits in more ways than we can possibly keep track of.

Do Americans simply not care about social inequality, ecological devastation, obesity, and impending economic devastation?  Expressions of concern are almost universal, crossing all party and philosophical lines – Ronald Reagan bowed to public sentiment and joined “Hands Across America” – clearly, though there are serious disagreements about methods, objectives are fairly universal – we all agree with the beauty pageant contestants who clamor for their one wish, world peace.

People do care about social inequity and natural resource iniquity; they simply don’t see.  Why not?  The inescapable conclusion when observing the sociological and ecological components of the American economy is that Americans do not value balance, because our collective actions have been so thoroughly unbalanced for so long.  So why the dissonance?  How can someone driving a gas-guzzling sport utility vehicle, clearly oblivious to their economic, ecological and social budget busting, have the wisdom to say the federal government ought not spend more money than it possesses?

The best possible explanation is that a fallacy inherited from neoclassical economics dominates our collective consciousness.  The neoclassical Venn diagram for discussion of sustainability shows “Social”, “Environmental” and “Economic” components of development as top level spheres, with the union of the three being the shaded “Sustainable” area.  Where only “Social” and “Environmental” unite, you have “Bearable” conditions; where only “Social” and “Economic” unite, you have “Equitable” conditions, and where “Environmental” and “Economic” concerns unite, you have “Viable” conditions.  Thus, in the neoclassical model, the center, the united “Sustainable” area, represents a compromise between these three entities.

This model is tidy, which neoclassicists appreciate, but it is fundamentally flawed.  A more accurate picture shows that “Environment” is the top level sphere; “Society” is not a separate sphere, but a subset of “Environment”.  “Economy” is a subset of “Society”.  Talk of united concerns between any of these three aspects misses the point entirely – there are no economic concerns which do not impact society and the environment; neither are there any social concerns which do not impact the environment.

All economics are social; all economics are environmental; all social exchange is environmental.

The relevant question, then, is not whether social and environmental concerns should be part of our thinking about economic issues, but rather are we willing to accept that economics ought by order of precedence to be the lowest level concern?  Environmental and social issues take precedence because if either of those spheres collapse, they will by nature take the economy out with them. 

Witness what happens to local economies during environmental or social catastrophes – who can do business in the middle of a hurricane, wildfire, tornado or earthquake?  Who can do business in the middle of a riot?  Where is the free market during protests and counterprotests?

Acceptance of this basic tenet leads to a wholesale rejection of common wisdom on a host of contemporary concerns.  “We have to increase domestic production of oil,” for example, is a fallacy accepted by most of the philosophical spectrum in American politics.  The justifications for drilling for oil in environmentally sensitive areas come down to economic independence and security against instrusions of socially unacceptable foreign enemies – the hegemony of OPEC nations strikes most Americans as being more important than biodiversity or global warming.

We do not, however, have to increase domestic production of oil.  Economic growth is not our primary concern; environmental security is our primary concern, and the petrochemical industry has demonstrated quite clearly for the entirety of its existence that it is incapable of coexisting peacefully with the environment.

Pursuit of economic growth through energy consumption has lead to irreversible climate change, has polluted our water supplies, has killed off several ecospheres, has put carcinogenic hydrocarbons in the food chain and has, in short, drastically lessened the survivability of contemporary social structures based on a consumption-driven economy.

Drilling for more oil, in other words, doesn’t make us safer; it makes us immeasurably less safe, both in terms of the immediate environmental dangers inherent in climate change, etc., but also in terms of the social and economic strains which will become inevitable as the results of unsustainable consumption manifest themselves.

The World Wide Fund for Nature, in their 2008 “Living Planet Report” summarized the dangers:

“Humanity’s demand on the planet’s living resources, its Ecological Footprint, now exceeds the planet’s regenerative capacity by about 30 per cent.  This global overshoot is growing and, as a consequence, ecosystems are being run down and waste is accumulating in the air, land and water.  The resulting deforestation, water shortages, declining biodiversity and climate change are putting the well-being and development of all nations at increasing risk.”

“But we have to have oil, so it’s better if we have American oil,” the argument goes.  This is nothing more than saying we ought to only impale ourselves on hirikiri knives manufactured in Pennsylvania, because the steelworkers there should take precedence over Japanese knifemakers.  We’re just as dead regardless of where the knives (or oil) are produced.

An ecological economist looking at the initially described problem – insufficient energy exists in order to meet the demands of the economy –would ask several different questions:

• Can the energy demands be mitigated (ie, what energy conservation methods need to be tried first)?  
• What sustainable methods for delivering these energy needs can be substituted for the unsustainable method of burning fossil fuels?  
• Are there opportunities to localize energy production to the specific places where energy consumption will be occurring?  
• Can those primarily responsible for consuming the energy be made more directly invested in the creation of that energy so as to reduce impact on those who are not consumers?

“That doesn’t sound like economics to me,” say the more mathematically and statistically grounded critics.  “It sounds like philosophy or even theology.”

There is some merit to this argument; ecological economists make no secret of the need to inject values statements into economic writing.  However, they further point out that neoclassical economics may claim to be a “positive” (empirical or evidential) science, but it is inescapably “normative” (values laden), which goes a long way towards explaining how the same data set can be used to defend so vigorously diametrically opposed ideas such as laissez-faire capitalism and determinist Marxism. 

All economic theories with any sort of following have of necessity at some point demonstrated strong predictive abilities which have garnered intellectual agreement among various students and researchers; however, the diversity of theories can only be explained by means of a differentiating grid, and in the case of theoretical frameworks, that differentiation comes in the form of normative “ought” statements, not positive “is” statements.

Which leads us back to our original premise – we value that which we pursue.  Evelyn Waugh wrote in The Razor’s Edge that “anyone can be a saint on a mountaintop.”  The true test of ethical systems lay in which hard choices adherents are willing to make.  Paying a little extra for the organic fruits and vegetables raised with fair trade practices, for example, seems like a sacrifice, but it is a far more ethical decision than selecting the lower priced alternatives which really represent a subsidy for laziness and sloppiness, a subsidy paid by future generations. 

Your great-grandchildren, in other words, will be paying more for everything because you just had to have that gas-guzzling SUV, that extra Big Mac, that brand new iPhone, that vacation at Disney, and on and on.

Do we want to continue to pursue economic growth at all costs?  Or are we willing to start putting our money where our mouths are?  Because ultimately, ethical behavior will mean we must consciously decide we are going to be satisfied with less.  If we truly care about future generations, we will decide that quality of life is far more important than quantity of dollars produced.

Ultimately, we have to decide we will pursue development, but not growth.  This means investing in technologies which produce non-polluting outputs using significantly fewer resources, none of which are non-renewable, and doing so across all sectors of the economy.  “Smaller is better” needs to replace “supersize me” in every aspect of our lives.

Heck, Myrtle isn’t even our biggest chicken.  The meek shall inherit the Earth; let’s just make sure it’s worth inheriting, okay?

Happy farming!