environmental sustainability

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

One of my relatives asked me: >>As an economist, what do you think of the
"sustainability" idea that's even coming out of the White House now?  <<

I answered:

>Frankly, I don't listen to the White House very often.

>Sustainability, however,is a good idea. We don't want to rape the earth,
since that eventually means that we can't continue to raise living
standards (to the extent that we have done so, which is much less than
meets the eye).

>The problem is that the White House's version of "sustainability" is
likely not be very sustainable, since Clinton and his buddies emphasize
market solutions to all problems, which typically don't work. (It's
important to ignore the hot air flowing from that direction and look at
what they do.) Further, instead of using the government's surplus to invest
in the future -- or to actually run a deficit in order to invest in the
future, the way businesses do -- the Clinton/Gore emphasis is to "pay down"
the government's debt (to run surpluses). The government is the major
institution in the US that doesn't follow the market incentive to go for
what pays off _now_ for individuals; it's the major institution that can do
investment for the nation -- or world -- as a whole. That takes money! It's
not free. But the Clinton people don't want to do this kind of investment.

>The Clinton administration also didn't go along with the world treaty on
global warming. Obviously, a lot of this is due to the pressure from the
GOP, but the administration is subject to many of the same political
pressures that the GOP is. It wants to keep Wall Street happy, among other
things.

>Probably Bush would be even worse (if that's possible), but maybe his
election would ignite fires under the Democrat's behinds, so they'd
actually fight for something good for a change.

>Frankly, I think that the more votes that Nader gets, the more the
electorate is signalling to the politicians that environmental issues are
important. <
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine