The Left's 'Sustainability Con' :: Political News and commentaries

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January 18, 2012

The Left's 'Sustainability Con'

Ron Ross has a piece today at The American Spectator on what he calls the endless streams of gibberish and pseudo-science from the well-established neo-Malthusian establishment. He's referring to the left's use of the issue of "sustainability," and how they use it to enlarge the government's control over our lives. He points out the way it happens, its all too familiar pattern, and how it always results in reducing everyone's freedom and giving more centralized power and control to the federal government. It's a pattern you'll recognize right away, and by now we all should have reached the point of realizing that it's always a ruse, a con, a snow job ... yet somehow, we always manage to let them get away with it.

Ross writes:

The way it's happening follows an all too familiar pattern.

There are several common ingredients in how the left enlarges its control over our lives. The first is the selection of some aspect of reality -- global warming, carbon footprints, population growth, inequality, diversity, for example. The second element involves designating the selected aspect of reality as a crisis. The third step is to explain that the only way to avoid Armageddon is by reducing everyone's freedom and by giving more centralized power and control to those who understand the magnitude of the crisis. The rest of us are told that our freedoms are a luxury we simply can no longer afford.

Another common element of the process is defining the crisis as ambiguously as possible. Ordinarily, a desirable characteristic of a definition is that it draws a bright line between what is included and what isn't. Clarity, however, is contrary to the objectives of the crusaders -- in regard to defining the problem, the slipperier the better. For example, climate change (or climate disruption) beats global warming. Global warming is too quantifiable in comparison to climate change. No one is quite sure what "climate change" is or isn't or how it can be measured. Sustainability is even more ambiguous than climate change and thus has more sustainability as a ruse.

Ideally the designated crisis is as expansive and open-ended as possible. A vague, loosely defined crisis provides politicians and bureaucrats with what amounts to a blank check or a no-limit credit card, a credit card where someone else gets sent the bill. A problem having no clear definition is a problem without borders.

... Academic papers on the topic of sustainability often include such concepts as "intergenerational equity" and "inter-temporal welfare." The left somehow manages to insert its obsession with inequality into every imaginable issue. Inequality is not only a problem at a point in time, but also between time periods.

So, just what is 'sustainability,' anyway? Ross explains:

It is actually an old concept that has once again been warmed over for the umpteenth time. Sustainability is simply the latest incarnation of Malthusianism. Writing in 1798, Thomas Malthus warned that England's population growth was going to outstrip its available endowment of resources such as agricultural land and coal. The specter that Malthus described was summarized as population increases geometrically, food increases arithmetically. Based on that logic, starvation and suffering were seen as inevitable. Malthus, in other words, was saying that England's economic growth was not sustainable. It was that profoundly pessimistic theory that resulted in economics being described as "the dismal science." England, of course, has gone on to experience over 200 years of historically unprecedented economic growth.

... Obviously, Malthus's predictions did not come to pass. Why not? Malthus's error, in a nutshell, was failing to appreciate the impact of an increasing stock of knowledge and the resulting technological revolution. The sustainability crusade is wrong for essentially the same reasons Malthus was wrong.

Take the time to read the whole thing. Of particular interest is his discussion on a close relative of 'sustainable' -- the term "renewable" -- and how the left's obsession with 'renewability' has resulted in so many of our silliest and costliest public policies (when in the history of civilization have we actually exhausted or totally depleted any significant resource? The answer is never).

Posted by Hyscience at January 18, 2012 8:15 AM

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