Sustainable development as a term came into its own with the 1987 publication of the Brundtland Report. Brundtland herself was a Norwegian Socialist, and the report itself showed that influence. For example, reminiscent of earlier, flawed analysis by the Club of Rome, the report looked to replace existing energy usage with "green power", claiming that energy was being used in an unsustainable way.
DEVELOPMENT AND RESOURCE DEPLETION
The Club of Rome projected forward usage rates of different minerals and combined these projections with existing proven reserves. The result was an apparent unsustainable level of usage and a looming depletion of a great many of the world's resources. We were, for example to run out of oil in 1992, of lead in 1993 and of aluminium (based on one of the world's most abundant raw materials) by 2003.
Absurd though these predictions turned out to be, they created a whole environmental industry that continues to prophesy "The End of the World is Nigh" but just moves the dates forward for each new cohort of wide-eyed gullibles. Thus, Paul Ehrlich, a high priest in the environmental movement, realizing in the 1980s that oil remained plentiful, put the oil crisis back to the 1990s. Environmentalists who pay inadequate attention to the interconnectedness of people's wants and their wherewithal to pay for them often make such basic errors. The fact is that when goods become scarce their price rises and this leads to them being used more sparingly, a search for new sources and a search for substitutes. This process applies to environmental services just as it does to the resources we use.
SUSTAINABILITY AND OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES
While physical limits to the supply of many materials remains, during the 1990s the focus of concern shifted to the alleged conflict between environmental "goods and services" and the private goods and services that make up our conventionally-described living standards. That focus has a great many dimensions. These include loss of environmental values due to human pressures on the environment; among other features, these values are said to include:
depletion of forests and agricultural land; air pollution; species loss; and catastrophic environmental outcomes said to follow from a global warming largely due to burning fossil fuels. Examination of these dimensions of environmental sustainability demonstrates that the worries are misplaced, or that the only conflict between them and development is a result of poor political institutions. The latter were most notably evident in the former socialist countries, where considerable environmental damage accompanied such economic development as took place. Among the Socialist states, urban pollution was the worst in the world, forests had been severely depleted, seas poisoned, and increasing amounts of land were being brought under cultivation without accompanying increases in food output.
Observing such outcomes and contrasting them to those in countries like Australia provide the key to understanding how economic development and an environmentally sustainable outcomes are not only compatible but are mutually reinforcing.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT WITH AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
Private ownership provides good incentives for conservation and careful usage for many of the reasons that explain why privately owned houses are better cared for than those owned by the government. Ownership confers a personal benefit, which is optimised by combining usage and conservation. If someone owns in perpetuity a timbered area of land they will harvest and resuscitate the timber to maximise its value. If they have no on-going rights they will harvest it as quickly as possible. Not to do so would mean no gain since others would take the value.
Australian forest areas have tended to increase over the past 100 years. Until recently this reflected the value of the wood for commercial purposes. This conservation force is being undermined by the reduced security in such ownership brought about by Regional Forest Agreements (or rather governments' ready willingness to overturn them). Future conservation will rely increasingly on reserving forests from woodcutting, with the accent on preservation rather than conservation and a likelihood of forest degradation by severe fire.
Private ownership also is responsible for the increase in Australian agricultural productivity. In the past forty years, Australia's farm production has increased by 130 per cent. Performance in other countries has been comparable. Table 1 offers some quantification of this in Australia.
Average % Increase in Annual Volume of Farm Output
1951-1962: 4.0
1962-1972: 3.5
1972-1982: 1.0
1977/8-1998/9: 2.6
Source: ABARE
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND SPECIES CONSERVATION
In terms of extinctions, since European settlement of Australia some 20 mammals have become extinct and 97 plant species are also known to be extinct. While any species loss is a matter of regret, two factors need to be considered. First, the extent of the loss comprises about 7 per cent of the pre-European mammals and a tiny fraction of the 25,000 plant and 40,000-plus other vegetation species identified in Australia. The mammalian loss was not caused by deliberate extirpation but as a consequence of new species. The previous isolation of Australia made it inevitable that native species would be vulnerable to competition from new strains. Other isolated areas like Hawaii and the south west of the US suffered comparable species loss.
Secondly, species loss occurred in the period prior to 1920. In that period, the premium on species preservation was much weaker than it is today. If it has not been arrested, species loss has certainly been considerably reduced in recent decades. This casts doubt on the estimates of future loss ("3329 plant categories threatened" and an estimated "50% of Australia's woodland birds will become extinct") in an ACF/NFF report.
URBAN POLLUTION
Urban pollution has been radically reduced over the past century. This outcome has been maintained over the more recent decades. Thus, in Melbourne the EPA reports that nitrogen dioxide levels halved from the early 1980s, carbon monoxide levels fell by one third, and ozone levels by 40 per cent. Most other cities in the developed world experienced comparable improvements. These reflect several factors including the general reduction in heavy industry and its associated pollution with higher living standards, and the greater affordability of mandated pollution standards.
GLOBAL WARMING
More intractable than these matters is the possibility of catastrophic global warming as a result of human activity. The possibility of this is far from proven. Indeed, the only reliable tracking of world temperatures, the NASA satellite data, show only a trivial temperature trend over the 22 years it has been available.
The greenhouse effect has spawned a considerable regulatory apparatus, globally and nationally. Yet, hardly any country is reducing the level of its greenhouse (mainly carbon dioxide) emissions along the lines agreed to at Kyoto in 1997 -- and even meeting the Kyoto targets would have a negligible effect on any man-made warming that might be taking place.
In the event that there is a need to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide the outlook is for much higher prices for energy (with attendant losses of real income). Perhaps these outcomes would be cushioned by vast increases in nuclear power if that proved politically acceptable in those countries like Australia which continue to resist this form of energy. It is most unlikely that sufficient cost breakthroughs will be available to allow (politically correct) solar-based energy to fill the gap. In any event, should greenhouse be seen to be likely, a resilient economy provides the best means of coping with the reduced income levels it may require.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
Development has been and can remain sustainable. The world's environmental resources are vast. Human impingement upon these resources creates its own antidote where the resources are valued by humans as long as our ownership structures allow ways that valued environmental resources can profitably be traded for other goods and services.
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