‘Sustainability’ May Leave Our Children Lots of Options (Commentary)

Sustainability is both a conceptual framework for evaluating our choices and a wedge issue that evokes an emotional response often disproportionate to the true impact of any policy that follows.

Underlying the idea of sustainability is a sense of fairness to future generations or “intergenerational equity.” We see this phenomenon periodically articulated in the media when a representative of one generation says they are concerned that their children will not enjoy the standard of living that they have enjoyed. Of course leaving our posterity a world with less opportunity and promise than we inherited seems, and frankly is, unfair.

As a parent I share this concern but as an economist, the question of how to achieve fairness across generations is considerably more complicated than it is presented by either side in the public debate.

The problem is that “standard of living” is beauty in the eye of the beholder. That is, my lifetime happiness depends on the stuff I like and how much of it I get. Moreover, “stuff” does not simply imply goods and services to consume. It is a much broader idea.

The stuff I like is the stuff I like, but I owned a pet rock when I was eight and I cannot envision the circumstances under which my children would want a pet rock. If only they enjoyed the same stuff I like and we could find a way so they could get as much of it as I did, that would be sustainability in action.

To make matters worse, I have to admit I am not sure what my kids want today much less what they will want as 45-year-old adults. This truth is painfully evident as I watch them open their Christmas presents.

So how do we enact policies that ensure we are not living high on the hog at the expense of our children when we don’t even know what it is they will want, much less what their children will want? The simple fact is we can’t possibly know.

So what do we owe them? What would make it fair?

Obviously we can’t leave them the stuff they will want in quantities great enough to ensure they will be as happy living on the planet as we were.

To make matters worse the population is expanding. Attempting to provide an expanding population enough stuff to achieve our living standards when resources are in many cased fixed in supply or dwindling is a tall order.

Again, the question arises, “What do we owe them?”

The answer is the best we can do is leave them the same choices that we enjoyed. This is helpful in determining how to incorporate sustainability into the decision-making criteria by which we create public policy and make resource-utilization decisions.

If our actions preclude our children from having the same choices we enjoyed, we have fundamentally reduced their potential happiness. Again, we can’t know what they will want, but if we eliminate many of their options we will no doubt negatively affect their standard of living.

From a practical perspective, this means that if our consumption of carbon-based fuels precludes theirs, we need to invest in technologies so their houses are as warm or cold as ours with burning coal or natural gas. If we have the opportunity to see tigers in the wild, even if it is a smaller number than our parents left us, we owe that to them.

Again, maybe they won’t want to go to India and look for tigers but that isn’t for us to say or is it for us to eliminate as a possibility.

Finally, there is a seductive desire to believe that future technology will somehow undo the elimination of choices our excessive behavior leads to for our children. That is, even if we exceed our allotment of stuff, because we leave our children more advanced technology than we inherited from our parents, it compensates for the elimination of choices.

Who knows? If the technology of the future is really advanced, maybe we haven’t eliminated anything. Certainly, if we believe what we see in Hollywood movies it seems possible that one day our children’s children will be able to go to zoos that feature living Tyrannosaurus Rex, which has to make recreating tigers a pretty simple exercise. Unfortunately we can’t count on that possibility.

If our actions destroy choices that cannot be undone, we have permanently impoverished our children. If our actions lead to the creation of technologies that give them choices we could never have dreamed of, we make them richer.

This, of course, is what every parent wants for their kids.

(Jeff Collins, Ph.D., is an economist and partner in Fayetteville’s Streetsmart NWA, which produces a quarterly report on real estate in Northwest Arkansas. For more information, call 479-575-9100.)