Many of the transformations discussed last week can be considered negative, like increased soil erosion, loss of species, and others that we have only briefly alluded to so far (e.g., like the addition of pollutants to the earth systems).

The great question posed in this chapter, and running as a theme thru this class is whether human development of the earth and its resources is "sustainable."

Sustainability is difficult to define, and can be viewed differently by different perspectives. As the book points out, very big differences in production/consumption patterns exist between the developed and developing countries.

Developing countries wrestle with population growth, increasing demand for land for agriculture, and local to regional environmental degradation. Their financial state tends to preclude how much they can invest in environmental protection.

Developed (industrial) nations: consume more resources per capita and produce wastes like CO2 into the atmosphere that further transform the environment. But developed nations also have put efforts into environmental clean-up and protection.

The text offers a roster of problems associated with human production and consumption growth, making its strongest case for the fact that human transformations have now grown to global proportions (affecting whole ecosystems, the climate, and oceans) and thus more threatening and even more difficult to mitigate (e.g., requires international cooperation, etc.).

So, what are the main PRESCRIPTIONS associated with calls for SUSTAINABLE DEVLEOPMENT?

• Recognition of the role of natural systems in human well-being; that even in heavily mechanized, technical production systems, natural processes and materials are essential, that our resource systems are inevitably embedded in a natural matrix ("people are part of nature").

• Better assessment of costs----"ENVIRONMENTALA CCOUNTING." This includes incorporating all of the costs of production and consumption into the price of goods and services. Especially INTERNALIZING" the costs to commons pool resources like oceans, atmosphere, species that have been left out of the economic calculus.

• Find a way to include the status of renewable natural resources into national economic indices----"NATURAL RESOURCE ACCOUNTING"----treat them as capital before they are transformed into goods and services. So if you liquidate old growth forest assess both the loss and the gain to the national economy.

• Reduce poverty/increase development---this is much more general, and seems something of a truism until you get into the debate about development. The idea is that poverty accelerates environmental degradation while wealth, although itself built on some env degradation, allows resources to protect the environment. This is a conundrum, maybe even a contradiction, but the text suggests that the basic idea of sustainable development is that you much have development to have a better environment, that the choice is not between using and not using land and resources but using them more carefully, more sustainably.

This may not seem very radical to you, but it was an idea resisted in some circles, especially those most skeptical of development, those who saw development and industrialization as the problem, and not conceivably part of the solution.

Agricultural systems: diverse crops, better land and water management practices, reduced subsidies (discussed at WTO last week as an economic issue, but if subsidies encourage spread beyond what markets would, then subsidies increase transformation of natural environment)).

Energy systems: efficiency, but also reduce subsidies that encourage consumption above what market forces would occasion.

Gloomy view: production/consumption rising faster than pop; everyone wants to live like wealthy industrial societies, and even they want to consume more per capita (e.g., SUVs).

Rosy view: a mixture of technology and education can win out. You are asked in the next recitation to examine the more optimistic assessment of human dev and the environment.