The Year of the Sustainable President?

I'm hopeful that this year we'll see a sea change in the way our federal government looks at economic sustainability. I'm hopeful that whomever we elect as our next president chooses sustainable economic policy as one of their areas of focus.

This is serious stuff. Jared Diamond, author of "Collapse" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel" writes in his op-ed in the NYTimes today:

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1....

The only approach that China and other developing countries will accept is to aim to make consumption rates and living standards more equal around the world. But the world doesn’t have enough resources to allow for raising China’s consumption rates, let alone those of the rest of the world, to our levels. Does this mean we’re headed for disaster?

No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels. Americans might object: there is no way we would sacrifice our living standards for the benefit of people in the rest of the world. Nevertheless, whether we get there willingly or not, we shall soon have lower consumption rates, because our present rates are unsustainable.

Real sacrifice wouldn’t be required, however, because living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates. Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life. For example, per capita oil consumption in Western Europe is about half of ours, yet Western Europe’s standard of living is higher by any reasonable criterion, including life expectancy, health, infant mortality, access to medical care, financial security after retirement, vacation time, quality of public schools and support for the arts....

Just as it is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now, it is also certain that per capita consumption rates in many developing countries will one day be more nearly equal to ours. These are desirable trends, not horrible prospects. In fact, we already know how to encourage the trends; the main thing lacking has been political will.

Fortunately, in the last year there have been encouraging signs. Australia held a recent election in which a large majority of voters reversed the head-in-the-sand political course their government had followed for a decade; the new government immediately supported the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Also in the last year, concern about climate change has increased greatly in the United States. Even in China, vigorous arguments about environmental policy are taking place, and public protests recently halted construction of a huge chemical plant near the center of Xiamen. Hence I am cautiously optimistic. The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

For me, this means identifying sound approaches to economic development that decisively and intelligently move the nation away from a carbon-based economy and toward patterns of economic life that reduce consumption of fossil fuels.

I guess I'm just ready for national leadership that is willing to poke holes in the increasingly false and dangerous story about the "American Dream"--that every citizen of this country has the right and capacity to earn and spend as much as we can without consequences. I'm ready for someone to make corporations act as though caring for the long-term health of our land and water is as important as the short-term health of their balance sheets and stock price.

Diamond's essay plainly illustrates a deep spiritual truth: God has placed on this earth enough for everyone. But Americans are using too much. I'm ready to make sacrifices in the name of environmental health and more equitable distribution of resources. But I'm also hungry for leadership that will ask for those sacrifices.