I was quoted today in an Associated Press story commenting on the WWF's usual Malthusian gloom mongering about how mankind and America in particular were "destroying Earth's ability to sustain life." As is usual on such occasions, I got letters.

One asked:

Mr Smith is quoted as follows:

"The real question is not whether the United States is a wealthy place but rather whether it's producing more wealth than it's consuming. Obviously, we are. We're using a lot of the world's resources but we're producing far more of the world's resources."

If this is so I wonder why is it that we are the largest debtor nation and we have to import between 1.5 and 2.0 billion dollars a day to keep our economy going?

Thank you.

I replied as follows:

You noted your view that the United States itself is a non-sustainable society and suggested that our deficit policies illustrate that point. Let me assure you that - in part - I concur with that assessment. However, the "deficit" itself is a misleading indicator of that problem. Whether one "pays" for current consumption via taxes (and thus in our misleading national accounts incurs "no deficit") or via borrowing (and thus does create a "deficit") is less important than the point that I sought to make (as I'm sure you know, reporters discuss an issue with people like me for some time and then select a few quotes to fill out their story - not necessarily the excerpts that one might have picked for that purpose). My major point was that the WWF focus on Malthusian approaches - restrictions on population, consumption and technology - would block the major forces that have made the world sustainable over the last several centuries.

People in an institutional setting (such as that of the United States) that encourages entrepreneurial activity respond to scarcity by reducing demand, by increasing supply and by creating technologies that make it possible to do more with less. That process has made all market-embedded resources more available over time. That is, sustainability is an artefact of the institututional framework of a society. Economic liberal societies enlist the energies and genius of the people far more creatively than do politicized collectively controlled societies (socialism does not work very well). In other words, the world really is an Alice in Wonderland world - "To stay in place we run; to get ahead we must run faster."

The WWF model focuses on the fact that current policies are non-sustainable ... but they always have been. No society that grows (that is that democratizes the privileges of the wealthy elites) can continue indefinitely without changing. It must continually find ways to do more with less - to replace the resources used today with new supplies, with greater effciencies or with instituional/technological innovations that make this possible. The structures popularized by western civilization (private property, the markets, contracts, economic liberalization) make this possible. Excluding key reosurces from the market (the anti-property rights bias of the current environmental orthodoxy) leaves these resources outside that creative response structure and leaves them at risk (to a Tragedy of the Commons).

Our web site has references to some of the longer papers and monographs, we're written on this topic. I regret that my excerpts might have suggested that we believe that current US political policies are sustainable. Private and political pension plans, the moral hazard introduced by government guarantees, the failure to bring key environmental resources into the exchange market (the lack of any push toward "ecological privatization") - all argue your case very well. CEI is engaged in an effort to integrate ecological and economic resources. And, we believe, slowly our work is succeeding. We're winning the battle in favor of biotechnology; we're beginning to alert society to the risks of current policies (the "precationary principle" and naive "sustainable development" policies). You may, of course, find these policies naive also but we do argue them on grounds that I think you would find interesting - even if you ultimately reject them.

In any event, let me thank you for taking the time to comment. There is a need for a much more intense debate on how best to address the issues raised by WWF and it is encouraging that individuals like yourself are motivated to critique the (inevitably) simplistic renderings of that overall program that pass through the filters of the media. If you have other questions, please feel free to e-mail me.