Good reasons for not wanting to be sustainable

Get money and use it wisely

One of the earliest lessons that most of us learn, is that dad (and often mum) have to go to work and the reason they have to go to work, is to get money. Most of our lives revolve around going to work and getting money. Once we’ve got the money, we learn that we better not waste it. We need to know the price of the things that we are going to buy, because mum and dad had to work hard for that money.

So what’s that got to do with sustainability? First, since we focus so much on things that cost money, we tend to ignore things that are free or very low cost, even if they are tremendously valuable. Things like clean air and clean water, the ozone layer, and a comfortable climate are very valuable to us, but since we don’t have to do any work to get them, we don’t give them any value. Why be sustainable if it means going to a lot of trouble to protect the things that are already free?

Second, the prices that drive our free market society, and make it so efficient in allocating goods and services are the result of the interaction between supply and demand. The demand, though, is set in today’s market place where the only bidders are people who have money today. Future generations can’t bid in the free market, so they don’t increase the demand and the price stays low. If the price were higher we might conserve resources, but the price is low, so we don’t conserve. We use everything now and we know we are right, because we learned a long time ago that the price is the only guide we need.

Third, prices are so convenient. We know exactly how much a litre of petrol costs and how much a cheeseburger costs, so we can plan our lives accordingly. We don’t know how much clean air and clean water for the next generation costs, so how can we make our decisions? This sustainability stuff just can’t be trusted.

Bigger is better

As kids we learned that big people (adults) are in charge. Big kids ruled the playground. Somebody who has a big house and a big car is successful. In all things, bigger is better.

Population growth advocates argue that Australia would be a better country with a higher population. We know per capita income drops slightly with a higher population and the environment is worse off, but that doesn’t matter as much as being a bigger country, because bigger is better.

Countries with big populations, are the important countries. It doesn’t matter that people are rich and happy in Luxembourg, it is a small country, so it’s a loser country. It doesn’t matter that millions of people in India and China live in horrible poverty with few rights. India and China are big, important countries. Proponents of sustainability say that increasing the population makes it harder to be sustainable, so they are dooming us to be a loser country. That means proponents of sustainability are losers.

Get money plus bigger is better

The more we consume the happier we are. The more stuff and the bigger the stuff we have, the happier we are. Advocates of sustainability want us to recycle and conserve energy and lots of other stuff that isn’t as much fun as spending money on big new stuff. That means they don’t want us to be happy, so sustainability must be a bad idea.

Lessons not learned as a child

Long term thinking