The Environment— Protecting the Global Commons 399others, such as many metals, are recyclable; but some—in par tic u lar petroleum— are
nonrenewable: once they are gone, they are gone. Given our universal dependence on the
environment both for our very existence and as a resource for our broader welfare, how
did the environment come to be so threatened and why have the efforts of individuals,
states, and international organ izations to protect the environment not been more suc-
cessful? If states’ shared interest in peace can lead to a dramatic decline in the likelihood
and destructiveness of interstate war, why cannot their shared interest in a clean envi-
ronment lead to a reduction in the rate of its consumption or destruction? In this chap-
ter, we see that issues of pollution, climate change, natu ral resources, population change,
and energy are all intertwined, such that trends in one of these areas affect trends in each
of the others. Costly policy decisions made to address one issue can have unintended
consequences. The complexity of the global ecosystem and the difficulty of predicting the
interaction of its many parts is one partial answer to the question of why more has not
already been done to slow or reverse harm to the global environment.
conceptual Perspectives
Two conceptual perspectives help us think critically about the interrelation of envi-
ronmental issues. These perspectives augment each other. First is the notion of collec-
tive goods. (See Chapter 7.) Collective goods help us conceptualize how to achieve
shared benefits that depend on overcoming conflicting individual interests. How can
individual herders in the commons be convinced to abridge their own self- interest
(which is for each to increase the number of sheep he or she allows to graze on the
commons) in the interest of preserving the commons for the collectivity? How can indi-
vidual polluters of the global air and water commons be likewise convinced to abridge
their self- interest to preserve these commons for the collectivity? One difficulty is that
our most influential economic theories had their origins at a time when the global air,
sea, and natu ral resources commons seemed truly infinite. Published in 1776, Adam
Sm it h ’s Wealth of Nations, for example, suggested that individual self- interest was moved
“as if by an invisible hand” to a collective good in the form of ever- cheaper and more
plentiful consumer goods. Yet by the close of the nineteenth century, this seemingly
infinite supply of space and resources had become bounded. Since the end of World
War II, we have come to understand that our planet itself is a commons, and as such,
we must reassess the collective impact of our individual self- interests. Collective- goods
theory helps us understand these prob lems and, at the same time, suggests solutions.
The second conceptual perspective is sustainability, or sustainable development,
introduced in Chapter 9. Sustainability is a crucial perspective because it helps us think
about advancing our survival and welfare without doing lasting damage to our
environment and thereby abridging the health and welfare of our descendants. As a
conceptual perspective, then, sustainability reminds us that it is pos si ble, desirable, and