Confronting Economic and Social Realities, 1980–1999 157
DOCUMENT 126: Lester R. Brown on Building a
Sustainable Society (1981)In 1974 Lester Brown, who holds a degree in agriculture and at one time worked for the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, founded the Worldwatch Institute, an organization devoted to worldwide environmental issues
relating to sustainability and global interdependency. The institute’s influential annual report on the environment,
State of the World, became a sourcebook for corporate leaders and government policymakers around the world.
The concept of sustainable development is an outgrowth of ideas developed by conservationist-minded land
and forest managers such as John Wesley Powell and Gifford Pinchot who, at the end of the nineteenth century,
began calling for the wise use of America’s resources [see Documents 58 and 73]. Interest in sustainable development
gained momentum in the 1970s, but the focus of the new breed of conservationists who supported this concept was
on international economic, energy, and resource policies and on activities that would make sustainability possible.
The international community’s commitment to sustainable development was made evident in the Stockholm
Declaration [see Document 119] and was clearly enunciated in both the 1987 Brundtland Report (the United
Nations World Commission on Environment and Development’s plan for nations to find areas of agreement
on environmental issues that involve the interplay of environmental and economic factors, which extended
the concept of sustainable development to the entire globe).^6 and the 1992 United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development (UNCED) “Programme of Action for Sustainable Development,” also known
as the Rio Declaration [see Document 144].Although economic approaches to public
policy may purport to weigh both consumer and
citizen values, we may, as citizens, believe that
certain public values or collective goals (e.g., that
an innocent person not be convicted) supersede
the values that we pursue as self-seeking indi-
viduals (e.g., security from crime). Moreover, we
might decide to sacrifice economic optimality for
cleaner air and water. Once legislatures, respond-
ing to political pressure, have made this choice,
is it defensible for economists to insist that our
policymaking process include the very consumer
values that we have decided to sacrifice?
When an environmentalist argues that we
ought to preserve wilderness areas because of
their cultural importance and symbolic mean-
ing, he or she states a conviction and not a
desire. When an economist asserts that we ought
to attain efficient levels of pollution, he or she,
too, states a belief. Both beliefs are supported by
arguments, not money.
* * *
What many economists do not understand
is that efficiency is one value among many and
is not a meta-value that comprehends all oth-
ers. Economists as a rule do recognize one other
value, namely, justice or equality, and they speak,
therefore, of a “trade-off” between efficiency
and equality. They do not speak, as they should,
however, about the trade-off between efficiency
and our aesthetic and moral values. What about
the trade-off between efficiency and dignity, effi-
ciency and self-respect, efficiency and the mag-
nificence of our natural heritage, efficiency and
the quality of life? These are the trade-offs that
are important in setting environmental policy.
Source: Mark Sagoff, “Economic Theory and Environmental
Law,” Michigan Law Review 79 (1981): 1393, 1395-96,
1399, 1416, 1419.A sustainable society will differ from the one
we now know in several respects. Population size
will more or less be stationary, energy will be used
far more efficiently, and the economy will be fueled
largely with renewable sources of energy. As a result,
people and industrial activity will be more widely
dispersed, far less concentrated in urban agglom-
erations than they are in a petroleum-fueled society.