03/17/2008: "Is the Sacrifice a Sacrifice?"

On page 54 of the June 9, 2008 edition of Time magazine Jeffrey Sachs points out that the key to heading off disruptive climate change is to improve technology. That is, implementing technologies that go beyond changing our light bulbs, and especially an implementation that involves the active participation of our government.

He goes on to say that all of the improvements we need to make are achievable and that the technologies we need to implement are within reach. But he also complains that our government has been both negligent and indifferent. Observing the difference between what we spend on the military and what we spend on ending the energy crisis and restoring the planet he notes, “U.S. spending for all energy research – nuclear, wind, coal, solar and biofuels – was a meager $3.2 billion in 2006. The Pentagon spends that much in about 40 hours.”

Some complain that the changes suggested by anti-poverty and ecological sustainability advocates are economically infeasible. But this claim is far more of an excuse than a reality. In fact, the economy will almost always wrap itself around whatever we collectively decide to do. If we all decided to work 30 hours per week, the economy would accommodate that change. If we decided to have only one family member work to support the rest, the economy would accommodate. If we decided to utilize only environmentally friendly technologies, the economy would certainly adjust to that, too. Perhaps wealth would not centralize quite as quickly, but that wouldn’t be so bad, either.

But what Sachs and others readily point out is that the sacrifice we might experience in making the necessary changes, sacrifices that are often touted as being horribly burdensome, wouldn’t be all that great. Rather, these sacrifices mostly involve a moderate reprioritization of our current resources. According to Sachs (Sachs, 2005, 2008) and others (Korten, 2006) the cost of ending the energy crisis and climate change would be a mere 1 percent of the GDP of the world’s richest countries, and another 1 percent would end poverty as we know it. In fact, America’s contribution to this effort would be a far cry from the $3 trillion (going on $4 trillion) dollars we are about to spend on the Iraq/Afghanistan conflict (Stiglitz & Bilmes, 2008).

Given the need for America to put its ethical money where its ethical mouth is (Zakaria, 2008), one would have to ask, “Is the “sacrifice” really all that terrible or all that difficult?”

Let us know your thoughts.

Korten, D. C. (2006). The great turning: From empire to earth community. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Sachs, J. D. (2005). The end of poverty: Economic possibilities for our time. New York: The Penguin Press.
Sachs, J. D. (2008). Common wealth: Economics for a crowded planet. New York: The Penguin Press.
Stiglitz, J. E., & Bilmes, L. J. (2008). The three trillion dollar war: The true cost of the Iraq conflict. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Zakaria, F. (2008). The post-American world. New York: W. W. Norton.